The dark truth of entrepreneurship nobody talks about
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Scroll Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok for more than 30 seconds and you’ll quickly get the impression that everybody and their mom is an entrepreneur running a 7-figure business from the comfort of their basement.
These gurus will lead you to believe that you TOO can get rich, drive fancy cars, and live in outrageous mansions…
And all ya gotta do is spend 5 hours a week on your dropshipping store, or your social media marketing agency, or your YouTube channel.
Now, in my experienc... yes, there has never been a better time in the history of mankind to be an entrepreneur…
And yes, I believe that if you do the hard work on a long enough timeframe practically anybody can take advantage of this incredible opportunity afforded to us by the internet and make a whole lot of money…
But here’s the truth:
There’s a dark side to this game of entrepreneurship that nobody talks about.
And if you’re not mentally prepared for the hardships you’ll face, then the game of business will chew you up and spit you out…
And I know this from first hand experience because that’s what the game almost did to me nearly a decade ago when I started on my entrepreneurial journey.
If you’re going to step into this world (which I hope you do), do it with your eyes wide open.
So here are 5 things I wish I had known before becoming an entrepreneur.
1: Responsibility is the Price of Freedom
We can blame it on my ADHD, but here’s the thing:
I hate being told what to do.
Anytime somebody says I have to do something, I turn into a defiant little boy and I go out of my way to prove them wrong.
This is not necessarily a healthy behavior and it shows up in all the sorts of tiny ways that I’m not proud of…
For instance, when my partner Jamie and I are driving somewhere and she’s playing navigator from the passenger seat, she knows that I don’t respond well to the instruction:
“You need to take a left in 200 feet.”
So instead, she says: “You might want to take a left in 200 feet.”
Now, I know, you probably hear that and think “What the hell is wrong with you, Anthony? What’s the big deal?” I get it, but trust me, I’m way better about this now than I was 15 years ago.
Back in my 20s, it was impossible to tell me what to do, I rebelled against any type of external authority or accountability (which is why I was fired over 15 times before I even graduated college).
In many ways, this is what led me to entrepreneurship…
I loved the idea of owning my own schedule. Of being the ultimate authority who decides what I do and when I do it.
But what I didn’t realize is that you need to be careful what you wish for, because like the dog who catches the car, once I was ultimately the one responsible for organizing, structuring, and directing my life…
I had no clue what to do next.
‘Cause not only do I buck against external authority, but at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey I also resisted my own INTERNAL authority.
I simply lacked the self-discipline to hold myself accountable to actions I told myself I would do…
So I’d create elaborate schedules with well-intentioned plans of being productive, but then…
When the alarm went off in the morning, and I didn’t REALLY need to get up and get to work because nobody was gonna yell at me or notice if I didn’t show up to do the work…
Then more often than not, I’d just stay in bed that little bit longer.
And this wasn’t just a problem in getting out of bed, it was everywhere.
I’d take three hour lunch breaks and go down YouTube rabbit-holes which I’d justify as “research”, but at the end of the day, I just wasn’t doing all the things I said I would.
It turns out, I was a really lenient boss when it came to holding myself accountable to the schedule I had created for myself.
Now, the game of entrepreneurship has continually reinforced the lesson that Responsibility is the price of Freedom…
Which simply mean that if you want to be in full control of your life, if you want to be the one that’s calling the shots… then you have to accept that nobody is coming to save you or tell you what to do next…
It all falls on you to create and maintain structure in your life (which sounds easy until you’re staring at a wide-open calendar and a buddy calls in the middle of the day to see if you want to hang out, and because nobody is there telling ya you have to do the work, ya think… I can finish this up later…)
This is one of the hardest lessons every entrepreneur has to learn for themselves, so good luck.
2: Diamonds Are Forged By Pressure
This is actually just an extension of the first lesson… but it’s so damn important it’s worth drilling down just a bit deeper into.
Nobody is coming to save you.
In fact, everybody will be looking to YOU to save THEM.
Your employees will come to you expecting a weekly paycheck regardless of how the business is performing.
Your vendors will come to you with invoices that they need paid RIGHT now.
And your customers will come to you with problems entirely outside of your control.
All the while, you’ll be thinking: "I don’t have a clue what I’m doing…”
You will feel this in the form of a low-grade, constant pressure that resides right here in your temple or right here in your gut.
And this pressure will only get worse as you grow and become more successful and you realize more and more people and their families are relying on you not to screw things up…
Some people can handle this pressure…
Most cannot.
How you handle this pressure, though, will dictate either how quickly you go bald or how quickly you go out of business.
3: You Are Always The Problem
The further you go on your entrepreneurial journey, the more you’ll be reminded of a simple truth:
A system will never scale beyond its biggest constraint.
And in almost all cases, the biggest constraint in any business is YOU the founder.
Growing a business is really nothing more than the continual process of identifying and removing your biggest weakness over and over and over again until you get to the point where you are no longer a necessary part of the machine…
My favorite thing about entrepreneurship is that it’s the greatest personal development program in the world…
But beware: It only ever ends when you get out.
So understand this:
The secret to building a 7, 8, or 9 figure business is by first building the SKILLS of a 7, 8, or 9-figure entrepreneur.
