With popular media and most marketers constantly pushing the idea of starting your own business, very few people have actually chimed in about the uncomfortable truths that go along with the journey of launching your own company. This post is not to discourage you, but to open your eyes up to the entire world of entrepreneurship.
I wish I could tell you that my entire entrepreneurial journey was rainbows and butterflies. However, it wasn’t and I don’t think any other successful entrepreneur can say the same. I would much rather do what I do than take a job, but starting a business is tough.
In this post, I’ll share 6 uncomfortable truths about starting your business nobody ever talks about:
1. It’s risky and terrifying at the same time.
The most upsetting part of all is the number of ‘successful’ business people that sell courses and webinars telling people to quit their jobs and to start their own business. Starting a business is very risky. SBA says that 50% of businesses fail within the first year, which means entrepreneurship is VERY risky.
Don’t let the “Instagram Celebrities” fool you into thinking that starting a business is a bullet-proof plan to get rich quick because it’s really not. Failure is definitely a possibility and it’s a risk that you have to consider. Not only that, but starting a business isn’t for the weak at heart.
There are so many terrifying things that can go on when you start your business. My first 12 months of starting a business consisted of getting hit with a cease & desist letter, employees stealing from me and clients rejecting me just because I was younger than my competition. Imagine having all of those feelings while balancing the risks of launching your own company, pretty terrifying if you ask me.
2. You really can’t please everyone.
This was the most uncomfortable truth for me of all. I always had the mindset that I had to please everyone and make sure that everyone liked me. As soon as I launched my business, it felt like everyone was against me. Were they? Probably not.
However, the truth of the matter is that you can’t satisfy everyone in business. My issue early on with my digital agency was that I had to make a decision between pleasing my employees or pleasing my clients. My clients wanted the websites done their way and my employees would say that their way was better.
Regardless of what decision I made, one party was going to be upset. However, I made the most logical decision any business owner would. Your business comes first and my business can only be successful with clients, I had to cater to their needs to ensure they were happy while not being able to please my employees every need. As a business owner, you’re going to have to make tough decisions that may hurt the feelings of others. It’s just the reality of it.
3. Taking shortcuts early on will hurt you later.
This whole idea of faking it until you make it has became a big thing among new entrepreneurs. Sure, that might be sound advice for certain situations but it doesn’t come without a price. You really think you can take shortcuts and pretend to build a foundation that doesn’t exist without paying for it down the road?
Unfortunately, you can’t. As a new business, you’ve got to be lean and you’re willing to take shortcuts to get cash flow early, but you have to build your company fundamentally sound eventually. When I first started out, I was selling websites without having a website of my own. How long did that last? 3 projects.
I really couldn’t have expected to get away with selling websites without having a website of my own to showcase to clients. I was surprised I was able to acquire 3 clients that way. It was a shortcut that I took that allowed me to get cash flow so that I had funding to develop my own site. However, it wasn’t possible for me to completely skip that step in the lifetime of my business.
4. It takes a lot more work than you can ever realize.
I’m extremely frustrated with how many people thinking that starting a business and achieving massive success is easy. It really isn’t easy and media nowadays has really given people the wrong idea. People see exotic cars, luxurious houses and laptops on beaches and assume that entrepreneurship is a cake walk.
What people don’t realize is that person sitting in their $500,000 car on an island somewhere worked their ass off for years eating ramen noodle cups. They just see the result of hard work, but not the hard work itself. I put in about 75 hour weeks and this isn’t close to the hardest I’ve worked.
When you start your own business, you realize that you are in charge of everything. From building up your brand, pitching to clients and delivering products/services to clients, you have a lot on your plate. You’re going to put in way more hours than you did at any job with no guarantee of a paycheck, be prepared to get your hands dirty.
5. Not all advice will be good advice, so be picky.
When most people start their own business for the first time, they approach advice in one of two ways. They take everything they hear and they run with it or they are close minded and don’t put anyone’s advice into consideration. From my experiences, I’ve seen that people are more prone to taking everything they hear and finding a way to implement it into their business.
Either way, you’re going to be heading into some troubled waters. When I first started out, I was the second way. I didn’t care what anyone had to say because I was arrogant and I thought I knew best. Shocker, turns out the 17 year old kid with no experience didn’t know much at all actually.
When you start your own business, people with and without experience will give you advice. Take everything with a grain of salt and make sense of it. Some advice will be good and very helpful while other advice will set you back months. The way to be successful is to sort through all the advice and to implement the good stuff while staying away from the poisonous advice.
6. The highs and lows are all part of the journey.
Jumping into entrepreneurship for the first time had me feeling bipolar. I wasn’t bipolar, but the swings that were generated from my everyday life were incredible. One minute, I’d be the happiest man in the world flying on cloud nine. The next, I’d be devastated and angry.
This is what entrepreneurship does to you, it’s a sad but unfortunate reality. After years of being an entrepreneur, I’m accustomed to these feelings and have been able to deal with my emotions a lot better. For someone just starting out, you have to be prepared to combat the highs and lows.
It isn’t easy feeling like a million bucks one minute and wanting to cry the next, but that’s part of the journey to become successful launching your own business. Don’t let emotions make business decisions. If you’re on an emotional high or low, take some time off. Find something that gets your brain to reset. For me, it was playing basketball and exercising. I’d come back a new me, more sane and controlled than before. Find your ‘reset’ button and hit it when needed.
Conclusion
Even knowing these uncomfortable truths, I wouldn’t change a thing about my career choice. Pursuing entrepreneurship is the greatest decision I made and I have no regrets about it. However, it’s important that people know both sides of the tale. In this post, I shared 6 uncomfortable truths about starting your business nobody ever talks about.
