A RANT: Entrepreneurship Made Out To Be Cool & Easy

This shit really boils my piss.

Social media and the mainstream media has made entrepreneurship ‘cool’ and fashionable now.

We are in the age of instant gratification coupled with a large percentage of people feeling like they want and in many cases ‘deserve’ to enjoy life, travel, follow their passions, work from anywhere and do just about anything other than the 9-5 and that everyone can do these things.

You are being bombarded by messaging that you can easily get rich quick or get famous from posting some holiday or ass pics on social media.

You constantly get stories pushed at you about people who have seemingly achieved ‘overnight success’, claims that you can become a millionaire, quit your day job and be a successful entrepreneur in a short amount of time, images of flash cars, mansions and yachts and beautiful people frolicking on beaches and always, always making out as if it’s not difficult or that you can avoid actual hard work….

Usually all you have to do is buy their course or subscribe to their content to learn how!

Worryingly this type of messaging about quick and easy money and fame, appeals more to younger and inexperienced people or people who are a bit more desperate and might be in the shit. People who really need to hear the truth, not get rich quick stories. I know from experience (read my story here) how it all appears when you are in that position. They sell you hope.

Well here’s some sobering facts:

• CEOs and business owners work on average 60 hours per week with many working up to 90 hours per week
• About 10% of startups are a success and the rest fail
• The average salary for a startup founder is less than $50k in the early years
• Over 50% of small businesses fail in the first 4 years
• A high percentage struggle with cashflow and breaking even
• 72% of entrepreneurs report mental health concerns with 1 in 3 reporting depression
• Only 16% of small business owners are under 35, 33% are 35-49 and 51% are 50-88
• Only 6.4% of the US population are millionaires, 4.9% in the UK and 5.7% in Australia
• In a survey about how long it took the self made successful person to become wealthy, the below ages were recorded:
  • 1% became wealthy before the age of 40
  • 3% became wealthy between age 40 and 55
  • 16% became wealthy between age 46 and 50
  • 28% became wealthy between age 51 and 55
  • 31% became wealthy between age 56 and 60
  • 21% became wealthy after the age of 60

You could go on and on about this but…

Would it be such a sexy topic if all the publications were putting out stories of all the failures, breakdowns and broken dreams?

How many people would buy the fucking course if the headline was:

“Become an entrepreneur! You will have to work at least 20 hours more per week than a regular job, have a 90% chance of failure, a 72% chance of experiencing mental health issues, nobody to tell you what skills you need and no guarantee of earnings… but if you work hard as fuck every day for at least 7-10 years with no guarantees and with most people doubting you can achieve it, many people telling you to quit and competitors trying to put you out of business… then maybe you too will be successful.”

There’s the saying: “It took me 10 years to become an overnight success” and I think this is very fitting.

I actually came across an article the other week that was a story about a lady who had started a business based on an interest and they said it was profitable and ‘successful’ in a couple months then it went into multi-millions.

The article glamorised the story and how she turned her passion into a successful business really quickly and about the idea, but only touched on and glossed over the fact that she:

• Created an MVP (minimum viable product) and validated it
• Pitched for investment and successfully raised it
• Built an online store
• Used influencer marketing
• Negotiated wholesale deals
• Marketed the website, brand and products

So tell me so I’ve got this right… you are working in an office job and had a passion hobby in your spare time. Then within 2 months of you deciding to turn this into a business, you taught yourself how to create an MVP, learned about the lean canvas and market validation, successfully did this, learned about websites and ecommerce and did this, learned about influencer marketing and social media marketing and did this and learned about wholesale and secured this.

All these things mentioned above take time to learn and refine your skills. You don’t just suddenly wake up one day with this knowledge and skills and execute perfectly to a successful and profitable business in 2 months!

I guarantee it’s taken years of struggle, hard work and possibly some failures, to get to the point where you can execute on the above strategy and business plan. <<< this is the bit that isn’t sexy that they tend to leave out but just remember this next time you are reading something similar.

What makes people think it takes years to master a skill like a trade, but that they instantly have the skills required to be a successful entrepreneur… oh yea it’s all the shit instant gratification and glamour stories that are pushed at you every day that’s what!

There are only a handful of people telling it like it really is, the below being my top 3 to follow:

Andy Frisella – The MFCEO Podcast tells it like it is, as does Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone so pay attention to people like this and not the ‘laptop lifestyle’ crowd.

Now… all that being said… if you think you are up to the long, hard road of going down the entrepreneur path then is it really worth it?

Now I’m nowhere near where I want to be, not a millionaire yet, but I’m doing alright and life is a million times better and everything I’m enjoying in my life now is a result of going after it. None of what I’ve achieved and what I’m enjoying in my life would be possible if I hadn’t gone down this path and gone after it. I’d still be similar to where I was years ago.

For the first 5 years I was doing 16 hour days with little to no payoff and I still do 12-16 hour days today but it took 5 years of doing this consistently before I saw any results.

Maybe it will happen quicker for you, maybe longer but the underlying facts state it will take years of consistent hard work, grit and perseverance. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and be really successful though right?

So my advice would be, if you think you’ve got the grit and your ‘why’ is strong enough to carry you through no matter what, then definitely go after it but understand just how brutally hard it’s going to be for years before anything that evenly remotely resembles success starts to happen… but you don’t learn how to be a successful electrician in 2 months either do you 😉

To your success… and don’t be fooled by all the bullshit being pushed at you in the world today. Consistent hard work towards a specific set of goals pays off and success has to be earned.