I Thought Being an Entrepreneur Was Cool Until It Wasn’t
Almost all content we consume about entrepreneurs these days paints a picture of having the freedom to work at our own time, at your own pace, anywhere in the world, siping pina colada on a white sand beach in Barbados while seeing money rolling in your bank account with as little as a click of a button. The world is an oyster they would often say and that infamous idea that why spend your time working for someone else when you can be the boss of your own company. Countless blogs and videos of clickbait titles of how they generated thousands of dollars in just a few days doing the things they love.
If you ever find yourself in a rabbit hole of watching videos after videos of so-called ‘successful’ entrepreneurs promising you to be rich and successful if you follow these simple steps or these secret formulas…I’d be the first to tell you these are all LIES! Being a REAL entrepreneur is not cool and albeit even tougher than just working at a 9 to 5 job. Success takes time, success is not easy. Success doesn’t come in a form of a website that promises quick rich schemes if you pay this amount…I bet you won’t click a video that says “Being an Entrepreneur is hard, click here to know more” right?
Getting rich should not be the dream
In the real world, truly successful entrepreneurs have put in a tremendous amount of time and discipline to build the business they have now. And often the ones that stay in the entrepreneurship game are those that have stayed consistent for so many years, those that dared to do the not so cool stuff like cold emailing potential clients, working more than 9 hours a day, getting rejected or ignored, and even saving up money for your business by not buying Starbucks coffee. Sometimes we keep a blind eye on these realities because it’s an unpopular idea and the mainstream thought is success equals lots of money. When in truth success equals REALLY hard work and that getting rich is not the goal of entrepreneurship.
Focus on the work, not so much the outcome
Although it is right to constantly evaluate why customers are not responding to your product, or that if the analytics don’t seem to match your expectations. There might be a need to pivot and fine-tune your strategies but there are really cases when timing plays a role and that if you're in it for the long run, you have to enjoy the process of doing it daily first before expecting things to cash in right away.
It’s not a role it’s a mindset
There was a time around the early 90s that when people hear you were a businessman, some people would assume that you were the rejects of society where you were the ones that didn’t get hired or those that didn’t seem to fit in a corporate setup. Looking back now especially when I hear businesses close and owners filing for bankruptcy, we would often think they failed as an entrepreneur but in truth, they only lost the physical aspect of the business. You don't lose your identity as an entrepreneur when your business closes, you only gain the knowledge needed to move on. You are not so much the role that you are playing but more of the mindset you apply that makes you an entrepreneur.
I hope when you decide to take on the big world of entrepreneurship you focus more on bringing value to others. Yes, there is the financial aspect you need to consider once you set up on your own, but ultimately it is the journey that brings so much more value to being an entrepreneur.
