3 Entrepreneurship Myths Debunked
One of the most common entrepreneurship myth is the idea that an entrepreneur is a typical tech founder: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. We see their lifestyles and success and feel that their version of success is the only kind. If we’re not getting million dollar investments, if we’re not based in Silicon Valley, if we’re not rubbing elbows with CEOs of massive companies, we’re not really succeeding. And this is only the pressure we put on ourselves.
None of this is true. They put unnecessary pressure on us to fit into a singular definition of “success”. They only hurts us because we measure ourselves against unrealistic standards that we think everyone is meeting. Here are some common entrepreneurship myths debunked:
Myth #1: Success is defined in money, and it’s a pretty smooth path to get there
Success ≠ money
We define success ourselves. Not our family, not our friends, no one other than us can tell us what it means to be successful. If to you success means having happy customers, that’s awesome! If for you it means making a living doing what you love, perfect! If to you success is money that’s great as well! But it’s not the same for everyone. We as entrepreneurs, especially those who haven’t done it before, tend to think that until we raking in millions we’re not successful.
The entrepreneurial journey has also become a bit of a myth. The entrepreneur who works out of his garage, but in the end perseveres and lands the big deal he needs. We’ve seen at least three big movies about this kind of story recently: BOTH Steve Jobs movies and the Social Network and one Netflix series: Girl Boss about the founder of Nasty Gal. Were these entertaining movies for us to watch? Yeah who doesn’t love a good hero’s journey story. Was this an accurate representation of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur? No way! They’re movies for a reason!
All of these people struggled and had many more failures than we hear about. You’re not alone; another entrepreneur has faced the issue you’re facing or you will face. Many business owners face huge amounts of pressure to see their business succeed and provide for their employees. This leads to anxiety, stress, and depression if things go wrong. Here’s an awesome article about these super common issues that entrepreneurs face.
