What I wish I Knew Before Deciding To Become An Entrepreneur
Found this piece I wrote in 2018 before I found out about communities like Indiehackers. It's a bit ummmm...well you'll see......Enjoy!
You know what no one told me about entrepreneurship before I got started?
How. bloody. hard. it. is.
Sure I’d read it in a couple of books, and watched tons of movies about startups and entrepreneurs.
Heck, I’d probably seen hundreds of Instagram posts about the ‘hustle’.
But I still didn’t really get it.
Or rather, it wasn’t communicated clearly enough.
Drawing the line
Now call me naive but when virtually every social media post about being an "entrepreneur’ is accompanied by fancy background music, images of flashy cars, or some deep-voiced dude reading motivational schlep, forgive me for getting the wrong message!
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to bash these posts or the intentions behind them.
I understand that they’re great for moments when you need some inspiration or help getting pumped about your goals.
But you know what they’re not great for?
Painting a realistic picture for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Or at least, a complete one.
They don’t grab you by your inexperienced shoulders, look you in your innocent doe eyes and tell you what I’ve found out 7 months in-
Trying to start a business isn’t sexy like in the movies, it’s downright hard!!
And no I do not mean the kind of ‘hard’ you read in ‘biographies’ of famous entrepreneurs.
The ones where 30 years of struggle are compressed into the first 30 pages and the next 300 are spent magnifying how the person quit school and built a multi-million dollar business in 3 days.
Not the kind of ‘hard’ you watch in movies that ‘supposedly’ chronicle the life of your favorite startup founder.
Yeah, the ones where you’re glued to your seat longing for the days where you can also stick it to some clueless higher up.
And most definitely not the type of ‘hard’ you read about in Instagram quotes that romanticize working 26 hours a day and living in isolation because you got rid of your old friends who couldn’t 'understand the vision’.
I’m talking about hard-hard.
The kind of hard where it seems like absolutely nothing is working for you. When the no’s and rejections keep coming…..and coming……and coming.
The kind of hard that makes you realize that there is absolutely nothing to be romanticized about looking for funding and turning up empty three months later.
Nothing ‘sexy’ about applying for an accelerator and being rejected.
Nothing ‘fun’ about people asking you why you don’t just go get a job like everyone else.
And sure as hell nothing ‘exciting’ about getting hundreds and hundreds of no’s just to get one yes.
People don't talk enough about the repetitive, boring, and even mentally draining every day of trying to build a business.
They don’t tell you that it won’t be like the Wolf of Wall Street or The Startup.
That instead it’ll just be you in your room or office, on your computer, for hours.
That’s the truth we don’t see enough of!
The truth that maybe one day, when you start making millions of dollars, your days will be filled with sports cars and exciting business meetings.
But right now?
It’s just going to be you working your butt off in some random cafe for weeks, maybe even years.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I love what I’m doing. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I can’t ever imagine doing anything else.
This article is just me getting this off my chest...A rant I guess.
About how I would have appreciated some sort of ‘realistic’ heads up that’s not diluted with dramatic background music or motivational BS.
How people give you these false expectations and gloss over the ordinary, hard, and not sexy reality of entrepreneurship.
And finally, how hopefully this inspires entrepreneurs to be more open about the everyday, dirty, boring, but just as real, parts of entrepreneurship.
Pheewww...The End.
Found this...ummm...... gem* I wrote in 2018 and after reading @chr15m 's post I was inspired to share it*
Hope you enjoyed reading 2018 Lola's frustrated, but honest musings. Lol
I found that it's hard to become an entrepreneur because people have such an expectation gap to overcome.
As a consumer, everything is available at my fingertips. The latest shows, the latest entertainment, tasty food, etc. Immediate gratification SCREAMING all around me.
When you transition to a creator, things get in the COMPLETELY OPPOSITE direction. Now you need to be PATIENT at going at a SNAIL PACE for MONTHS. And even then it's a big IF you're going to make it big.
I think this gap is going to widen more and more because:
a) As a consumer society, instant gratification becomes more instant every single day
b) As a creator, things get harder with each single day, with more/smarter competition.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Hey @zerotrousers. Thanks for the feedback.
Here's what I think about "the instant gratification mindset" :
I actually never thought about it from that angle but it does make a lot of sense now that you mention it.
Most people (me included) go into business with the same mindset we have as consumers- we pretty much want the idea in our head to become reality and catch on NOW!!!
But yeah it doesn't work like that in real life.
