Being an entrepreneur has long been an over-glorified profession by the media. Everything from being your own boss, having flexible hours, working from your laptop in the comfort of your own home (not that we have any other options right now), but that’s not the entire story. You see, being an entrepreneur is harder than it seems. That’s always been the case when you’re building something from the ground up, and even harder when you’re pouring all of your heart, blood, sweat, and tears into the business that you’re starting. Yes, life as an entrepreneur is a lot like life in a startup. You’ll have to work hard to get to where you want to, you’ll need to have resilience, and you’ll have to be patient.
But let me share some pointers that I’ve picked up along the way while building my business.
First thing’s first. You gotta be patient, and I mean REALLY, REALLY patient.
You can think of it as a relationship. Whenever you go in for a sale, you can’t always expect a swift answer like a very quick yes, because you’ll know that something’s just not quite right, especially in the beginning. You need to think of your clients, customers, as relationships that you’ve fundamentally changed through asking them for a sale.
Personally, my experience with building both House of Leaders and Executive Mafia has always been about offering the most value to my clients rather than about the money. In fact, most of the money that we earned is invested right back into the company to make sure that the company continues to grow.
You need to be patient. There’s no such thing as a shortcut to success. Dig in deep and focus on giving your audience the best value, and you’ll start to see the growth you’ve been yearning for.
The second point is to get to know yourself first.
Many startup founders don’t realize their true desires, strengths, and weaknesses. This proves to be detrimental later on in their career, especially if the company has already seen some growth and these points are not yet recognized.
You need to know who you are.
I know who I am, and this allows me to only play to my strengths. Doing this not only allows me to gain a deeper level of understanding in my life as an entrepreneur to know what it is that truly works and what doesn’t. Get to know who you are.
The third point is to get to know and love your people.
You need to understand that your company is only as strong as the people that you lead. This is why you need to actively show appreciation for those who work with you as much as you can. This can take the form of anything as simple as telling them how much you value their hard work every day, to giving them a hug, telling them that you love them, and really mean it. These things convey a much deeper impact than you would have realized in the beginning.
In my case, I always give out a lot of free content away. I do it because I know that value is something that people are actively looking for, and if they truly want to know more about what I post, they’ll pay for it eventually. I always fo with offering tons of value before asking for business.
Something that I realized lately is that when I share positive values, it makes me feel good, and it helps me realize that I do genuinely want to help people grow. This is also why no matter how busy life can get for me, I’ll always pause and take some time to create content, videos, or podcast interviews with a smile on my face.
Last but not least is to work.
The hustle is real. Not many entrepreneurs realize how much hard work is required for success. This goes back to the media’s portrayal of life as an entrepreneur, things will fall into place without much effort and the success is left under-appreciated. This is rarely ever the case.
You see, when we have big goals, our actions need to reflect those goals and make as great as an impact as well. Hard work is what makes a billion-dollar idea worth a billion dollars, not the idea itself. Trust me when I say this, but hard work is always the answer. Work hard and smart and you’ll start seeing things happen.