does being an entrepreneur suck

Summary

a friend of mine became an entrepreneur and was grinding through the slog and asked if it always sucks. I wrote him a letter. that letter became a newsletter. and now it’s this episode.

1. when I became an entrepreneur I read a study that said entrepreneurs are less happy than salaried peers. that tracked. there’s no off switch. for the first several years it can feel like survival, weekends included. if you don’t figure out your mind, it grinds you down.

2. entrepreneurship pursued correctly applies pressure to every part of you. either you survive and become a better version of yourself, or you don’t. fitness taught me self discipline. entrepreneurship taught me self mastery. both were life changing because both hurt.

3. three things to start. one, write down your goals and create a plan. I’ve worked with two people who sold companies for over $100 million. both of them had me do this exercise on day one. write the goals down, make a plan. you never outgrow this.

4. two, take immediate action. plans are great. plans that start tomorrow or next quarter are not plans, they’re hopes. take one action today, no matter how small. three, start stopping. focus requires you to remove things. say no. quit. don’t reply. you can’t add success on top of everything you’re already doing.

5. three things to stop. listening to the wrong people. don’t take entrepreneur advice from your brother who isn’t one or investing advice from broke friends. making excuses, find another way when one doesn’t work. and complaining. eliminate complaint as a habit and you’ll 10x your life from that alone. you can do this. try harder.

Transcript

the letter i wrote a friend

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Today I’m going to read you a piece that I wrote. I have published this to my newsletter, but ultimately I did not write this for my newsletter originally. I wrote it for a friend. So I had a friend who became an entrepreneur several years after I did, and he was struggling.

And he was seeing progress, but he was struggling with a grind. And I remember when I became an entrepreneur, I read this study that said entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs are less likely to be happy than their salaried, uh, you know, peers, people who have a job. So you just have a W2 income. You can get off work and, you know, kind of do whatever you want and you don’t think about work on the weekends, those kinds of things, uh, you know, for some people that can lead to happy happiness because entrepreneurship, at least the beginning, if you don’t figure out your mind and you don’t have to, you don’t figure out how to control your mind, it will wear you down.

There’s no off switch. There’s no, I clocked out today. There’s no, I’m just going to enjoy the weekend. When you are first getting going and for the first several years, it might be all that you think about. It really feels like survival when you first get started. So my friend did ask me if, you know, does being an entrepreneur always suck?

And so this is what I wrote. Um, like I said, kind of edited, um, for what I wanted to publish publicly, uh, but I want to read this for anyone out there who’s, you know, an entrepreneur and you’re wondering, does it suck and what can you do? So I’m going to give you in this piece, three things to start doing and stop doing it as an entrepreneur and kind of a little bit of my backstory, but I’ll get started.

entrepreneurship as pressure that builds you

Does being an entrepreneur suck? Entrepreneurship when pursued correctly will apply pressure and discomfort to every part of who you are. You either survive it and become the best version of yourself imaginable or you won’t. The two most significant impacts on my life have been fitness and entrepreneurship.

Fitness taught me self-discipline, which is instrumental to any success. Entrepreneurship taught me self-mastery, which was life-changing. The entrepreneurship journey is long and it is hard. So come back to this podcast, whatever you are struggling. What I want for you, I want you to know, I truly want you to be successful as deep down as I can feel.

I want you to be successful and I mean the person listening to this right now, as well as my friend who I originally wrote this for because I want everyone to be successful. I really do because that’s where the best version of you is at. So back to the note. If no one is rooting for you, I am. If no one understands you, I do.

You’re right if you feel like your friends can no longer relate. They can’t, but I can and I want to urge you to keep going. I want you to achieve every financial goal you can imagine. I want you to have a profession that you love and a level of personal freedom you never thought possible, but you can’t just want it.

You have to make the hard choices. You have to do the hard things. Break free from the status quo and put in the work so you never go back. I want this for everyone. You become a much better version of yourself when you remove fear, anxiety, and scarcity from your life and replace it with confidence and abundance.

start one, write goals and make a plan

You become the version of yourself people want to be around. Your ambition is electric. Your drive attracts. Your mission inspires those around you. This is who I want you to be. But getting there is not easy. There are many ups and downs and there always will be, so if you’re struggling, I have some painfully simple advice.

Three things to start doing or restart. The first, write down your goals and create a plan for their achievement. The second, take immediate action on the plan above, like what you just wrote. And three, lastly, stop things that don’t serve you. I’ve now had the opportunity to work closely with two different people who have sold their businesses for over $100 million.

Over $100 million. I have worked with these people in a mentorship role. Do you know what they had me, both of them had me do when I worked with them? Develop goals, write them down, make a plan. You never outgrow this. You don’t get to a level of success where you don’t have to develop goals, write them down and make a plan.

Next, take immediate action. A plan is great, but it also kind of sucks when you start tomorrow, next week or next quarter. Take action today, no matter how small. Lastly, I’m asking you to start stopping. And you heard that right. If you want success, it takes a lot of focus. You can’t just keep doing everything you’ve always done, so it’s okay to stop doing things.

Say no, quit something, don’t reply. Nothing I’ve said is groundbreaking information or advice. And guess what? Success does not come from some breakthrough secret. It comes from doing the boring stuff you know you need to do every single day. Now what should you stop doing? You should stop listening to the wrong people.

start two and three, take action and stop things

You should stop making excuses and you should stop complaining. Don’t listen to people who don’t know. Unfortunately, your brother who is not an entrepreneur cannot help you make the right decisions. Your broke friends cannot give you sound investment advice. Stop listening to the wrong people. Block it all out, every bit of it.

Same with your goals. I don’t care if you want a $10 million house on a glacier in Alaska. Don’t listen to a soul who tells you it’s a bad idea. Instead, find an architect and an engineer to help you create the plans. Next, stop making excuses and stop complaining. If you never made an excuse or complained out loud ever again in your life, you’d easily 10X your life just from that singular habit.

If you can’t figure something out, find a way. Oh, that didn’t work? Fantastic. Find another way. And in that process, don’t complain about the ways that didn’t work. And I think I’ll finish this out from a very applicable excerpt from my book, Killing Comfort. In the end, it’s not what you do today.

It’s what you do every single day. You have to know it is 100% possible to achieve your goals. Everything else is useless if you don’t think you can achieve it. You can do this. It doesn’t matter what you say or why you think you can’t. You say it to me and my response will always be the same. You can do this.

stop the wrong people, the excuses, and the complaining

Jerred, you don’t know how many times I’ve tried. You can do this. But I can’t stay motivated. It works for a little while, but then everything falls apart. You can do this. But you don’t know my schedule, my life, or what I face on a daily basis. You can do this. You can change little by little, just one thing at a time.

It will feel forced and awkward, and you may even hate it. But it will start to work. Making a change won’t be fun. You may not enjoy pushing yourself and trying to find the time to fit new things into your schedule, but the results will start to show. What you can’t do is sit around and twiddle your thumbs.

You have to do something. Don’t feel sorry for yourself and think about how you’ll never achieve your goals. You have to do something. Believe in yourself. Believe in your ability to achieve your goal. It’s that simple. My entrepreneurship journey started while recovering from an injury that would eventually remove me from Air Force aviation.

While I was laid up, I started a blog. As my dream of being a fighter pilot melted away, a new opportunity didn’t come along. I made the new opportunity. Now you go make yours. Quit waiting for something to happen. Make it happen. Fly harder.