Entrepreneur's guts is the ability to live your dream. The dream may be different for every individual, but being an entrepreneur is the capability to take this dream and turn it into a reality. Your determination, your resilience, your courage is what drives you to pursue this dream, even when others tell you that it's impossible.
The journey of an entrepreneur is not an easy one. It's full of challenges, heartaches, and hardships. But it's also full of rewards, satisfaction, and a sense of accomplishment.
Since I bootstrapped my startup 12 years ago, I lost a lot, even went close to going out of business, even considered shutting down, especially after my first three projects closed in a week at the beginning of my journey, but I kept going. When trouble struck, I increased my efforts even further. I pushed myself beyond my limits. Entrepreneurial guts always prevailed.
However, what really got me thinking was how I managed to do it. It was the same for most entrepreneurs around me. Lack of time is the number one problem in entrepreneurship, followed by lack of money, followed by entrepreneurs' optimism and the third, that entrepreneurs are often super optimistic people and I believe that's the problem. Our lack of time and money may be a problem, but we still hope that someday, something miraculous will happen and everything will change, and we think the only problem with entrepreneurship is a lack of money.
So, go out there and take a loan to put it in the system that is not working, and burn that money. Entrepreneurs then end up in what can be described as a virtually insane situation that is called ‘stress.’
If you are not stressed in today's world of entrepreneurship, then something is wrong with you. You haven't got any sincerity and you're not working hard. In times of stress, you can wear it like it's a badge of honor, kind of like it's your life's biggest accomplishment. When people don't have stress, you look at them as crooks and corrupt, because they may be doing something wrong, and they still get going.
In that kind of situation, when you don't have time, money, debt, or stress, you are not qualified to own a business. You could call them job owners at best.
It's a job owner that's stuck on their own. Self-employment is what it sounds like -- it's one's own job. Maybe you'll ask me what's wrong with it.
It's as if you are doing it to pay yourself and are not being able to pay yourself consistently when you are self-employed. Your own personal journey may look like one of a superhero, because you're pursuing your passion, but the world isn't good enough to back you up.
Many entrepreneurs are used to this, and they think there's light at the end of the tunnel. They never know what's going to happen until they see the end of the tunnel.
When you're self-employed, you could feel like you don't have time, you don't have money, and the business doesn't grow, but you're still employed. Many entrepreneurs go through this, and it's quite deceiving.
In such a situation, one needs to re-educate themselves to dig into the psychology of starting up a business and what method to use to build a successful business. Investing in your re-education might make people wonder if you are crazy.
Education at a university or college doesn't prepare you to be an entrepreneur, but learning from successful business people can enable one to transform one's life.
In my 10-month journey of re-education, I realized I was making some classic mistakes that most self-employed individuals make.
My first mistake was being too optimistic. Despite my optimistic outlook, I believe that it is actually toxic. It gives you hope that someday, somehow, miraculously, your life will become fine and change. If you don't make a choice, your life won't change.
During difficult times, a lot of people avoid making decisions and go with the flow, perhaps consulting some soothsayers to see what the future holds. In order to achieve my goal, I wanted to understand how some wearing stones could help shine our future and control our destiny. Most people make this first mistake to play small and accept things as they are.
After speaking with business leaders, I realized that a business has seven functions that are like a will. No matter whether you are a sole proprietor or a micro-enterprise of a large corporation, those areas include:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Operations
- R&D
- HR
- Accounts
- Management
Those functions you have are like the spokes of a wheel, and if you don't perform these activities consistently, this means that your wheel is broken. It keeps losing balance.
Why do entrepreneurs often struggle to balance all seven functions?
A small or medium-sized business depends on its entrepreneur to succeed. Owners are like superheroes. They keep things moving at firefighting speeds. Firefighting is a survival game, so killing is part of its nature.
In other words, these entrepreneurs keep focusing on matters that destroy their businesses, which is why they are not building their businesses. They are actually doing business on a month to month survival model. Since they believe everything depends on them, nothing can consistently work. Sometimes, marketing leads to some leads, and sometimes, sales leads to some customers. Then, business operations fill their time.
How do marketing and sales fare while they are working?
In a word, nothing. In a business, when things happen sequentially, they do not produce results. Due to this, the results in terms of efficiency among small business entrepreneurs are very low.
What motivates small and medium entrepreneurs to do these things?
They believe they are the best on their team. The worst thing you can do for your business is to be the best on your team. Most entrepreneurs feel a sense of pride when it comes to being the best. They insist, “I'm the best marketer, I'm the best product person.”
Everything ends up being done by them. You cannot do everything simultaneously if you are the best. In a month-to-month survival game, you are naturally focusing on your crying baby. Mistakes like this are the bane of any business. Businesses thrive best when their entrepreneurs aren't involved. The idea of being fully involved in your business is very different from this.
Another mistake entrepreneurs make is they don't take hiring into account, because they see it as a cost. But if you are hiring at a cost, not hiring the costlier because you get sucked into the business and you are paying this game for survival. Many entrepreneurs even go out for “cheap talents.”
Cheap talent is an oxymoron, contradictory phrase. Whenever you hire a cheap talent, you are subconsciously convincing yourself that they cannot bring the results you expect. Consequently, the salary is paid, while you do the work on your own.
The fourth mistake is to focus only on the customer instead of building a team, systems, and strategies. The client is king, as the saying goes. And you will get to know how big a lie it is. Just sit with a customer in a deal negotiation, you will understand there is no trait of a king in them. See for example, a client suddenly tells an entrepreneur he/she wants to meet him/her. The entrepreneur will put off all his/her pre-scheduled team meetings and go for client meetings. It is because they are very much client-focused. They being this client-focused are losing out on building a business. They are landing into the trap of self-employment.
You may say that your money comes from your clients. That’s not the truth, because your wealth comes from the team.
A successful entrepreneur is more focused on the inside rather than outside. He remains more focused on building teams, building strategies, building systems, rather than running behind the customers. If he is not doing so, he is technically hired by a customer, without giving him a fixed income. More broadly, he is a free advisor to the customer, because his customer deals with him like a Google, they want just information, they don’t want to give him a cheque and create transmission in his life.
Focus on building teams, building systems, building strategies, rather than personally chasing customers.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship?
I’m sure that you didn’t choose it because you could pay your salary to yourself, pay your credit card bill on time and the like. That’s not the vision you started. You must have started your venture as an entrepreneur with a big vision of creating a difference, of adding value to a large market, of creating jobs, and creating wealth for yourself and your team members, and your customers. If deviating from this vision, and getting stuck in the month-to-month trap, that means there is something you are not doing right.
You’re not focused on building teams, systems and strategies, which can make sure your business can work without you. Initially, you may make several mistakes, you may even lose out on many things, but if you keep belief in yourself and keep trying, even not doing perfectly, one day your efforts will yield results, giving you a scalable enterprise. What you need to ensure is that you must come out of your comfort zone and true entrepreneurs keep doing it till they achieve.
