We’re living
in a time that makes it more and more difficult to be an
entrepreneur. Decades of exposure to innovations that claim to make
life easier has eroded our fortitude and will to persist in
difficult circumstances. One retailer has tapped into this
emerging psyche by creating an “easy button” that can solve the most
difficult problems with the push of a button. If we’re honest, we’d
all like to have access to a real, working easy button.
I work with
business people all over the country who are at various stages of
achieving their entrepreneurial dreams. I’ve yet to meet one that
would say it’s been easy.
Because of
the relative simplicity of tools and technology of past generations,
these people were more accustomed to working at projects that
required hard physical labor and took years, even decades to
complete. A few examples might serve to accentuate the point:
·
Built
hundreds of years BC, experts estimate that a single Egyptian
Pyramid may have taken as much as three decades to build and each
one required thousands of workers.
·
Even with
considerably more modern tools and techniques by the mid 1600’s,
India’s Taj Mahal took some 20 years to complete.
·
At the
beginning of the 20th century, Americans undertook the
construction of the Panama Canal. Tens of thousands of workers
labored (and more than 5,000 died) for more than 10 years to
complete the 50-mile passage.
Nothing
that’s great every gets built in an instant; except in the fantasy
world of movies and fiction literature.
In a world of
opportunity and corporate downsizing, many bright individuals have
put their hands to the task of birthing and parenting an
enterprise. Sadly, most fail. 50% of start-ups achieve failure in
less than one year. The standard wisdom is that the primary causes
of failure are some combination of:
·
Lack of
Planning
·
Under
Capitalization
·
Poor
Management
·
Inability to
delegate
But I would
suggest another pervasive cause that is far more fundamental – an
unwillingness to endure the difficulty of the task.
In one of my
favorite movies, A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks says, “It’s
supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The
hard is what makes it great.”
If you find
yourself considering starting a new venture, I’d encourage you to go
for it – follow your heart! But don’t expect the dream to come true
in short order. In fact, expect the dream to morph into a nightmare
before it actually gets fulfilled.
Assure that
you don’t make one of the common mistakes bulleted above – that’s
just good business practice. But in addition to covering the
basics, be prepared to endure long stretches of lean return, deep
bouts with self-doubt and frustrating periods where you feel
misunderstood by nearly everyone. Be aware that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Literally everyone who has ever gone down the road to
entrepreneurship has experienced these things.
And whether
you’re just getting started or you’ve been at the entrepreneurial
game for a while, my challenge to you is to stick with it. Learn
from your mistakes and failures. Work on relationships. All you
need to do is find the one right person or company that believes in
you to start the ball rolling toward realizing your dream.
Remember the
simple, yet profound, words of Sir Winston Churchill as he
inspirationally led the free world against the tyranny of Adolf
Hitler; “Never, never, never give up. Never, never give up!”
Paraclete
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