16 Hardest Parts of Owning and Running a Small Business
Many things are hard about starting and owning your own business. What’s hardest depends less on the business itself and more on the person running it.
Picture two people opening identical retail shoe stores on the same street, with the same starting capital and the same market conditions. The hardest part of running each store would still come down to the skills and personality of the owner. What’s difficult for one person comes naturally to another.
For example, getting people through the door may be a struggle for one owner and second nature to another. The same goes for managing staff — some owners have a natural feel for it, while others find it constantly draining.
So some, not all, of the hardest parts of owning a business will depend on you and your particular strengths and weaknesses. With that in mind, here are the challenges business owners run into most often.
1. Getting a Business Loan
Starting a new business involves real financial risk, and lenders are well aware of it. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data covering the year ending March 2025, about 22% of new U.S. businesses closed within their first year — a track record that makes lenders cautious. Unless you have a solid business plan, a workable idea, and some collateral, getting a loan to fund your business can be difficult.
Loan officers evaluate risk based on your financials, credit history, and collateral — they approve loans when they’re confident the money will be repaid, whether your business succeeds or not. In the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, just over half of applicants were approved for at least some of the financing they sought, and approval rates ranged as low as 30% for higher-credit-risk firms up to 60% for lower-risk firms.
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If you don’t have enough collateral or a co-signer, you may need to look elsewhere — often toward a higher-interest loan that eats into your profit margin. Without enough funding, you can’t get your business off the ground, which is exactly why this ranks as one of the hardest parts of starting out.
2. Running Out of Money
Getting funding is hard enough, as the point above covers. Suppose you’re approved for a loan with just enough to get started, and then you run out of operating cash. Going back to your original lender for more money is often difficult. You may need to look elsewhere, which can mean a higher-interest loan that hurts your bottom line, or you may need to close your doors.
Watch your spending and keep an emergency fund in place. Needing a loan out of desperation is a situation you want to avoid.
3. Supporting Yourself When Starting Your Company
Starting a new business is a stressful time. You’ll have dozens of issues to deal with at once, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. On top of the pressure to open on time and make things work, you have to figure out how to support yourself.
Your business is using up startup cash, and you’re working full time without a paycheck the way an employee would get. Figuring out how to cover your own expenses while running the business can be tricky and stressful.
Having three to six months of living expenses set aside gives your business some breathing room to start generating income before your personal finances are strained.
4. Hiring the Right People
Finding the right people to hire can be difficult. Hire the wrong person, and you end up paying twice: once for their training, and again when you have to start the hiring and training process over. According to 2025 U.S. Department of Labor–based estimates, a bad hire costs a business at least 30% of that employee’s first-year salary once training time, lost productivity, and rehiring costs are factored in.
Getting it right the first time matters — a second hiring and training cycle is time and money most small businesses can’t spare. For more, see How and When to Hire a New Employee.
5. Managing Your Staff
Managing your staff isn’t always easy; sometimes it feels simpler to do everything yourself. When you’re fortunate enough to hire a skilled and dedicated team, management becomes fairly straightforward — they already know what to do, know your expectations, and get things done.
In a business with high turnover, though, you’re constantly hiring and training new people, and it wears on you. New employees are rarely as dedicated or skilled as your seasoned staff right away.
You’ll also run into problem employees. Sometimes it’s worth giving them a fair chance to improve. Other times, especially when there’s no improvement, letting them go is the better call.
6. Keeping Up With Change
The business world moves fast, and it seems to move faster every year. Technology drives a lot of that — new tools and better, faster ways of doing things show up constantly.
When a better way of doing something comes along, it usually means a change in process, whether that’s new software, new equipment, or an entirely new method.
Keeping up with change is genuinely hard. Fall behind, and your competition gains an edge. Staying current with your industry and adapting when needed is part of the job.
7. Dealing With New Competition
Things may be going great — a healthy market, a strong customer base, solid profit margins. Then a new competitor shows up seemingly out of nowhere, and suddenly you have a fight on your hands to keep the customers you’ve built.
This happens often in healthy markets: success attracts competition. A new competitor might arrive with better prices, a better process, or a better product, and you’ll need to respond to hold your position.
Don’t take new competition lightly. Ignore it, and you risk losing real business. You already have an edge — you’re established, with customers and a piece of the market — so treat new competition as a signal to sharpen up, not a reason to panic.
8. Keeping Costs Down
Keeping costs down is especially hard in the early stages of a business, largely because of expenses you didn’t see coming. A web design business, for example, might not budget for a stock-photo subscription until the need shows up — a real but easy-to-miss line item.
There will be a handful of moments like this, where you spend money you didn’t plan for. It’s less a mistake than a natural result of not having run this exact business before.
Costs also tend to rise as your business grows. Higher demand means higher operating and staffing costs, and expenses can get away from you quickly if growth outpaces your planning. Keeping a close eye on costs is a habit worth building early.
9. Marketing and Advertising
Marketing takes skill and experience. You can run your own ad and get some results — plenty of business owners do exactly that. But marketing is also something of a science: understanding what motivates people to buy takes years to learn well.
