One of the challenges you will face in the early stage of your business is starvation or delayed gratification. You may need to starve like Richard Branson when he started his first business, the Student Magazine. You may need to deny yourself of some immediate gratification. You may not eat the right kind of food, operate the right kind of office or wear the right kind of clothes. You may be constantly broke because you are investing your lot in your business. You don’t have to worry, it is a phase.

Another challenge you will experience is loneliness. Yes, you may have friends around you, even a lovable family, but entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. Nobody will see the business challenges and how draining they are. Nobody will understand why you stay up at night like an owl. Nobody will understand why you are crying in your small office late in the evening. Nobody will understand why you are frustrated, depressed or transferring aggression. Nobody will understand why you just want to be alone all weekend. It is also a phase.

You will have to learn to improvise at all times. The resources that you need will readily not be abundantly available. So, what do you have to do? You must learn to make lemonade when life gives you a lemon. Your business is going to give you lots of what looks like lemon; it is left for you to improvise and create something unique. If you can’t micro management your resources, you will probably close down your business when you least expect it. You need to learn how to start and run your business on a shoestring budget until the big break or an angel investor comes to rescue you.

Again, you will be everything in the business. This could be overwhelming, but that’s what comes with starting your own business. You will virtually be doing almost everything in the business. So, you must develop those skill-sets that will help you to effectively multitask.

You need to learn how to work with different people. Every single person that will be working with you has got his or her own emotional baggage. Yours is to help them manage their baggage in such a way that it won’t affect the organizational goal. Forgive me if I say this: you are going to be the shrink and your employees are your patients. So be ready to help them become stable emotionally and otherwise.

Lastly, the money will come, but it won’t come in droves. You must learn the habit of turning your hard earn dime into several dollars. Most entrepreneurs go bankrupt because they don’t know how to manage and multiply their returns on investment. You must become a successful money manager. Once you have successfully gone through all these, then you would have developed the lifestyle of living a life of luxury that your business will offer you.