What Suffering as an Entrepreneur Taught Me About Achievement
The ugly truth no one tells you before you make it
If you’re considering the entrepreneurial life, you may want to know what you’re about to get yourself into. What’s often portrayed as freedom, travel, and working from home with a view to the ocean, is a reality that exists only after financial success. Until that happens, most long-term entrepreneurs go through something like my story, if not once, then several times before they “make it”.
The list of challenges facing an entrepreneur.
Many successful entrepreneurs (who write about their success) don’t want to share this ugly list with an aspiring creator. This list is so daunting, no one in their right mind would dare get started. The excitement and the hype of having your own business and working for yourself is marketed to the point of deception. Search the tag, “entrepreneur” on Medium for hundreds of feel-good (nary a warning) articles.
The most important characteristic you need to have as an entrepreneur.
You need a fucking stupid amount of unwavering belief in yourself. I’m talking about belief that is so blind your friends will look at you with wonder and concern that something is terribly wrong with you.
If you don’t already have self-sufficiency, work to develop that characteristic before you give up your day job.
On a regular basis you will face any one of the following challenges:
- The repeated need to take risks and to be vulnerable;
- Unstable income for long periods;
- Long work hours (longer than you’ve ever worked);
- The possibility of needing to declare bankruptcy;
- So consumed with your endeavour that you forget about spending time with friends and family;
- Possible health challenges from chronic stress, sitting too long, ignoring your health and fitness, and loneliness;
- Sleepless, stressful nights thinking about money, what you did wrong, what you need to do tomorrow, not having enough time or energy to get it all done, and;
- The shame and desperation of having to borrow money from your parents, your lover, your friends, and amassing huge credit card debt.
On an emotional level, you will have to face the doubters and the haters in public and private. They will tell you that you’re wrong, stupid, out of your league, not smart enough, or just a dreamer. Every time you fail, you will have to pick yourself up, brush yourself off, take a deep breath and keep going forward. Most times you will do this entirely of your own inner motivation.
The Catch-22 is that the biggest threat to your success is yourself.
You will hate on yourself. You will break down in tears. You will spend a day half-asleep, wondering if you should take drugs or open another bottle (or both) to escape for a few hours. You will avoid reaching out to friends, because you don’t want to feel like you’re complaining (yet again). You will doubt your choices and ask yourself why you gave up that high-paying job that offered health benefits.
But, there is a deeper purpose at play…
“Set a goal to become a millionaire, for what it will make of you to achieve it.” — Jim Rohn
For the sake of this article, replace “millionaire” with entrepreneur. Now have the reason — the purpose — for holding on to your dreams and never giving up.
There will be days when you feel deflated to the point of being crushed flat by the weight of your fears and concerns.
Those days are best served in bed or in the bath, alone and without responsibility. Those are the days you need to take completely off to recover. These are the days you should have planned to take off in the first place (but you don’t because you’d feel guilty otherwise). These are the repeated rights of entrepreneurial passage that (if you come through) strengthen your resolve and determination to continue.
Still want to be an entrepreneur?
Be careful who you listen to when considering taking the leap. You need to make educated decisions and to prepare for the long haul. If you haven’t guessed already, the major players are your financial stability and your emotional health.
Entrepreneurship places huge demands on the psyche.
If you are going it alone, you are the boss, the creator, the producer, the employee, the bookkeeper, the webmaster, the designer, and so on. You will become your own worst boss. You will tell yourself to keep working when what you most need is to stop working and thinking about work all together.
In these moments of weakness you’ll scour the internet for productivity and life hacks, thinking those are the answers to your problems. Take the false precept that to be successful you need to get up at 4am. That’s an illogical argument based on the weak premise, “If it works for me it will work for you”. Where, for example, do night owls fit into this privileged equation? Know yourself, and know how you work best.
Remember Jim Rohn’s quote from above? Let’s paraphrase that to read,
“Set a goal to become a self-sufficient entrepreneur for what it will make of you to achieve it.”
Sure it’s nice to have lots of money, but so what? You can lose it all in an instant. As an entrepreneur you face more liability than an employee. You also face the volatility and whims of the market that can affect your bottom line without warning.
Doing the work to make a million dollars — the work to become a self-sufficient entrepreneur — will make you a stronger, and more evolved person. It will make you the kind of person who, having created what you so long desired, can go on to repeat the process to manifest your next dream.
Darren coaches gay men with their personal growth to break free of the status quo and live out their gifts so they can create a positive impact in the world. Listen to the latest episode of the Living OUT Podcast.
