So…Is your thing working? The Reality of entrepreneurship nobody talks about…

If you have already embarked on your entrepreneurial journey, you know very well, just like I do, how difficult the beginnings can be and if you are considering becoming an entrepreneur, I would like you to understand one thing: Entrepreneurship, especially in the first few years, is often the equivalent of doing twelve jobs in one.

You have to learn to sell, to communicate, do marketing, create content, manage your finances, understand accounting, build an offer, manage all the administrative side, make strategic decisions, deal with the tech, serve your clients and of course… Do the work you originally intended to do and why you started your business in the first place.

All of this while you are learning to navigate the ship of entrepreneurSHIP.

And as if all of this were not enough, you also have to learn to manage and overcome your own fears, doubts and limiting beliefs.

Because entrepreneurship does not only require you to develop professional skills, it pushes you to become the person who is capable of receiving such growth and sustaining it over time.

You are going to have to learn to make decisions despite uncertainty,

to keep going without any applause, despite the many rejections, to question some or several of your beliefs, to accept not knowing, to put your ego aside and allow yourself to be vulnerable, to sell something you believe in without knowing if anyone is going to buy it and above all: To continue believing in your project and  vision while the results are not tangible yet.

The reality of the first years

We hear a lot about financial freedom, passive income, working from Bali or creating a successful business, but much less about the reality of the first years. With a little luck, you will have a few months at $/€1,500.

But the reality, for a majority of entrepreneurs who are starting out, is rather earning less than minimum wage. And some months even…$/€0. Yes, zero.

This number can be particularly frightening when you have bills to pay, a family to feed and then you see people around you who seem to have a much more stable life. This is when entrepreneurship becomes much more than a simple professional project, It becomes a mirror.

A mirror of your fears, of your relationship with money, of your self-confidence, of your need for validation, of your ability to manage uncertainty and of your relationship with failure among many other things

Entrepreneurship has challenged me more than the military

Honestly, I am not the only one saying it:

entrepreneurship is one of the greatest forms of personal development work there is.

In my case, the greatest one so far and yet, I spent nearly a decade in the military.

I have experienced pressure, discomfort, situations where I had to keep going despite exhaustion, stress and pain. But entrepreneurship has confronted me with something completely different:

In the military, there is a structure, a mission, a hierarchy, objectives and rules.

As an entrepreneur, especially when you are alone, you are the one who has to create all of that structure and discover your own mission. Nobody comes to tell you what you have to do on a Monday morning, nobody guarantees you a paycheck at the end of the month and nobody tells you whether you are on the right path or whether you are completely off track. You have to learn to lead yourself, to become the commander of your own ship…

That is where the real work begins…

“So then… is it working?”

There is a question that comes up almost systematically when you tell the people around you that you work for yourself.

“So…, is it working well?”

Or:

“Does it make money?”

“Can you make a living from it?”

“Is it profitable?”

And all the other variations that exist for this same typical question.

In my experience, it is often the people who have never worked for themselves who ask it the most.

FYI: I am absolutely not saying that this question is asked with bad intentions.

Most of the time, people are simply curious, they want to know how you are doing, maybe they are even trying to encourage you.

But behind a question that seems perfectly innocent can sometimes hide expectations, fears or unconscious beliefs and above all, this question can have an important impact on someone who is just starting out and whose self-confidence is still fragile.

But what does “working well” actually mean?

This is perhaps the most interesting question.

At what point can we say that a business is “working well”?

For someone who is just starting out, getting their very first sale can be a huge victory. That sale can represent months of work, hours of reflection, hundreds of rejections and above all, proof that someone is willing to pay for what they have created. For that person, that first sale can be proof that: “It is working.”

But for someone who has very little confidence in themselves, that same sale could be interpreted in a completely different way:

“It’s only one sale. It doesn’t mean anything.”

And for an entrepreneur who is already generating several thousand euros or dollars a month, that same figure could be considered a failure.

So…Who is right? Nobody.

Because the real barometer is not always revenue and this barometer varies according to a whole bunch of factors such as the business model, the person, the stage of the process they are in, etc…

So, why ask this question then?

If you are the person asking this question, perhaps it is worth taking a few seconds to ask yourself:

What do I really want to know?

What is your intention behind this question?

Is it simple curiosity? Are you looking to help? Are you trying to compare your situation with theirs? Are you unconsciously trying to check whether that person made the “right decision”?

Or perhaps their “success” or their “failure” simply comes to challenge your own life choices?

Because there is something we do very naturally as human beings:

We compare ourselves.

Sometimes, without even realizing it, we try to find out whether the other person is doing better or worse than we are. There is a phrase that sums up this phenomenon quite well:

“Most people don’t necessarily want you to do badly. But they don’t always want you to do much better than them either. They simply want you to remain close enough to continue being part of the tribe.” This is where it gets interesting, because when someone around us changes, evolves or takes a completely different direction, it can force us to confront ourselves to our own decisions.

If you are an entrepreneur: don’t take this question personally

If you are the one being asked this question, my advice is simple:

Don’t take it personally. This question probably says much more about the person asking it than it does about you. You don’t need to convince anyone that your business works or justify your journey and you certainly don’t need to measure your personal worth through your revenue.

If you feel solid enough and if you see that the person in front of you is receptive enough, you can even take advantage of these moments to educate the person in front of you about the reality of entrepreneurship.

You can explain to them that building a business takes time.

That the results are not immediate and that the growth curve is never linear, that some periods are difficult and some decisions take months, even years, before producing any visible results…

And above all, that success is not reduced to how much money you are making today.

Never forget: you are an artist

And if you notice that this kind of question starts affecting your self confidence …Remember something: Every work of art begins with a draft.

An artist does not take a blank canvas and immediately create their masterpiece. They draw, erase, start again, experiment with different shapes, change the colors, make mistakes and little by little, something begins to take shape. Your business works exactly the same way: You are going to try, make mistakes, readjust, start again, sometimes you are even going to take the wrong direction. Sometimes, you are also going to create something that works much better than anything you could have imagined.

But you cannot know what works before you have actually tried it…

So don’t judge your work while you are still painting it.

And above all… Don’t let someone who is looking at your draft convince you that you are not capable of creating a masterpiece.

Failure really only exists on the day you decide to stop trying.

Until then…It is simply a stage of the process.