8 things I learned as an Entrepreneur that you won’t find anywhere.
An honest story about personal learnings that just might have the answers to your own questions.
So have been doing this for a good 16 years and I could say I have suffered my share of ups and downs (understatement), but it has been a hell of a ride.
As someone who has been at the peak, then down in the trenches (Huge Loss), and now again trying to get to the peak, there have been some key takeaways that I learned that you might not find elsewhere with all the entrepreneur talk going around.
Now I am not your “ideal” green smoothy drinking super charged sleep deprived always working guy. I used to be for a bit when I was in the trough and I very quickly realized that I was digging myself a hole deeper than the one I was trying to get out of.
No, I am your average, like to wake up early to sit quietly and beer-drinking guy, who has his own process and doesn’t need to work 14 hours a day unless he must to “make it”.
And I am someone who has been so down and out, that I was plagued by mental issues and a smoking and drinking addiction of magnanimous proportions. The addictions are still there, I am working on them, but I am a lot wiser and in a better frame of mind now.
Anyway, enough about me here are my 2-bits on the lessons I have learned so far ( don’t intend to stop learning, I bet you thought that was gonna be one of the points but it isn’t)
You are alone.
You might have co-founders and staff and stuff, but you are alone. I know this might sound cynical, but it has a deeper meaning to it. You might have heard of success stories and cofounders sticking to their belief in the idea and stuff, and these stories are true, BUT, those are the 1% of companies that do succeed.
What I have noticed after working with others for 16 years, you are all by yourself. You need to think for yourself and see where your interests are taken care of, with the outside chance, that yes, maybe you would compromise if you saw others doing the same.
You are the hero in your story, and you need to do what is best for you.
It is better to be stuck with no one than with ones who do nothing at all.
As long as one is moving forward, it’s all good. But, more often than not, you will come across people who act like they are doing things to move forward, but they aren't.
They are more the wait-and-watch types, who are waiting to get some heat or they are all talk no cock.
Or they just pretend.
Pushing something to happen WILL delay it further.
Can't force something, if you do you will either end up getting frustrated and burned out or entirely fucked because of a rash decision.
You need to do what you do and then wait for things to happen on their own. Focus on doing the work and not on the results.
If you constantly keep developing assets for your business, you will get there, and focus on the development.
Virality is a sham.
Unless you are willing to do dumb shit where you become the laughing stock on the internet, virality doesn’t exist.
Entrepreneurship is a journey, and you need to work on it step by step. Even if it is making only one sale call a day.
Say you just make one call a day where you at least speak with the person. In a week, you would make 5, and in a month (mon-fri) you’d end up speaking with 25 people.
Your current venture is not you.
I had at one point started treating my entrepreneurship venture as my identity. It isn’t, it is an attempt to try and change something or solve a problem that exists.
The moment you start on it, you are already one of the few people who tried it. Pat yourself on the back.
Don't get beat up about it not moving fast enough or it failing. Start again, with a different approach.
Keep on approaching it till you find the right way, but also be cognizant enough to realize when it is time to walk away.
Entrepreneurship is a mindset and a state of being, not a venture.
Entrepreneurship is commonly confused with being all about a venture. You could be working a job and still be the best entrepreneur to have ever existed.
It is about taking something that exists and making it better. If you change the process at a job you are working at, you are still an entrepreneur.
And that is why you can’t be defeated, you only need to keep asking if there is a better way to do something, and if there is, then find it.
When you detach yourself from the end result, you have a higher chance of success.
When you attach yourself too much to an idea, you leave very little room for objective thought and your decision to keep working is driven by your emotions more than your analytical mind.
I have spent hours sitting at my comp like a donkey and getting nowhere.
Here is what does help though, shut it out. Go do something you like, and when you step away you will suddenly get hit by thought after thought about what you could do.
Take what you read online (Including this) with a pinch of salt and be yourself.
Picking up from what I was saying earlier, entrepreneurs are portrayed as being those make-it-happen types who are super functional, because of their eating habits, workout regimes, and work ethic.
Don't watch TV, Don't Play Video Games, Don't Have Sex, Don't Eat, or Have Green Coffee. Basically don’t have any joy in your life, just have cauliflower.
The only people who benefit in any way possible are the ones who come up with that shit.
I can promise you doing any of that nonsense will take you so far away from your goal you will forget why you started.
Just go DO YOUR THING. Anything that helps YOU. Fuck the healthy/unhealthy, you have moderated it thus far, and you will continue to.
Change is intrinsic and no one but you can know what you need to change.
As long as something is working for you it’s great, do more of it. You go get them you Tiger / Tigress. The world is your canvas, and it is your’s to paint.
After reading this, look at yourself in the mirror and admire the spectacle that is staring back at you.
Go get’em.
I currently run Ting Tong Marketing and have just recently launched my product sampling platform Brandybuck. I wrote this post because I was again getting into that mindset about everything I have detested up top. I needed to remember these things myself. Were all in this together.
