The Brave Entrepreneur's Desk: 121 Affirmations & Epiphanies for Motivation and Profits

Chapter 1: Entrepreneurship is Complex

Entrepreneurship. It can take you to such highs and yet can also drive you crazy.

You’ll hear numerous people discuss the benefits and extoll the virtues of entrepreneurship, which are all valid. It’s amazing when you can create your own schedule. It is great to be able to work on something every day that excites you.

Creating a money earning machine that has an almost unlimited capacity for you to gain financial freedom is amazing. The fact that you can gain financial freedom to create time freedom allowing you to focus on activities and people that you love is incredible.

However, entrepreneurship is not all sunshine, rainbows, and complete autonomy. Just as there are fabulous benefits, there are also some really hard conditions and truths about the entrepreneurship journey.

The struggle of making a name for yourself within your market, worrying if the sales are sufficient to pay bills, and thrive while wearing all or many of the hats in your business is stressful. There are innumerable other struggles and worries, but you get the point. As an entrepreneur, you know them well.

I have a major issue with the advice and conversations about entrepreneurship. There is too much discussion of the benefits and not enough information or talk about the hard times, and most importantly what it takes to make it through those hard times.

Saying that the entrepreneur journey is tough is a MAJOR understatement. It tests you in so many ways. When people say that this journey is not for everyone, this is the unabashed truth. I, for one, have the scars to prove it.

After earning my doctorate, I jumped feet first, into entrepreneurship. I had a plan, albeit (in hindsight) not a great one. However, using the knowledge and experience that I had, I created the best strategy that I could.

While looking for jobs, I did research and read books and blog articles, on starting up a for-profit business. Once I felt I had a good enough grasp on it, I wrote a step-by-step strategy based on my research. I then got to work implementing it.  Within 30 days, I created my first product which explained how to accelerate saving money and save consistently. I then created a website to sell my product.

My product was a kit that detailed a six-factor system. It included a guide, an audio lesson, the audio lesson script, and money management templates for budgeting and tracking spending. I thought it was awesome. After getting three people to test it I received a lot of feedback. Constructive criticism is always a good thing.

After having six manuscripts torn apart before publication in peer-reviewed journals during graduate school, I knew the importance of not taking criticism personally and implementing the feedback. I had to be okay with the fact that what I thought was good was not ready to be sold just yet. After revising each item based on the feedback, I thought, okay now I’m good to go, I just have to let people know about it.

We all know the power of social media and its continuous growth. It is possible to gain millions of followers who pay attention to what you post or have to say. Individuals with a large number of followers on a social media platform are called influencers. The term influencer was officially added to the dictionary in 2019. That in itself lets you know how pervasive social media and influencers are in daily life and our businesses.

As an entrepreneur, you’ve seen the advice: create a personal brand on social platforms, grow your following, and occasionally post information about what your business offers. Many are led to believe that this is all they have to do and then BOOM; sales will come pouring into the business.

Well, that is not quite the way it goes. When I started my for-profit business in 2013, social media was already quite powerful. Although at that time I wasn’t yet familiar with the term influencer. I figured with a few social media posts and my website I could let people know that I had this amazing product for sale and people would buy. 

I thought, of course, everyone would be able to see that my product is amazing. I couldn’t imagine anyone who didn’t want to get help saving more money. I truly believed I was ready to send my product out into the world to help others, and now I would have a successful business.

I had earned a PhD from one of the most prestigious universities in the nation, surely this couldn’t be that much harder. I also co-founded and helped run a non-profit for ten years. As I wasn’t starting completely from scratch, and I’d done the research, I knew what I needed to be successful. I had convinced myself that I’d made a good strategy for this business and I would now make it work.

So naïve! Yes, I know. However, I didn’t know that at the time.

My time and energy started to shift from searching for jobs to working hard in my business. Being self-employed was so much more attractive than working for someone else, and the idea of an uncapped income was especially attractive. I knew it would be a lot of work but figured I could do it.

I made less than seventy-five dollars and lived on my savings for eight months. At this stage, I had to admit that I did not know what I was doing. It was extremely difficult to watch my savings dwindle while earning no revenue.

A few times a