Being an entrepreneur brings with it an endless succession of challenges. Thankfully most of them are also interesting; even if some can bog you down in bureaucracy because they revolve around government-induced paperwork and compliance. The forced interest in these cases tend to lie in learning how yet another cog in the nation’s commerce machine works.

But the really interesting things are the range of tasks needed to steer the ship; a ship that is continuously taking on more cargo as it progresses and thus becoming less agile after every nautical mile .  At the helm, you’re the one that has to keep an eye on the progress of many tasks as they pass by, hopefully none of them so out of control that they sink the vessel.

One minute you’ll be honing the marketing message on your website, proof reading the brochure going to print, or Tweeting a word of wisdom to your fanbase. The interesting thing is that you now have a basic grasp of website design, typesetting publications, and running a social media campaign.

The next you’ll be studying your cashflow forecast, trying to fathom your P&L and wondering why you need to ring customer X yet again to chase payment. You’ve inadvertently learnt about accruals accounting, balance sheets, and credit control.

And then you’ll turn to procurement to see if you can source things a little cheaper, tighten up on the specs of a critical component, or drop ship something somewhere to speed up delivery. Suddenly you have become a logistics guru that understands at least the basics of supply chain integrity.

That sorted, its time to look at stock and fulfilment whilst trying to determine whether its worth outsourcing this entire operation to free up a bit more time.  Before embarking on all this, you probably knew very little about warehouse management and the vast business of fulfilment centres.

As you take on more staff, you’ll be guiding them on all these tasks and fretting that they can’t benefit from all your experience to date. You’ll be solving issues around project management and how to successfully motivate a team. Suddenly you’ll have an interest in human resources, successful recruitment techniques, and employment law that you never thought possible. And you’ll be trying to find out more about effective communication software packages, enterprise resource planning, and how to delegate rather than micro-manage.

Then, just when you think you have the general hang of day-to-day operations as your venture expands around you, the unexpected one-offs come along. These are where you really have to learn quickly on the job; someone wants to do a joint venture, you need to pitch for for your first tranche of venture capital finance, or a suitor has suggested acquiring all of your company.

As long as you set out willing to expect the unexpected and accept you’ll never know all the answers when you need them, entrepreneurship is an exhilarating experience. Boredom, thankfully, is not on the menu.

And if you can start out with a modicum of organisation and structure, the journey can be even more exciting because you’ll have more time to be circumspect and soak it all in.

Start to Exit is due to be published in 2017.