Entrepreneurship is hard. The following statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the reality of this truth:
- Only 80% of businesses started in March 2016 made it to March 2017
- Only 50% of businesses started in March of 2012 made it to March 2017
- Only 30% of businesses will survive their 10th year in business
These statistics are interesting when you start to think about the context of the entrepreneurial journey during the first year and fifth year. Once you do that, you can see why the failure rate is so high.
In the first year of starting our business, we have so much hope for what the potential is that we devote some incredibly long hours to building it. Might founder burnout be part of the failure rate after the first year? While that is quite possible, I have also seen too many times where founders begin to show signs of founder depression. Both can be avoided.
After having the great fortune to interview close to 100 founders across my live events and for The Startup Story podcast, I have identified five struggles that most startup founders experience and how they got through them.
My hope is that you will find this helpful to you, as they are not my words but advice from founders like Jason McCann (Varidesk), Larry Namer (E! Entertainment Television), Clint Harp (HGTV hit show Fixer Upper, and Harp Design Co.), Emma Rose Cohen (FinalStraw), and Anna Victoria (Fit Body App).
Flying solo
Most entrepreneurs have fallen victim to the glamorized narrative of “hustle” and “sacrifice” because of the incredible tech startup stories where we hear about founders working 150 hours a week and not having any social life. The problem with that narrative is that there is a selection bias in that we only hear about the massively successful startups. We do not hear about the failed startups because, unless it is a glorious implosion, it does not make for great news.
If you have a co-founder, do not start believing that all of a sudden you are not susceptible to this struggle. This still pertains to you, because a party of two works for dancing but not much more. You need to find a community of people that are pushing with you. There are lots of resources for this.
- Coworking spaces are a great place to find like-minded individuals, usually in the same place you are…just starting. Here is a great article expanding upon the benefits of a coworking space.
- Meetup groups and events are also a solution to find people of mutual interest.
- An organized mastermind was one of the most preferred resources from the founders I have interviewed. A mastermind is a hand-selected group of individuals that meet together from various disciplines to sharpen and refine each other. The key to a successful mastermind is a variety of focus.
You cannot successfully navigate the startup journey alone. There will, undoubtedly, reach a point when you feel like you cannot go on and that community that you’ve connected with may be your life preserver and just what is needed to move forward.
Starting for the wrong reason
Again, we live in a culture that has media and storylines in front of them more hours per day than ever before. Those stories are curated by algorithms that continue to push content that you seem interested in. So, for a founder seeking information about how “XYZ startup grew to $100 million in 2 years” those become the only stories you hear. That has created a population of entrepreneurs that see these “build it and sell it” stories and start the journey for the same reason. Again, they are building a dream on information that is biased towards success stories.
Another solution that founders have shared with me is to pursue passion before fame. I know that seems obvious, but think about why you started your business today. I’m fairly confident that initial thought was centered on how much money you could make.
At some point, you are going to want to throw in the towel and if your purpose for starting down this journey was for the money then you will inevitably quit. Money is never a long-time motivator. What is birthed out of your very being is what will sustain you in the most challenging of times. Ideas birthed out of monetary opportunity will never carry you for the long journey ahead.
Listening to the wrong voice
Everyone around us has an opinion and often times we allow the voices “in the cheap seats” to have a say in our dreams and ambitions. Especially in the day and age of social media where we only post our success stories and not our failures. The decision alone is driven by our concern about the opinion of those who are not nearly as crazy as we are. Yes, entrepreneurship is crazy!
Understand, at your very core, that nobody is going to believe in your idea more than you are. Be so steadfast in your belief that all other voices become silenced. We hear stories of professional athletes and Olympians who get on the court, track, or field and everything goes silent for them even though there are thousands of screaming people, often times where half the crowd is against them.
Another solution…see #1 above. Surround yourself with people who are just as driven to do something crazy. Those are the people that will provide the oxygen needed to keep the flame going.
Identity confusion
It is too easy for us to tie our identity into the success or failure of our startup. If we attain some metric of success we feel as though we are God’s gift to entrepreneurship. The same is true when we don’t hit a milestone or receive some major rejection and we feel like a failure. Neither conclusion is true.
Do not inflate the moment. The truth of the matter is that a successful moment deserves its celebration but it does not make YOU, the person, any more valuable or capable. The same is true of points of failure. The effort fell short, YOU, are not a failure for it.
Data shows that the odds are against you in building a successful business so do not allow those stacked odds to play any role in your self-worth.
Running someone else’s race
The timeline of another founder’s success story is not your timeline. This line of thinking is similar to those stories of Apple Map users that would follow Apple Maps directions without any awareness of their situation and then find themselves off the side of the cliff. This lack of clarity is such a significant factor to the failure of startups.
Understand what your business or service delivers. Know exactly who your buyer is. Be crystal clear on all the inputs for YOUR business to be successful. Stay in your lane and do not allow your eyes to drift. Yes, keep your ears open to macro changes taking place around you…but make changes based on your wisdom and intuition, not a competitor’s.
Also, use Google Maps…Apple Maps is trash.
Like I said in the beginning, entrepreneurship is hard. The key to the success stories is that they did not originate in a vacuum. Don’t do this alone, find your people, find your passion, and find your focus.
Who knows, maybe one day you will be sharing your story on The Startup Story.
