Lalastilala Seun There will be sleepless nights.
You’ll glance at the clock in your office, read 4:38 AM, and swear that the sun set only a half an hour ago.
You’ll lie in bed, tossing and turning, because you have no idea how you’re going to start bringing in revenue before you run out of runway.
You’ll promise yourself a good night of sleep before your investor pitch the next morning, but lo and behold, a mix of too much stress and too much caffeine keep you awake well into the wee hours of the morning.
There will be difficult conversations.
You’ll feel anxious, humiliated, and ashamed after a client chews you out for a half-hour on the phone. You will think it’s your fault. It probably will be.
You’ll walk into a negotiation and realize, too late, that you were woefully unprepared. You will pay for that lack of preparation. For months.
You’ll realize that despite how much you like him and despite that he has a family, you need to fire your favorite employee. It will hurt to do it. He will never see you the same way.
There will be challenges you think you can’t overcome.
You’ll stare at a to-do list that should take a month when all you’ve got is a week. It will feel like there’s no way to get through it.
You’ll feel sweat drip down your brow every time you look at your income and compare it to your expenses. You will not know what to do.
You’ll lose your last client when you’re down to your last dollar. It will feel like you’ve lost everything.
And at some point – it may be early in your career, it may be late, but it will happen – you’ll watch everything you’ve worked for crumble.
You’ll watch months or years of work fall apart.
You’ll watch your business fail.
You’ll watch your dream die.
It will be the hardest thing you ever go through.
But in that moment, you decide if you have what it takes to become an entrepreneur.
Either you will give up, move on, and find a real job.
Or you will keep going.
It’s that simple.
Because guess what: no matter how many puff pieces you read about the Elon Musk’s and Jeff Bezos’s of the world, that’s not what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship isn’t about the money, the highs, or the successes. It’s not about being on top of the world. That’s easy.
What sets successful entrepreneurs apart from the rest is their ability, their willingness, to keep going. Even when everything has been lost.
You want to know what it takes to become an entrepreneur? Ask yourself this:
When I’m at my lowest, when I lose everything, when I’m penniless, have no connections, have no prospects, have nothing –
Will I take the easier path? Will I find someone else’s dream to join? Will I say “well, I tried my best” – and be done with it?
Or will I keep going?
To become an entrepreneur, you don’t need a bunch of capital. You don’t need a massive network. You don’t need a high IQ. Hell, you don’t even need to be all that smart.
But you do need to do one thing.
When everything is lost and you see no way forward, you have to make the choice to keep going.
You must find a way.
And that, my friend, is a hard, hard thing to do.
But if you can do it, you have everything it takes to become an entrepreneur. Copied 1 Like |
