This article is about obstacles that may be standing between you and your dream business. While there are many obstacles that can limit your ability to move forward, there are two broad categories that we will over in this post. If you find yourself stuck, read on because the obstacles we'll discuss are simple, yet complicated and not easy to see at first glance. If you find that the scenarios we discuss are ones you face, we'll give you some solutions you can use to get unstuck.

One category of obstacles is something that may limit you once you've started a business. The other category of obstacles is something that can be one of the biggest obstacles you may face when trying to build a business. And it may haunt you from before you start, and throughout the course of your business journey.  

Affiliate Disclaimer: This page may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. However, using these links will have no effect on you or your purchase in any way. For more information refer to our disclaimer page.

When we think of the reasons high percentages of businesses fail, we think of things like low quality products, high competition, lack of training and management skills, poor planning and more. 

Does Any of This Describe You?

Believe it or not, many of the obstacles that stop us from reaching our goals are related to issues that are within our control. If any of these scenarios describe you, this article will give you some options and help you navigate your entrepreneurial journey. 

The things that stop us include things like our beliefs, our confidence level and three simple things that we'll cover here. 

Obstacle 1: Fear a Powerful Emotion

If you’re struggling to build your dream business, the first obstacle we'll discuss is fear. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions we have.  It can serve as a strong motivator to encourage us to make changes that can move us ahead or hold us back. 

When we start a new venture, it's normal to have fear, but lots of entrepreneurs start a business because they have a lot riding on their decision to start a business. They usually want to improve their lives and the lives of their families. If they fail, they may continue to face uncomfortable circumstances. And that's why there is so much fear and anxiety around getting started. 

Your Support System Matters

In addition to the fears entrepreneurs face, there is the support system (or lack thereof) that surrounds the person. If there's support for the business, that makes it easier to move ahead.  If support is limited, there may be naysayers who may add to the business owner's fears and even instill doubt.  Fear paired with doubt can stop you in your tracks... these emotions are known as entrepreneurial dream killers. 

Obstacle 2: Communication

Finally, another huge obstacle can be communication. We've talked about this before, but I can't stress the importance of communication enough. If you're like many entrepreneurs these fears, doubts and limited support issues can easily translate to communicating and the way we communicate (or not) with our audience.

Communication is one of the most important skills you can have when you're building a business. The goal is to figure out what communication style will work best to help you reach the audience that is the best fit for your business.  

We'll take a look at some of the communication pitfalls that limit our ability to move forward. They are considered pitfalls when we allow our fears, doubts and other factors to stand in the way of doing these things on a regular basis. They include the habits, preferences, fears, doubts that nag business owners and hold them back from reaching their dreams. 

Let's take these obstacles that limit business owners boil them down a little further to 3 simple things… reading, writing and talking. More specifically, fears, doubts and limited support that has a direct effect on reading, writing, and talking. 

This is a simple list of things that most of us do each day…with our friends and family which makes up (our inner circle). Some of us may communicate with an audience (our employer's audience) on our jobs. However we fall short when it comes to doing these things with our target audience. 

We work to maintain our relationships with our inner circle because these are the people we are closest to. We work hard to communicate with our employer's audience in order to keep our jobs. But in all the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, we can fail in a major way when it comes to communicating with our audience.

When it comes to building a business, the people we need to reach are the people who would be the best fit for our products, and they should be a bigger priority when it comes to building a thriving business.

So the question becomes, are you communicating with your target audience each day? And if not, why? Are you putting emphasis and effort into reaching this important group of people, or are you leaving them on the back burner? Are you allowing your fears and doubts and possibly a limited support system to keep you from reaching out on a regular basis?  

The power of communication for our business comes when we find an effective way to connect, with the people we want to work with. Our business communication has to resonate with an audience of people who are looking for what we have to offer. And because the competition is fierce, we need to send our marketing message pretty regularly.

It's really a simple thing, but it could be more complicated, especially when we factor in fear, doubt and a lack of support from those in our inner circles. 

It's the thing that holds a large number of business owners back. Now that we know the problem, let's look at ways to overcome these obstacles. 

Your Daily Tasks and Habits Matter

Incorporating the right communication tasks and building skills in reaching our audience each day will help you reach your income goals without being salesy without twisting arms or inviting people to take a look at your products and services. They will come to you...

Communicating doesn't necessarily mean having a one on one conversation with someone. It can include things like the following:

These pieces of communication can be batch produced so that they don't take up a lot of time. For example, choose a block of time that you can create content. Let's say for example, you choose an hour or two to make videos and reels for a week. Then drip those videos out each day to communicate with your audience.

