You have to be willing to forego the game and nights out with friends to enhance your product and yourself. You have to be willing to sustain several losses without being discouraged and lose (toxic) friends without being dismayed. You have to be willing to walk down the path less traveled alone and not succumb to loneliness. You have to see profit and loss both as impostors and understand that both serve as an opportunity to reinvest into your business because both teach you something new. You have to embrace the idea that loyalty DOES have an expiration date and that anyone who is not helping you is hindering you and must be fired from your inner circle or “mastermind” group. You have to be willing to ignore the plethora of rejections and still ask for the business, mentorship, contact, etc. one more time with enthusiasm.
You have to get to the place where money doesn’t motivate you and it is because you have a product or service that has so much value that it enhances your target market’s life better than any of your competitors. You must be willing to undergo a myriad of obstacles to ensure potential customers are aware of you and are willing to invest their hard earned money with you and continuously seek to eliminate their justifiable reasons to go with someone else. You have to be able to convince yourself that YOU can change the world and your product or service actually solves a real problem. These are the bare minimum requirements of what it takes to be a business owner (there are more requirements to be a sustainably wealthy business owner). If you cannot fulfill these, stay at your 9-5. It is safer and less painful. In order to be successful you have to consciously and subconsciously choose to do so—–I know this is a departure from my normal optimistic posts, but I have had one too many people this week look at my successes and attempt to profit from or implement them without being willing to understand and undergo the pain I (and those like me) underwent to become successful. I know personally it’s worth it in the end, but you have to be willing to walk through the fire to get it.