The Entrepreneurial Struggle Is So Real, But So Worth It
My younger brother and I knew that we would own our own business from the time we were seven and nine years of age, conducting business meetings to establish Power Rangers, Inc. — the amazing and not-so-original idea that we thought would help us fulfill our dreams of being full-time, professional, you guessed it….Power Rangers.
At 29 and 31, we’ve accomplished our goal. No, we aren’t Power Rangers, but we do own our own small marketing company, WannaGoYo, Inc. We’re proud of what we are accomplishing, and it sounds so glamorous and awesome to say that, but here’s the truth:
The entrepreneurial struggle is real. It’s SO real, and while I’ll end this by telling you all of the reasons why you should never give up on chasing the dream of successfully running your own business, I’m going to shoot straight with you first and hit you with three very hard truths that every entrepreneur probably knows, but needs to fully embrace.
On the path towards making your entrepreneurial dreams come true…
1. You will be exhausted…all the time.
2. You won’t make any money…for a while.
3. You’ll wonder if it’s all worth it…every day.
The Exhaustion
While we’d all love to quit our 9 to 5’s and plunge head first into pursuing our ideas and passions, this option really just isn’t possible for so many entrepreneurs. My brother and I have maintained our full time jobs, gone to school, and done everything necessary to make ends meet while trying to get our company off of the ground.
The desire to chase your dreams will always be inescapably tethered to the reality of life’s many obligations, like paying bills and supporting yourself and your family. So, the reality of entrepreneurship is that you’ll start out with at least two full-time jobs: the job that’s actually paying the bills and the passion you’re trying to turn into something that can one day pay the bills.
You’ll wake up earlier than necessary before work to squeeze in an hour or two of fleshing out ideas for a business plan, and you’ll come straight home from work to jump right into the hustle of finishing a project, or thinking of ways to secure funding, or trying to figure out how you can scale your business quickly enough to quit your job by next Monday morning.
It’s a non-stop grind that only the strong and the most persistent can make it through.
The Early Lack of ROI
Despite the early mornings, late nights, meetups, thousands of cups of coffee, webinars, books, and thousands more cups of coffee, if you do any business the first few years, you’ll either do so at a loss or do so at just enough to break even and still not pay yourself a dime.
From undercharging clients just to make a name for yourself, to recognizing that there’s another program, or software, or service, or widget that you need to make your business run more smoothly, though the time that you put in truly is moving you one step closer to achieving your goals, some days, without any tangible return in sight, it may seem like you’re treading in quicksand.
It’s a brutal day-to-day that, at the end of the day, you may not always have much to show for it.
The Million (Or Maybe Billion) Dollar Question: Is It Worth It?
You’ll ask yourself this nearly every other day, if not every single day. And, some days, the answer will start to feel like a no.
As if the long hours and little to no pay isn’t strain enough, all of the uncertainty of knowing what steps to take next, how to best obtain legal and financial guidance, and simply dealing with all of the paperwork (geez…the paperwork!!!), staying on the easy path and sticking with that 9 to 5 will start to look and sound pretty good from time to time.
Yay, entrepreneurship! Sounds like a great time, right?
Here’s the other part of the truth though… It’s absolutely worth it.
It’s pretty well-known that 80% of all small businesses will fail, and the three reasons above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why that statistic is true. However, it’s the 20% of entrepreneurs that can remember why they started, and who can recognize that there’s more to the journey than just trying to get rid of that 9 to 5, that end up succeeding and inspiring others to take the same journey.
Outside of the confines of traditional employment, you learn so much more about what it is that truly motivates you, what things in life are truly important to you, and exactly what you are willing to do and go through to obtain the life that you want. When you set out to create something that doesn’t exist, you immediately step outside of the comfort zones of societal predictability and force yourself to ask, “What more can I make of my life and the world around me?” And, for those that can keep finding reasons to ask that question every day, they’ll continue to find that the possibilities are endless, the rewards are greater than just the tangible, and that struggle, while very real, really is worth it.
Your first idea may not be the one to knock it out the park. Your first company may not get $1 million in seed funding, or any investment for that matter. And, it may take your first three years of existence to get you operating in the black. But, you will have learned more about who you are, tested yourself more than most people ever will, and in doing so, you will have become more marketable, become more skilled, created new networks and contacts, and overcome challenges that WILL generate a return in ways that you would’ve never known had you not fought through the struggle of entrepreneurship.
Stay driven, friends. The world goes ‘round because of people like us and it’s only a matter of time before it brings back around the success we’ve earned.
