5 Ways To Stay Positive When You’re A Broke Entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur, you’re well aware of the many peaks and valleys that come with starting a business of your own. One day you’ve got a world full of possibilities, the next you’re pinching pennies and considering an out. It’s a stark reality that so many people face when they find themselves as a broke entrepreneur.

Here’s a few ways to stay positive when you’re a broke entrepreneur.

Work A Well Thought Out Strategy

Setting realistic and regular goals for yourself can make a world of a difference when you’re trying to dig yourself out of the hole. Not having a plan can make you feel hopeless and incapable, fight feelings of self-doubt by dusting yourself off and aiming to get back in the saddle. You don’t have to do it right away, but not setting a timeline for yourself or a strategy can lead to the ultimate blow that terminates your entrepreneurial aspirations.

Make up a checklist of goals to complete – focus on SMART goals, not vague ones that will only serve to demoralize you further. Setting a goal such as “dig self out of hole” will make you feel about as overwhelmed as you were before. Get specific; it’s better to have items on your goal list like “get a shovel” and “scoop three piles of dirt out on Wednesday”. As soon as you set daily and weekly goals for yourself, feelings of positivity and engages to get goals accomplished will already have you motivated and even excited about checking off your to-do list.

Know When It’s Time To Find Funding

If you’re a broke entrepreneur, you’ve likely started to take your financial options into consideration and thought about seeking outside investors. You’ve realized that doing it all alone might not be as feasible as you once thought, and the idea of a financial helping hand is looking more and more enticing. But before you get hasty with your decision to get financial help, you’ll want to ask yourselves some questions, including why it is that you need funding.

A clear idea on when it’s time to seek out investors will allow you to keep from throwing in the towel and going off track with the goals you’ve set for yourself.

Chase After The Lessons

How bleak would the world be if every time an entrepreneur failed, they just gave up without asking questions or seeing the opportunity as a lesson? Forget Facebook, SpaceX, Apple, heck, forget computers.

In business there are always lessons to be learned, that’s the first thing you should know as an entrepreneur.  Embracing every one of your failures can be a hard thing to do, especially when you find your failures haven’t left you two pennies to rub together. Still, learning from your failures is as essential to your success as the lessons you learn from your wins and can make all of the difference. For every failure you experience, make sure that you take the time to examine and take away a lesson.

Never miss an opportunity to learn about life, people, your business, and yourself by reflecting on what caused your failure. Adopting an objective attitude when you do this is imperative to helping you understand what truly put you in your state of failure in the first place. Doing this regularly will help you find that sense of empowerment you might have lost when things turned downhill.Utilize your network

Reach Out To Your Network

Calling up your network and asking for help can be difficult, especially when there’s a strong sense of embarrassment attached. One of the first goals you should set out to accomplish when you’re broke is recognizing that there shouldn’t be any shame in asking for help. All entrepreneurs experience ups and downs. Unfortunately, this time it’s your turn.

Don’t have contacts yet? Jump into the world of networking events. They provide amazing opportunities for you to learn and connect with other entrepreneurs and they can help you scratch off a major goal that should be on that list we talked about: connecting with someone who can help.

Use networking opportunities as a way of also coming to understand the environment you’re trying to get into. Pay attention to how others interact, what they talk about and what’s piquing their interest. There’s a lot to learn and take home in chatting networking circles.

Focus on Your Customers

When you first came up with your big idea, it’s likely that the amount of money you could make off of it popped into your head. The thing is, though, it wasn’t your first thought, your idea was. Refocus on your customers and offer them a service that genuinely gives them value. When a business is able to offer customers a service that caters to their specific needs and personality, they find success. Utilize your target audience as your first lesson in entrepreneurship and come up with solutions to make their lives easier.