Entrepreneurship can be both an exciting adventure and challenging journey. When you venture out on your own, you will suddenly have a whole new plethora of responsibilities and much more to learn because the success of the company depends solely on you. The reality is no one knows everything about entrepreneurship when they decide to pursue it as a career.
While being the creator of your own destiny can be rewarding, here are 5 things no one tells you about being an entrepreneur.
Start small:
Coby Pachmayr is the founder and owner of IdeaSpring in Phoenix, Arizona. His best advice to new entrepreneurs: start small.
“We started out working with small businesses providing all the basic design services: website design, traditional print media design, logo design, etc. Over time, I started to realize that what I was passionate about was helping people grow their business and solve larger problems than just basic design and technology.”
It takes financial discipline:
As an entrepreneur, you’re not just responsible for your own finances, you’re also responsible for the finances of your employees. Everyone counts on you to lead a business that is profitable, so that they have a paycheck.
Octavia Conner, Founder of Say Yes to Profits, says financial discipline is critical.
Entrepreneurs must be able to focus on the numbers — the profitability of your business is what matters. You must set aside money to pay yourself, pay your taxes and more.
Learn from your mistakes:
It’s not just acceptance of your mistakes that many business leaders tout. It’s giving yourself permission to fail – as long as you learn from it. It’s about recognizing your failures and what you have taken away from them.
It’s ok to focus on more than one area:
Kris Thorkelson, owner of My Place Realty in Canada: “A serial entrepreneur is always trying something new — and they don’t have to be all in the same kind of businesses. It’s the drive to create something out of nothing and watch it grow that motivates a person to shake off failure in order to achieve a degree of success in life – whether you’re a writer with a rejected manuscript, or like me, you have experienced some failures in business. It’s the motivation to create something new that helps you get past it.”
Success takes time:
Don’t worry if it takes time for your business to succeed. The first trait of becoming an entrepreneur is to develop patience. Also, be prepared to fail and willing to take risks.
Jaclyn DiGregorio, Founder of Cusp, says,“If you want to have any chance of success as an entrepreneur, you have to keep trying, failing, and learning. Successful entrepreneurs did not become successful in spite of their failures. They become successful because of them.”
“It always takes longer than you want it to,” explains DiGregorio, who has been running her own business for years, “Every successful business is the result of years of hard work.”
Becoming an entrepreneur is not for the faint-of-heart. It can be a difficult journey charting new paths, starting something new with small odds of success and trying things the average person isn’t willing to try. Despite its downfalls, the payoff can definitely be worth it in the end.
