What are some of these personal challenges? Limiting beliefs and conflicting intentions are right up there at the top. Either, in and of themselves, can bring your smarter marketing and lead generation efforts to a screeching halt. If somewhere deep down, you don’t really believe you can build a wildly successful business, if that little nagging voice in the back of your mind is still thinking, “Yeah, right, like I could ever build a six-figure business” or if you’re convinced that booking yourself solid will mean you’ll have no time to spend with those you love, it’s definitely going to have a negative impact on your business building efforts.

Some of the more concrete personal challenges that I’ve run into over the years and that you may be facing as well:

Resistance or lack of support from a partner, spouse, or other close family member. (Often they have their own limiting beliefs or conflicting intentions about how your business will affect them, or the status quo at home.)

When you add in the personal factors, time-management takes on a whole different dimension. Not only do you have to schedule time for working on your business, not just in it, but you may also be juggling the multiple, and often conflicting, schedules of the rest of your immediate family as well. Hmmmm……how do you get little Jimmy to the doctor, Susie to her soccer game, and still make those direct outreach calls before 5pm? Oops……and don’t forget to grab that loaf of bread and gallon of milk at the grocery store, swing by the post office to drop off your tax returns, and the dry cleaners to pick up the business suit you’ll need for next week’s trip.

Then there’s the blurring of boundaries between work and home to deal with. Perhaps you don’t have an extra room to turn into an office and find yourself playing musical furniture in an attempt to define some space amongst the chaos to devote to your business. I recently joked with a close friend about how on earth I was going to turn my small bedroom into a serene oasis I could relax in, AND an efficient work space. Not an easy task, but a necessary one, at least temporarily.

Then there’s one of my personal favorites, trying to teach the kids that, no, they can’t interrupt a business call to ask if they can have half a bag of Oreos as an afternoon snack, or worse yet, that picking up one of the other extensions is NOT an acceptable way to see if I’m still on the phone.

My kids are the light of my life, and they have incredibly short attention spans and virtually no long-term memory when it comes to certain things. I’ve been a solo business owner all of their lives (they’re teens now) and I still have to remind them that although they may have the day off for some obscure holiday or teacher in-service day, Mom still has to work. So, no, I can’t always drop everything to pick up half a dozen of their friends and take them all to the skateboard park.

On the flip side of the craziness when the kids are home, are the days when 3pm rolls around and I realize the only one I’ve spoken to all day is the cat. While he’s a very good listener, he’s not much of a conversationalist. The isolation of working solo can at times feel disheartening and it’s important to find a way to create some sense of community and support with colleagues.

These few things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the more personal challenges of being a solo or small business owner. I’d love to hear some of your own stories. What are your greatest challenges, personal and professional?