Building a business takes time. And lots of it.
It's basically the opposite of what we've been wired to expect nowadays. So maybe that's where that initial shock at the beginning of the journey comes from.
Makes a lot of sense........
Now about whether or not that gap is going to widen, I'm a bit on the fence here.
On one hand yes there's the "instant gratification culture" getting bigger and bigger.
But on the other, there's now tons of communities like Indiehackers where people are being more open with new business owners about the realities.
So one might balance the other out? Who knows?
And also (btw this is my personal opinion) on your point about it getting harder, here's what I think-
As much as starting a successful business has gotten harder in some regards, I feel like its gotten easier in others. For example:
Successful creators have become soooo transparent with their playbooks that as a new creator you basically have step-by-step blueprints on how to achieve success. This is huge cause it largely eliminates the "groping blindly in the dark" part of business people had to deal with before.
Every year it becomes easier, quicker and cheaper to start and validate a business ( think no code tools, audience building platforms, etc).
So, creators can now build multiple projects within the span of a few months without wasting hours or spending an unreasonable amount of resources.
One doesn't workout? Well move on to the next!
With every new tool or service that comes up, there's new opportunities for businesses.
For example, when a social networking platform like Tiktok blows up, there are tons of opportunities for creators to capitalize on it.
Basically, the options are infinite.
So yeah I guess even though every platform, product or tool brings more competition for someone, it creates opportunities for others.
And even then, for the businesses that are directly threatened (competiting businesses), there are now more ways than ever to:
So, yeah as much as business has become harder in some regards I think its become easier in others.
That's a good point.
Great post, thanks for taking the time to write it!
For me, the expectation that it would be easier probably comes from focusing too much on the successful companies. I mean, seeing all these great stories about hackers and entrepreneurs who make it big can be very inspiring, yet it doesn't paint the whole picture.
The reality is that 99% will fail (or something close to that), and you will never hear about it. That's survivorship bias, and it's very real. This thing is way harder than we all think.
Oh but I still love it, what about you?
Definitely love it @dagorenouf.
I've tried my hands at a couple of projects since 2018 and even though none of them really took off I'm still working on a couple new ones today.
I guess it's about taking the good with the bad and just managing my expectations.
Couldn't agree with this post more.
One of the biggest challenges with entrepreneurship is consistencey.
It's having the strength to get out of bed every day and keep working towards your end goal.
It's having the humility to pivot and accept your loses after failing with your original concept.
Add on top of this the little recognition you get along the way, and you can start to see how draining this process can be.
Throughout my 2 year experience so far, I genuinely believe luck and timing are the most important key factors for any entrepenuer. Of course, the longer you actively try, the more luck you'll create for yourself.
Exactly @LachlanKirkwood. That's the actual "reality" of business that most people who are trying to "sell the dream" don't talk about.
But yeah it's something you eventually learn when you jump in.
And that's why I'm so grateful I found communities like Indiehackers - it's really nice to have a community where you can read about how someone else is slowly but surely building their business.
Especially when they struggle or even occasionally fail. Which is just as important as seeing the times they succeeded imo.
Cause yes you obviously want others to succeed (which is so inspirational), but it's nice to see that "Oh I'm not actually doing it all wrong. Turns out this happens to everyone".
Plus you also get to learn from how they deal with and overcome these struggles.
And also I really agree with you on timing being important - so many businesses are successful because they came out with the right product at just the right time.
Thanks again for taking the time to leave feedback.
For me the hardest thing has been accepting that many of the blockers are within myself.
On the flip side I have confirmed that I can ship a lot of functional stuff very quickly.
A paradox of entrepreneurship is you must be humble enough to accept brutal feedback from the market, but pig-headed and egotistical enough to believe that you can get there eventually.
The journey continues.
Oh hi @chr15m, thanks for leaving a comment.
And amen to what you said about internal blockers
At some point, I actually sat down with myself and told myself some hard truths.
Like how I needed to stop feeling "special" when I hadn't had a single "success" to back it up.
And this actually really helped- especially with dealing with rejection.
Once I got rid of the belief that "everything would work out just because "I" did it" (which is so silly now that I think about it), I was able to handle rejections much easier.
Plus, when you get rejections a certain number of times they just generally start to sting less.
Now I kinda go through entrepreneurship with Murphy's law in mind "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".
Of course I hope things work out, but I'm kinda prepared in case that they don't. Helps me get off my butt and stop feeling sorry for myself a lot quicker.