You might consider using a notebook or  journal to write down your content ideas each day, so that when it's time to create, you'll have ideas you can implement.

It's also important to take look at your numbers, using a tool like Google Analytics at least once a week (or even once per month) to see what content worked best during the current period and what didn't. Do more of what works, and less of what doesn't.

Taking time to learn as much as possible, and understanding your ideal customers, and communicating with them each day will help you build relationships that will in turn help you reach your income goals. Overcome these obstacles and watch your business grow. 

One of the other elephant sized dream killers is fear. And your fears may be keeping you from excelling at reading, writing and talking (verbal communication). 

Talking and Presenting Ideas 

Would you rather have teeth pulled rather than talking in front of an audience? Are you better at talking to people one on one? Or are you a complete introvert who does better behind the scenes? 

Many of us have had to give presentations in the workplace, or even talked to customers over the phone, helping us to develop verbal communication skills. You can use these skills to build a business by reaching out to your audience daily utilizing your gift of gab.

This task is about using your voice and language to share experiences, demonstrate and tell stories that attract people who are actively looking for what you have to offer. 

Consider terms you've probably hear before like keywords, hashtags, and targeting when you talk to your audience. If you don’t have an audience, pretend you have one and just start talking to them on a daily basis if possible through one or more of the communication methods we discuss in this article.  

Solutions for those who don’t like talking in front of groups or presenting ideas. Some of the solutions available are faceless videos, over the shoulder training tutorials and tools like Canva Whiteboard that are great for people who either don’t like showing their face in front of others. These tools make it easy to present ideas to others who might be a good fit for your business. It makes it easy to educate and inform your audience and demonstrate that you know what you're talking about. 

The more you practice these tasks, the better you will get in connecting with an audience using your verbal communication skills. 

What You Can Do to Excel at Talking to Groups of People

Reading and Absorbing Information 

Have you bought eBooks that you have never read? Do you take courses that you start and never complete? Do you invest in knowledge, but never implement what you learn? 

Reading and absorbing information that helps you build a business is crucial to reaching your income goals. First there’s a reason you purchased a book or an eBook. Examine why you would buy something and never use it. Kinda seems counterproductive, as if you are sabotaging your own success. 

If you’re like many people, you buy books because they seem interesting and beneficial to helping you solve a problem or reach a goal. You may have every intention of reading your books, but time and life take over and in the grand scheme of things, reading just doesn’t happen. If you’re buying eBooks (or receiving them for free) and not reading them it’s a waste of time. And time is the thing that life is made of… use it wisely. 

Solutions for those who don’t like reading. There are tools like audiobooks and podcasts that are great for people who either don’t like to read or don’t have time. They make it easy to listen on the go, to your favorite authors. There are also text to speech tools that will read PDF documents.

For example, iPhones have a built-in text-to-speech (TTS) tool that can read digital text, like emails and text messages. There are also apps like Speechify that allow you to listen to docs, articles, PDFs, email, and various other formats — anything you read.

Listen on the Go

What You Can Do to Excel at Reading

Writing and Explaining

Did you know that you can use your writing skills to create profitable assets (information products, blog posts, ebooks, guides and more) that you can use to move your life ahead?

Your writing skills can help you create an eMail marketing asset that helps you grow your business, day after day, month after month, year after year. 

For example you can use your writing skills to build a list of engaged leads and customers. However, many people hate to write because they feel that their writing skills suck. But the good news is that writing for sales and marketing is not like writing a term paper for school or college.

Everything doesn't have to be grammatically perfect when selling your products and services. If you can string together complete thoughts, you have spelling and basic skills, you can communicate with an audience in a conversational tone that will take you a long way. 

Many people struggle with what to say when writing emails, so they never start… or they start, receive limited results and never start again. 

Solutions for those who hate to write. There are many solutions available today for people who have limited writing skills, don’t have time or those who just basically hate to write. There is spell check, available in most word processors, tools like Grammarly that will check your grammar and tools that will basically write out documentation for you. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is available now on many platforms, (writing, email, video, audio, graphic design and more) to help you craft amazing content, even if you have limited writing skills. 

Video: Get Up to 500 Subscribers with a Free Email Marketing Tool

What You Can Do to Excel at Writing

You Suck at All Three of These Skills

If you suck at all three of these skills, you have a few choices. You can stay where you are and continue to wish you could build a thriving business, making excuses and getting nowhere. You can outsource these skills to someone else using companies like Fiverr and Upwork. If you outsource these tasks, you will share your profits with partners who excel at the skills you lack.

Finally, you can work on the areas you need help with and practice until you get better. But this requires putting your fears aside, working on eliminating negative self talk and taking steps to improve.