The thought of being the boss of yourself or the thought of being able to do the things you want to do at the time that it is convenient for you are a few of the captivating reasons for anyone to become an entrepreneur. You get to name your business, be in charge and decide how you want each product or service be done. In simple terms, you’re in charge. Also, there is a part of finance, where you get to work your way to financial freedom, a dream every mankind nurses and hopes to achieve.
Unlike being an employee, being an entrepreneur helps you in achieving this goal of becoming financially free and stable. However, what no one told you is that the journey of entrepreneurship can be very tough, especially when you aren’t informed beforehand.
7 Things No One Told About Being an Entrepreneur
1. It is lonely at time
Until you eventually grow your business to the point of bringing others on board, it’s going to be a one-man show. It’s going to be just you running your business. You’ll be responsible for making all decision, taking risks and the likes. You’ll be the salesperson, the manager, logistic person, the PR officer, the finance office and everything else there is to become.
Having to deal with so much can sometime be discouraging and tiring, which is why it is advisable to step out and take a break, just enjoy some fun time with family and friends now and then. It can fuel creativity and remind you that even if you have to deal with your business alone, you are not alone in the world.
2. You’ll work longer hours than before
If you thought becoming an entrepreneur was an opportunity to quit 9-5 job so that you can get rest for yourself, I’m sorry to announce, your 9-5 just became 5-9. The life of entrepreneur running things from a beach in some nice location in the world is the picture often created by the media. However, behind all the freedom and relaxation comes from hard work and persistence.
Being an entrepreneur is only glamorous in social media. It requires more work that you can require.
Stephen King, an American author said, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separate the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
3. Making money will take longer than you expect
The goal of every entrepreneur is to make money but it doesn’t come as easy as we all want or expect it to come. In the beginning, there will be a lot of unplanned expenses that you’ll need to make payment for if you want your business to be taken seriously by both loved ones and outsider. For instance, things like website hosting, business card printing, and inventory – startup cost are always more than what we estimate.
Besides running a place where you’ll feel comfortable enough to sell you products and get customers on board immediately to secure profit always take longer than expected.
4. Finding your dream team will be challenging
Don’t be surprised to find out that your family and friends might not be as excited as you about joining up the startup league. Hence, they might not jump on it as you’d expect, making it difficult to build the dream team you’ve always wanted to achieve. Also, aside your loved ones, getting people who can devote as much time and value into your business as you want might be difficult because that will mean that you need a bunch of professionals to help you achieve the result you want, which will cost a lot of money to bring them on board.
So, to get the right people on board, you’ll have to demonstrate your company’s value to people so that they’d feel more confident that their venture was at least semi-reliable. This means that you’ll have to keep setting goals for yourself, develop your business skill and keep putting money into your business so that you’d have real results to show potential team members.
5. Business growth grows hand-on-hand with personal growth
Your business grows only at the level to which you grow. Sad that no one tells you until you’re neck-deep in it.
According to Jim Ron, “Income seldom exceeds personal development.”
Depending on how well you are informed, you’ll be able to take calculated risks, make good decisions and do certain things that will yield positive results in your business.
Brian Tracy said, “Personal development is a major time-saver. The better you become, the less time it takes you to achieve your goals.”
If you don’t improve or develop yourself. Then your business won’t grow as well. So, the best way to ensure that your business becomes productive is to ensure that you constantly develop yourself.
6. You’ll fail before you eventually succeed
When you watch the lives of some famous entrepreneurs, who have turned out to be one of the best in their various industries, you might be tempted to think that they were born that way, hence, they’ve never experienced failure in their career. Do you know what? They weren’t born that way and they have also had their share of failures in the past.
The truth is that you are likely to make a bunch of mistakes and have a lot of setbacks, and your ability to rise above them will equip you with the insight and resilience you’ll need to eventually succeed.
Jessica Herrin said, “You have to see a failure as the beginning and the middle but never entertain it as an end.”
Reid Hoffman also said, “If you tune it so that you have zero chance of failure, you usually have zero chance of success. The key is to look at ways for when you get to your failure checkpoint, you know to stop.”
Failure is an outcome that you should expect. But rather than getting worked up about it, learn from it, re-strategize and focus on how to get better results in the future.
7. Your income will be inconsistent
Well. It’s official. Your days of paychecks are over. Although entrepreneurship provides the opportunity to earn significant income, it can be inconsistent. It will take time to build a steady customer base, which is why there will be a lot of high and low periods. However, if you learn to develop a good savings habit and you can create a solid emergency fund, you’ll hardly fall into the trap of debt and the likes.
Starting your own business is a good start to financial security. However, you can only achieve it when you are prepared for it. In other words, knowing these things isn’t an excuse to give up but an opportunity to prepare ahead of time.