The tough road of entrepreneurship can be defined in 1 simple mathematical formula,
Effort ≠ Results
Some efforts might result in results, but most won’t.
Our entire life growing up, we’ve been conditioned to get rewarded every time we put in effort, and I guess for most people, the reluctance to breakaway from this mold is the main reason why most people aren’t entrepreneurs, but employees.
I too was groomed using guaranteed rewards growing up. When I was younger, I loved lego toys, especially the Slizer series.
My guaranteed reward for my efforts when I was younger was, my mom would buy me one of these lego Slizers’ (there’s different elements) every time I got an “A” for any of my subjects.
It was a pretty good motivation, I got quite a few “As” when I was still a good student. But this reward system kind of primed me for the Employee mindset which up to today and I’m still wrestling with myself to fully unlearn it.
Right now I’m working on the belief that I’ll one day surpass the average paycheck of people that’s in the same age range as me, but sometimes, I still kind of wish I can live the safe paycheck life. This is when I remember what Kevin O’Leary says, the paycheck is really a trap they give you to forget your dreams.
Just like my lego toy experience, employee life is nice and stable.
You put effort into the company you work for for 44 hours a week and you get the guaranteed reward of a paycheck.
Entrepreneur’s life on the other hand, you might put 168 hours of work into a hustle week and come out at the other end of the venture not making anything, or worse, losing more than you’ve put in.
As a newbie entrepreneur (3 years so far), the instability in income is a real concern. There’s the high months where we’ll feel over the moon, and the down months, where your tenacity is really challenged.
The downward spiral is not an easy rut to get out of, there’s this quote I saw on reddit that I found funny and applicable to the point I’m trying to bring across
“I’m depressed because I’m lazy, I’m lazy because I’m depressed”
Random Redditor
I don’t consider myself a successful entrepreneur yet, but here’s my take on what’s the future of this life that I’ve chosen looks like…
Life’s easy when it’s the ups of business, but every entrepreneur has to face the downs, and the downward spiral is a real phenomenon that’s really hard to crawl out of.
Imagine you run a company and the good times are over, the negative tipping point has arrived, and your company’s finances start going into the red,
You get emotional and stressed because nothing in your business is going as planned. And because you’re stressed you make bad decisions, and because of the bad decisions you’ve made, you lose more money.
You use your personal savings to keep your business afloat which means you might miss out on the instalment of your next car, house payment, or can’t pay for your children’s tuition, which makes you even more stress.
And the stress from your personal life causes you to make even more bad business decisions, and the spiral keeps goes round and round until there’s nothing left.
The challenge most business owners face is keeping a rationale mind and focusing on what’s important when the going gets tough.
We can learn a thing or 2 from the Hell Creatures from the Rick & Morty episode, where they feel pleasure from pain, this might perhaps be the best mindset to have for success.
Observing the mindset of some of these successful business owners that I had the benefit of crossing paths in my life, these guys are really good at reframing obstacles into opportunities, kind of like the Hell Creatures in Rick & Morty.
Perhaps the only way out of a downward spiral in anything in life, is a strong mind which isn’t a slave to emotions, or turn negative emotions into positives through reframing of a negative situation.
“The Grind” is a term I can across today when joining a mindset business coaching call, and to our business coach says he has trained himself to enjoy the grind.
Most people usually believe they can only find joy when they see the results.
But I guess aIways getting what you want is an unrealistic expectation to have in this world, and perhaps the only way forward is learning to enjoy the process.