“The real pain of going into business for yourself comes when input far exceeds output and you don’t understand why your best efforts to correct the imbalance are failing.”
There’s no quote more accurate at this particular time in my startup career. Chances are there are many entrepreneurs out there who feel this same way. Know that you’re not alone and that the same desire and passion that thrust you into business will help you scrape and claw your way back to prosperity.
A couple of months ago I was up late watching Mixergy interviews online. In a way, Mixergy is like the business mentor that I never had. The site pulls together the nation’s most accomplished entrepreneurs and interviews them about what steps they took to achieve success. I find the interviews to be more valuable than most others because the interviewees are strongly encouraged to provide actionable responses explaining how they built profitable companies instead of the standard “work hard and never stop believing in yourself” responses that are at very best, cliché.
So I’m on Mixergy listening to Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Engine. With about 10 minutes left in the 100min interview, he struck a cord within me that I’ve yet to hear to this point. In simple terms, he explained that my feelings of self-doubt, frustration, confusion, and fatigue were shared by him during the early stages of his business and by many other entrepreneurs he’d encountered. It was as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and sunlight immediately pierced through the sky on a cloudy day. Here was this highly successful entrepreneur that was able to tap into my exact emotions and explain that I’m not alone and my feelings are quite natural.
He talked about Imposter Syndrome for entrepreneurs. The feeling that “everyone else is doing better than me. Everyone else is smarter than me. Who am I anyway to be doing this? I’m scraping to get customers. Nobody cares what I’m saying. Everything is hard.”
Does anyone else feel this way?
Hearing him talk about this syndrome hit a nerve for me because right now, I just don’t understand why my efforts are not producing results. And when I say results, I’m not talking about a comfortable 6-figure income. I’m talking about going consecutive weeks without making a single dollar in income OR revenue! When you get up every day, sit down at your desk, and spend 10+ hours trying to push your business forward and you get no results. That’s real pain. It’s agony. It’s brutal. It really starts to break your spirits as an entrepreneur and as a person. Particularly when you have such lofty expectations from the onset of the business.
What makes it worse is that while you begin to fall apart, you try and make changes… to little avail. “Ok, I’ll spend more time on the phone calling potential customers.” Doesn’t work. “No, I’ll send out at least 2 additional follow-up emails on every lead.” No luck. “I’ll do more networking.” “ I’ll spend more money this month on XYZ marketing campaign.” And on and on and on. At a certain point, you look back at all of your attempts and the results are mostly the same: More money out than money in. This is the feeling that turns your stomach and makes you nauseas. It’s to the point where you become skeptical of your own abilities and don’t know if the upcoming week will just be 70+ hours of vain toiling.
Yes, everything that I just described is pumping through my veins as we speak. The only solice I take is in a small spark of optimism, buried deep inside of me that always manages to ignite. “If I just tweak this here, the stars will align.” I guess it’s just the entrepreneur in me. We’ll see. For now, back to work.
I’d love to hear your story of entrepreneurial hardship and how you got through it.
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