When running a business you often face challenges along the way. Growing your income steadily and strengthening your brand are key ways to avoid sudden challenges.

We asked Waynne Smith, an internet entrepreneur and owner of the Entrypoint design agency what tips he would give an aspiring entrepreneur.

He explains, “A key mantra to have is to view problems as hurdles and not obstacles.”

It is very true that our approach to a problem has much do with our success in dealing with it.

An obstacle is something clearly in the way, a potential barrier, but a hurdle is something that although a challenge can be got over and progress can still be made with just a little more effort.

Turning problems into opportunities is intriguing so we asked Waynne what examples he has of doing this in his business portfolio.

Creating opportunities from lock down restrictions

During the 2020/21 pandemic we noticed a dramatic downturn in new business start-ups, a key provider of new leads for us. We also saw many companies decreasing their budgets with the increased uncertainty as the world entered lock down and movement restrictions.

So a challenge like this could certainly be viewed as an obstacle, and many business owners may respond by cutting costs, digging in and trying to ride out the storm.

Waynne’s approach though was to thoroughly look through his portfolio and see the potential growth trends. He highlighted a fairly strong automotive site he ran www.torquecars.com, which he initially started as a background hobby.

Traffic had already started to increase, so clearly more people had time to look at improving their cars and were doing more hobbies at home. So with the time that was freed up with the dip in his main business area, he was able to increase the content of this site over the first 6 months by more than double.

He kept track of which articles and brands of car people were most active on, and further added to these and continued to refine them.

So the result of looking for an opportunity was a substantial increase in website traffic and dramatic increase in revenue generated.

There was no cost in time, as effort was merely diverted from one business area as it dried up to another more lucrative one.

He was also able to identify other content sites he runs like, coffeerevolution.net and was able to spend time on these refining the articles and adding new content, again resulting in an increase of traffic and revenue across the board.

Every obstacle can be turned into a hurdle

Sometimes things may go very wrong for you, but this often affords an opportunity to learn, see where things went wrong, work out what you should have done differently and store this lesson away.

Experience counts for much in the business world and learning from our mistakes and those of others proves more important than getting exited about our successes, and helps us avoid falling into the trap of complacency.

It also helps to keep an eye on others in your industry and see what is working or not working for them. The more data points you can acquire the more accurate your conclusions will be resulting in a much better strategy.

Highlight emerging trends and target these

 As things and restrictions are being eased around the world, it is once again time to change focus on the new business opportunities.

Many companies were starting to look at moving their business model online, and many fast food places, and even restaurants were looking to start selling online and develop an online presence.

Waynne tells us that he is once again starting to see business start ups from those who lost jobs during this pandemic so it’s time to switch focus back on to the original business model and develop those new leads.

You can never assume that things will always be the same and will continue, you have to sit back and look at trends and predict where things are heading.

When you can get ahead of the trends you put yourself into a very strong position indeed, and this is equally true of a digital marketing business, product sales and service providers.

So find that way to turn each obstacle into a hurdle and see your business go from strength to strength.

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