3 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started as an Entrepreneur

Ten years under our belt…err, seatbelt… here at Launch Kits made me reflect on the road in the rearview mirror. Although I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur when going door-to-door and collecting newspaper subscriptions from neighbors ($6 per month in case you were wondering) at age 12ish, or mowing lawns at age 13, there are some things I wish I knew earlier. 

Don’t we all? 

If you’re just starting out on your entrepreneurial adventures as a teenager, a high school reseller or local service startup, or as a post-college explorer of a new career, I want to help you enter this grand adventure with your eyes wide open.

I won’t make you keep reading. You’ve got things to do and places to be, right?

Hard

I wish someone told me that it’s hard.

Sure, there are tons of amazing days, experiences, unforeseen blessings, memories, and times you die laughing with joy or embarrassment… in a good way.

But there are many seasons (not just days) that are hard emotionally, physically, and even spiritually.

Entrepreneurship will test you to your core and reveal your deepest insecurities, crippling weaknesses, and fears. Wearing the hats of owner, operator, technician, sales, marketing, spreadsheet manager, brand builder, and check-writer can wear you down without you even being able to point to “which of those” is the key deflator of the dream balloon. 

If you are just starting, it’s not really something I can prepare you for, but it is something you’ll feel, know, and likely figure out your own way through.

Well, that’s not totally true. 

Half of you who are just starting will quit this career pursuit called ‘entrepreneurship’ in the next five years if the closure rate statistics are correct.

So why am I saying I wish I’d known it would be hard?

The reason I wish I knew ahead of time how hard it would be is so that I could build the support around me to sustain me well in those seasons. You can manage the exposure of your insecurities better if you are also committed to proactively developing your own emotional maturity. That requires true friends, wise counselors, vulnerable spaces, and an ability to embrace that ‘who I am today is a result of choices I made yesterday, and who I am tomorrow will be a result of what I choose today.’ 

Entrepreneurship will reveal your deepest insecurities.

Some of you are thinking “Yeah, but my journey won’t be hard… I will be smart about how I go about this.”

Yes. Please use wisdom, but wisdom will not remove the hard.

Charles Spurgeon famously said “God keeps his choicest wine in the cellars of affliction.”

As an entrepreneur of 20+ years, I can tell you based on my experiences and those of, well, everyone I have ever read or talked to on the same adventure: your journey will be hard.

But the hard times you are sure to encounter can also be fruitful in your own life if you don’t try to be a lone warrior. Hustle Harder is not a solution when things get hard. Asking honest questions about your own capabilities and capacity, and learning how to ask for help is a more healthy response to ‘hard.’

The adage ‘You can do hard things’ is true to an extent. But usually ‘you’ becomes ‘you, with the help of others’ in the world of entrepreneurship.

Allowing others to speak into your life and learning to listen well means your mental health improves, your spiritual health flourishes, and even the physically difficult parts of running your own business (yes, it is physically draining even if designing websites) can become manageable.

Pride

The second thing I wish I knew when I started down this road was how tempted I would be to take responsibility for my own success. 

Ancient pride.

That’s the bugger.

Pride always comes before a fall. Always has. Always will.

When you are successful, it is always the product of a lot of people and not your sole brilliance. 

If you think of the ‘people’ behind your ‘product’, you will find the process (yep, using all of Marcus Lemonis’s Three P’s) of your growth and success is a long list. Maybe a mother or father’s encouragement, a friend’s advice, a spouse’s encouragement, a chance encounter at a mixer, an unexpected change of events, maybe a sudden firing (in my case), or even a failed idea (also, my case).

So when we celebrate our success as the result of our own efforts, we dismiss those who sacrificed, took a chance, believed in us, opened doors for us, and played a role in where we arrived.

Arrived. That word has definitely tripped me up in life.

It’s a myth. We never arrive; we only move. Pick your direction by the choices you make: forward or backward. 

“God keeps his choicest wine in the cellars of affliction.”

Charles Spurgeon

I was very tempted to raise my own flag and take the credit for a successful non-profit I was the Founder of when we had rapid growth, made cool music videos, rocketing enrollment of students and tons of artists working together in schools. In fact, I did take credit… until I had my own (humbling) come-to-Jesus moment that forced me to realize it wasn’t my own initiative or vision alone. Sad to say, I didn’t just learn that lesson once and move on either – but am constantly tempted with pride’s poisonous promise: that I earned and deserve the praise I get due to my own efforts! 

God’s favor over my life in spite of my mistakes and His kindness to guide me “to lay down in green pastures” (Psalm 23) is His goodness and not my own ingenuity. 

Practice humility, which is acknowledging your gifts as just that: gifts. Things given to us that we are honored to steward and use for the short moment we call ‘life.’

If I am getting too deep, then I will respectfully move on.

But one more thing: the success is not ‘yours’ and neither is the failure. Identity is not bound by whether you met the mark or you failed to meet your goal, but rather in who you are outside of your business. So don’t own your success as solely your own doing, and also guard against (re)defining yourself because of a failure.

Successes and failures happen, but you will need to learn how to remain confidently ‘you’ in the midst of those mountains and valleys.

Ready for the third?

The Journey

The third thing I wish someone told me early on is that the journey is the reward.

Maybe you need to consider if that’s what you are signing up for: the journey.

The journey on this road is the very thing that will shape you, leave a legacy to your children, and become part of who you are in your old age. 

I bet you have some entrepreneurial friends or mentors who have talked about “finding the off switch” and learning how to manage your boundaries with life and business. There are also some voices that celebrate the ‘always on’ ideas of entrepreneurship. 

Who I am today is a result of choices I made yesterday, and who I am tomorrow will be a result of what I choose today.

I am here to tell you that your journey should not be an ‘always on’ experience. The reward of the journey is not always looking for inspiration or opportunity but rather the discovery of healthy ways to create space, be fully present with those you love, and to enjoy the moment you are in. 

Early on, I used to make projections for business ideas and say, “If I ever achieve that, then I will just coast and be good!” When those came and went, I realized there was not a ‘destination’ that was going to mark the completion of the journey, but rather things I learned on the journey itself were the reason I kept waking up for more. 

If you think making a million dollars will be the reward, you’ll discover that your satisfaction will never be measured by a number. 

Even if you are seeking time freedom, the reward will be what you are learning along the way.

When you stop learning, you will feel life suck out of you, and the reward of this life of entrepreneurship loses its shimmer.

When you look back, you’ll see the journey of laughs, memories, and character shaping experiences, likely in the mesh of numerous valleys and the failures. Whether or not you see your idea through Year Five, or a decade, or if you switch things up ten times – I encourage you to weigh the costs with the rewards of becoming an entrepreneur and take the best next step for your journey.

I hope we cross paths along the way.