What To Expect In The First Year Of Business

Freshman Year in Business

Written by Chukwuma Asala for Gaebler Ventures

Your first year in business will be one of the most thrilling and frustrating at the same time. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship.

You will learn what it takes to be successful in your first year.

Hopefully if you're in business for yourself, by now you understand the difference between being in business versus being an employee. This is usually the toughest aspect of being in business and not surprisingly it is a mental challenge. If you were an employee in your former life then you're used to showing up to work, sitting at your desk, fooling around on the computer, doing work for two hours out of the work day, and getting paid at the end of the week for doing that Monday through Friday. Business is an entirely different ball game. You don't just get paid for showing up. In fact, you don't even get paid for working hard necessarily.

Expect to make a lot of mistakes

Sadly in business the only way you really learn is by making mistakes or through a mentor. But even with a mentor you will have to go through your own share of business valleys before your career is done. And make no mistake: you will walk through a financial valley more than once when you're in business. But the important thing is not if you get knocked down, but when you get knocked down do you bounce back stronger. You will find that if you adopt the belief that for the first year you are just gaining experience, not focus too much on results, you will feel much more confident in the vision you have for your company and this is something that will be contagious. A famous saying in the military is "Don't trust someone without a limp". This is referring to the fact that unless someone has actually been in battle before they have no idea what war is really like. This is the same with business.

Be ready to be alone

Being in business is lonely not because you're necessarily by yourself. You will find that no one will ever care about your business as much as you do, which makes sense, because you're the owner. You will spend a lot of the first year trying to expand your enterprise and get other people who will buy into you and your company, and this will not be easy. Just remember that the first year you will feel like nothing is happening but a lot of the growth will be internal and you will eventually see the results of your perseverance the following year.

Chukwuma Asala is an international student from Nigeria who is studying to earn an MBA from the State University of New York in Albany. He has analyzed more than 20 industry case studies throughout his education thus far, and hopes to bring some of his business knowledge to Gaebler.com.

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