As a business owner, you may not have the time, talent, or interest to handle your own marketing. Building an in-house marketing function is one option; outsourcing to an agency that understands your business is another.
10. Online Marketing
Online marketing brings its own set of challenges — there are so many ways to advertise online that it can feel overwhelming. Between pay-per-click ads on Google and Bing, social ads on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn, banner advertising, search engine optimization, and influencer marketing, it’s easy to spend thousands of dollars without seeing results.
Getting real results from online marketing without professional help is genuinely difficult.
11. Being Understaffed When You’re Underfunded
When you’re understaffed and can’t afford to hire, you can quickly become overwhelmed. You stop being able to service customers effectively and end up trying to do everything yourself.
That often means working long hours, seven days a week, while juggling customer service with the day-to-day work of running the business.
12. Living a Balanced Life
Living a balanced life is one of the hardest parts of owning and operating a business. As an employee, you clock out and leave your work behind for the day. As an owner, that’s much harder to do — your business is always on your mind, and finding real balance takes deliberate effort.
Some owners get pulled back into work after hours out of necessity; others stay engaged because they’re invested in the outcome. Either way, many small business owners find themselves thinking about and working on their business well beyond a typical eight-hour day.
13. Finding Great Suppliers
Finding a great supplier can take time. When you’re just starting out, suppliers may be willing to work with you as a new client, but they don’t yet know whether you’ll stick around.
Even though gaining a new customer benefits a supplier, you likely won’t get the same pricing, priority, or dedication that an established client would. Once you’ve built a track record, you’ll often earn discounts, better terms, or a line of credit — and priority access during shortages.
Suppliers matter as much as customers. The right supplier lets you keep your shelves stocked and your quality consistent; the wrong one, or none at all, makes both harder.
14. Fine-Tuning Products and Services When Starting
In the early stages, fine-tuning your products and services is difficult because doing it well takes information you don’t have yet. A simple customer survey can surface useful feedback, but if you don’t have enough people coming through the door, you won’t have enough responses to draw real conclusions.
Making changes based on a handful of responses is risky — you want a sample size you can actually trust. With solid feedback in hand, you can make informed decisions; without it, you risk going in circles without real results to show for it.
15. Growing Too Quickly
Something a lot of owners don’t plan for is growing too fast. Rapid growth can strain a business — and its reputation — in ways slower growth doesn’t.
When demand increases faster than you can staff for it, you’ll struggle to keep up, and service will suffer. What you want instead is steady, manageable growth that gives you time to prepare for added demand.
16. Waiting for Results Is Difficult
Waiting for results is hard, especially if you’re a driven, high-energy person. You want to see sales and profits build so you can reinvest and grow.
The catch is that you can influence your revenue, but you don’t fully control it — you can only push so hard before you simply have to wait. This isn’t limited to sales, either: if a website designer tells you a project will take two months, that’s the timeline, regardless of how eager you are to launch. Business owners are often go-getters who want results fast, but with only partial control over outcomes, learning to wait is part of the job.
Conclusion
These are some of the most common challenges business owners face — though which ones hit hardest will depend on you. Knowing what’s coming gives you a real head start on handling it.
Key Points and Facts About Owning and Running a Small Business
- About 22% of new U.S. businesses closed within their first year, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the year ending March 2025.
- In the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, just over half of loan applicants were approved for at least some of the financing they requested — approval rates ranged from about 30% for higher-risk firms to 60% for lower-risk firms.
- A bad hire costs a business at least 30% of that employee’s first-year salary, according to 2025 U.S. Department of Labor–based estimates.
- Which parts of running a business feel hardest often comes down to the owner’s individual strengths and weaknesses, not the business itself.
- Growing too quickly can create as many problems as growing too slowly.
Action Steps for Owning and Running a Small Business
Before You Apply for a Loan
- Put together a business plan with realistic financial projections.
- Check your credit and gather documentation of any available collateral.
- Compare lenders — banks, credit unions, and online lenders often have different approval rates and terms.
Before You Hire
- Write a clear job description and set expectations up front.
- Use a standardized interview process rather than an informal chat.
- Budget for onboarding and training time, not just salary.
Before You Expand
- Test demand before committing to major new costs.
- Build a cash reserve to cover unexpected expenses.
- Scale staffing gradually rather than all at once.
Checklist for Owning and Running a Small Business
- Funding readiness
- Do you have three to six months of living expenses saved?
- Is your business plan complete, with financial projections a lender can evaluate?
- Hiring readiness
- Do you have a standardized interview process in place?
- Have you budgeted for onboarding and training costs, not just wages?
- Growth readiness
- Can your current staff and systems handle a real increase in demand?
- Do you have a cash reserve set aside for unexpected costs?
FAQ: Owning and Running a Small Business
What is the hardest part of owning a small business?
- It varies by owner, but funding, hiring, competition, and cash flow are the challenges business owners cite most often.
How can I avoid running out of money?
- Keep an emergency fund, monitor spending closely, and avoid relying on a single lender for future financing needs.
Is it normal to feel overwhelmed as a new business owner?
- Yes — most owners describe the first year as stressful. Setting aside personal living expenses and building a support network both help.
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