In the beginning, you need to learn all sorts of skills because you’re more or less the one doing everything in an early-stage business. You’re going to be the one designing products, and building landing pages, and writing the sales copy, and handling the finances…
And truthfully, at times it can feel a little overwhelming.
The question I always get is: Where do I actually go to learn these things?
Well, ya could spend a fortune on coaching and consultants, but one of my favorite resources for entrepreneurs at ALL levels is Skillshare.
Skillshare is an amazing platform with courses on pretty much every skill you need to run a successful busines.
I worked out a deal with them so that the first 500 subscribers to use my link will get a 1-month free trial of Skillshare.
This is completely free and you can cancel anytime, so you've got absolutely nothing to lose.
Get your FREE trial of Skillshare here.
Alright, now that you’re leveling up your skills, let’s talk about the fourth thing I wish I’d known before starting a business:
4. Zero Work-Life Balance
Go ahead and erase this concept from your mind right now.
As an entrepreneur, it no longer applies.
There is no distinction between your work and your life. They will melt and blend right into one another to become a singular thing.
You don’t get to punch the clock and check out at the end of the day.
If there’s a deadline coming up and the work isn’t done yet… guess who’s sticking around and working around the clock to get it done.
That’s right, you.
But here’s the hardest part: The work follows you everywhere.
Listen, there’s no escaping this… resistance is futile, so ya might as well stop trying.
The work will always be sitting in the back of you mind because as an entrepreneur there will always be MORE to do.
This is an Open Cognitive Loop occupying prime real estate in your brain every hour of every day.. .and it only ever closes the day you sell or shut down the business.
Now, because of this, I’m a firm believe that you need to build a product you absolutely LOVE for people you LOVE serving.
If it’s gonna to dominate your mind, it might as be something you love thinking about.
But this is easier said than done, and the truth is, this right here is enough to break most wantrepreneurs. They need more stability and balance in their life.
They want the ability to shut it all off at some point.
And there’s nothing wrong with that… it’s different strokes for different folks…
But what I’ve found is that instead of focusing on what you’re giving up, that is the work-life balance (and the fact that the work is going to follow you everywhere) the most successful entrepreneurs I know, they focus on what they’re getting in this equation, which is:
Work-Life Control.
That means instead of having somebody tell you where to be and what to do everyday… YOU decide what you want to do, when you want to do it, where you want to do it, and with whom you want to do it.
Now, referring back to the first point, this can be either a blessing or a curse depending on how you manage your schedule.
So again, this life of entrepreneurship is all about trade-offs. Just be certain you know what you’re getting and what you’re giving up.
5. Perpetual Impostor Syndrome
I’ve yet to meet an “uber-succesful” business owner who had it all figured out.
Hell, I’ve yet to meet any who even have it mostly figured out.
Truth is, most successful people didn’t get to where they are because they knew what they were doing…
It was because they were too stupid to quit.
Now, when I say stupid, I don’t mean they’re actually stupid people (though a lot of them actually are).
What I mean is: they found themselves in situations where by all accounts, the chips were stacked against them, the probability of success was practically zero, and the LOGICAL move would’ve been to pack it up, go home, and get a job.
But they didn’t… they defied the odds and they persisted.
And wouldn’t ya know it, they eventually found success.
Now, of course, not everybody wins in the game of entrepreneurship. In fact, most fail.
But the one thing all winners have in common is they understand the secret of succes:
You can't win if you don't start... and you can't lose if you don't quit.
And despite all the trials and tribulations they faced, they found a way to stay in the game and keep playing long enough that they eventually found success.
But that doesn’t mean they ever felt as though they belonged on the field.
In fact, most of the time, they feel the exact opposite.
If you go down this path of entrepreneurship, there will come moments when you will question yourself…
You will question what you’re doing and how you got here because this game requires you to continually solve problems you have NO clue how to solve.
But because nobody is coming to save you and it falls on your shoulders to figure it out, you must keep moving forward the best you can while putting on a brave for the world so nobody can see just how badly you’re freaking out on the inside.
This means, however, that as an entrepreneur you will live more or less in a perpetual state of impostor syndrome.
Like at any moment, the Adulting-Police will figure out that you don’t belong and they’ll come kick you out of the game.
Here’s the truth though (and I hope it brings you comfort on your journey):
If you don’t ever feel like an impostor, it’s probably because you’ve stopped growing.
Stopped reaching for goals beyond your current capacity.
Stopped stepping into rooms with people operating beyond your level.
Stopped trying to do things that you’ve never done before.
If you never want to feel like an impostor, then get out of the game…let somebody else take your place so you can sit safe and secure in the stands where nobody will ever judge you, or laugh at you, or try to sue you…
But the tradeoff is that you’re not actually in the game.
You’re not challenging yourself… you’re not growing… you’re not seeing what you’re capable of…
The cure for impostor syndrome is to stop striving.
But in my opinion, that cure is worse than the disease.
Now, despite all the downsides… in my book, there’s nothing better than being in the game…
In having control over your life.. or building a product that improves lives…and building teams that can make your ideas a reality.
Entrepreneurship is the best vehicle I’ve found for doing just that…
It’s not an easy road… but for a certain type of person, it’s the only one.
Just make sure you go in with eyes-wide-open.
Until next week,
Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend
AV
From YouTube Today:
The Dark Truth of Entrepreneurship
