The steps as I see them.
It’s exciting right? Starting your own business? With the entrepreneur trend at an all-time high, we’re all willing to throw our hat in the ring to try out a crazy idea. After all, you could be the next Elon, right?
Five years ago, while still in college, I had four thousand dollars in savings, started a custom auto shop, and prepared for easy success. The next six years were the hardest six years of my life.
There is no distinction between personal and professional success when you truly are an entrepreneur. If your business gets a bad review, you take it to heart. Your product and service become you. Your business success consumes you. So where does one start on the entrepreneurial journey?
It starts with an idea. We have a concept we think could be big. We talk to our friends and family and wait for wonderful feedback that we have designed the next Instagram. And that’s the first misconception many new entrepreneurs grapple with.
Most often people will tell you what you don’t want to hear; that your idea will never get funded, has flaws, has already been done or is just plain nuts..
And their input is not entirely off-base. The chance of getting an idea funded in its initial stages is rare. So why apply for a small business loan and take a risk in the first place? What’s the worst that could happen?
You might make it. Just enough to keep you going until next year. You’ll pay yourself and think, next year will be better,.and the next year you make just enough to convince yourself you still shouldn’t quit. You’re a go getter. You’re an entrepreneur No one believed in you and now you have been working for yourself successfully for a couple of years. Well… sort of.
You’ve been working for the business. You’ve changed one form of employment for another. But now you work for an awful horrible boss that never lets you take time off, makes you skip lunch, and makes you sleep in a shabby warehouse with no windows, hot water and lots of ants. After year 4 the business needs your shabby spot so you trade it for the back lot a trailer with no water and no power.
This new boss of yours also wants you to deal with all the business problems. Did a handicap van door just scratch a one of a kind Maserati paint job? You need a manager, look in the mirror, and realize, you’re it.. But you must remain calm. So you decide it’s time to hire a new employee. Now, not only have your bills doubled, and you’re still not getting paid, but your new staff is complaining about how little they are making too. Also, by the way – they are going to need the day off Friday. But you still feel progress is being made; at least a little.
Remember when you missed lunch and you thought that’s why your stomach was hurting the entire day afterward? In fact, it’s been hurting for 6 months. A sick anxiety style hurt that doesn’t fade – also known as stress. This feeling of constant discomfort will be your sole payment for the next year and a half. You’ll continually ask yourself if you were wrong to start your business. Maybe your friends and family were right? Should you have hung onto your day job just in case? Is this all really worth it? It’s ok to end things now…everyone saw it coming. Most people don’t even know I had a business in the first place so what’s the big deal.
After year two you begin to develop a clientele. There is a steady stream of traffic, and you have some staff thanks to the 80-hour work weeks and the $50 a week eating budget you’ve guaranteed. But then your staff starts to complain. Nevermind the fact that you’ve loaned them money for cars, bailed them out of jail, and allowed them to pretty much show up when they like. You change your open time to 10am in the hopes that they can surly get up by then. Then your staff become friends and unbeknownst to you, they leave your business to start-up their own locations increasing your competition. Now your stress is mostly employee related but the bills are still coming and the question of business insurance is looming large. At this stage your mentality is most likely, “I’ve got people counting on me now so I cannot give up. Now people know what I do so failure will not be private…but maybe it’s still ok.
By year 5 you most likely have ‘made it’. . People write about you. You’re in magazines and are frequently being invited for interviews. You have millions of dollars in revenue and everyone wants your service. You have been offered multiple related shows and even been screamed at by the the producer at Discovery.
You feel like a business genius because you have successfully made it past the 5-year hump. Your popularity continues to grow and now supposed business gurus whom you’ve never before heard of want to help. They knew all along you could do it. Money gets offered in large amounts with one click of a button – never mind that it’s highway robbery. Assuredly you will be sued and now the city will be over-inspecting you once a month. You are still the least paid employee and haven’t had a vacation in months. Failure now would be an absolute and total embarrassment, and I still haven’t had lunch…
Written at year 5. I was told this writing is to real and it should not be shared. I was told that no one wants to hear true business story’s only the fairytale stuff…. There would be 3 more years to come. These years would include a fire closing down a location, 3 robberies and covid…do you crave more of the story? Or do you only want to hear the good stuff?
