By contributing writer: Christian Nellemann (www.linkedin.com/in/christiannellemann)
Things I wish I had known when I was starting out as an entrepreneur. It’s that you don’t have to rush it. You can take your time. That creating a successful business is not a race so you should take the time to enjoy it along the way. This idea of doing it at high speed runs right through the business world.
When people start out as an entrepreneur, they think they need to build their successful company and sell it as quickly as possible. And when people begin a career in business they think they need to make loads of money as quickly as possible.
But they have got it all wrong.
It takes time to learn how to be an entrepreneur. There is a certain chronology to it. You have to learn how to run and grow a business, how to manage people and raise funds. It is not something you can just waltz into from a corporate job or straight from school or university and get it right instantly. You need to learn all these different skills through pain and struggle, and that will probably take you ten years or longer. Being able to cash in and make the big bucks is likely to be decades away.
I was always in a rush; in fact for probably two thirds of my career as an entrepreneur. I always felt that I had to get to a certain point in a certain amount of time, and then get to the next point in a certain amount of time, and the one after that. I was super impatient, I was never calm and content, and so I definitely didn’t enjoy parts of the journey as much as I should have.
Don’t be like me. Don’t be in too much of a rush. If you are in your 20s or 30s you have got plenty of time. Much more than you think. Be confident that if you keep applying yourself and working at it, you will eventually get there. And allow yourself to enjoy the process and journey rather than being constantly fearful that you haven’t made it yet.
Because it turns out that while it is great to get that big pot of money once you are ultimately successful, it is actually the memories and the joy that you experience along the way that is the really valuable thing.
Comments