Starting a business and going on an entrepreneurship journey has its ups and downs. And on this solo episode of the Business & Life Conversations podcast, I will give you a rundown on ten realities you will surely face when taking the leap to entrepreneurship that nobody talks about to guide you and prepare you for the road ahead.
This episode is sponsored by Angela’s 4-day, 3-night Women in Business Retreat. Click here to learn more.
Important Links Mentioned in the Show:
Australian Business Collaborative Facebook Group
Finding Balance in Business Women’s Retreat
Angela Henderson Active Business Facebook Group
Angela Henderson Facebook Business Page
Prefer to read 10 Realities of Entrepreneurship, Nobody Talks About? Here’s the transcript:
ANGELA:
You are listening to the Business and Life Conversations Podcast with Angela Henderson, Episode 36.
Hey there, you’re listening to the Business and Life Conversations Podcast. My name is Angela Henderson and on this show we talk about improving your business life or both by having amazing and rich conversations with brilliant guests who will inspire you and who will give you tips and tricks to help you grow both in life and in business.
Hey there, it’s Angela and welcome to another episode of Business and Life Conversations with me, your host, Angela Henderson. Today we’re going to be talking about 10 realities of entrepreneurship that nobody talks about, but everyone in business or who wants to start a business should definitely know about. Everyone seems on the worldwide web that they’d tell you that you can travel the world, you can take vacations and work from anywhere in the world. But what they don’t tell you about is the countless hours that you must spend finding all the pieces of the entrepreneurial puzzle and then putting them together in order to have a successful business. Nobody tells you about those sleepless nights when you won’t be able to stop thinking about where you’ll get new clients from or whether you’ll be able to pay your next bill or not. Nobody talks about the times when you won’t be able to help but bang your head against the wall and cry out a literal frustration. Nobody talks about the self doubt that will creep in multiple times a day. The nasty little voice that will often tell you that you’re a failure, you should go back to your corporate job and live a normal life. In fact, what most people are telling us is in a time where entrepreneurship and owning a small business is glorified, many don’t want to look at the actual realities of entrepreneurship. Why? Because every social media platform, we hop on there are numerous success stories that give us all – the viewer, the reader, the listener – a perception that everyone is killing it. But this is far from the truth. In fact, here in Australia, more than 60% of small businesses fail within the first three years of having their business. In the US it’s 20% fail within the first year, and after five years, only half of the businesses left still remain.
But before we get started talking about the 10 realities of entrepreneurship, I’d just like to share with you that this episode is sponsored on my four day, three night exclusive Women in Business Retreat where we focus on women having the chance to connect, refocus, learn, and grow in order to have both a sustainable and profitable business, an equal and happy life. With eight of Australia’s leading women entrepreneurs speaking daily masterminds, creative sessions, fantastic food and connections that will last long past the retreat. You will not want to miss out on this amazing event. It’s an exclusive event with only 50 tickets being released so you want to grab yours today before they are gone. And we also have six monthly payment plans in order to help with your cash flow. To grab your four day, three night Women in Business exclusive retreat head to angelahenderson.com.au and simply click on retreat.
Now let’s get straight into the 10 realities of entreprenuership that nobody talks about.
Reality Number One, having your business is stressful as fuck, people. If no one tells you this, they need to. It is stressful. There are days where you will get gray hair just from sitting at your desk because you were so stressed. They make it out like, oh, you’re on a beach living this laptop lifestyle. No, it is stressful as fuck. So reality number one that everyone needs to know about is it is going to be stressful. There are days you are going to cry. They’re days you’re going to fight with your partner. There are days that your kids are going to watch more iPad time than you would ever care to consider. It is stressful as fuck – reality number one.
Reality number two, you will go without pay. You will eat beans on toast. Don’t quit your day job. Literally, if you think you are going to be paid copious amounts of money and you’re having a regular wage every single week, you are absolutely in some fairy tale with unicorns shitting out purple cupcakes. Alright people? You will go without pay. You need to be prepared for going without pay. If you’re in a product based business, you are buying products. You are getting websites set up. If you’re in a service based business, you’ve got your insurances to cover, you’ve got Facebook ads potentially. Again, websites, these are all costs that you must outlay. So you will go without pay. If you are not prepared to go without pay and eat baked beans on toast or go go without a family holiday and listen, probably don’t quit your day job. So that’s reality number two, you will go without pay for some amount of time. Again, most people don’t talk about it. Why? Because people are staying behind fricking BMWs, airplanes and making it look like they’re all rolling in six, seven and eight figure businesses. Wrong. It’s reality number two, you will go without paying, you need to be prepared for that.
Reality number three, you will need to have a day job. Again, there are a lot of entrepreneurs, which I won’t name, but there are a lot of people out there teaching, “You just quit your nine to five job. Everything’s going to be all great and dandy.” But if your nine to five day job is what pays the bills, what I would say is don’t just quit your day job unless you’ve got copious amounts of money already in a savings account or unless you’ve got a Kickstarter campaign that’s going to fund your new business, or unless you’ve got your inl-aws or your mom and dad or whoever that’s giving you money to start this. Most businesses don’t have that luxury. So I say, do not quit your day job. With my first business Finley and me, it’s still going. It’s been going for over eight and a half years now. For the first seven years, I worked full time as a mental health clinician, but what I did was I took advantage of that. I made sure that I had two weeks of sick leave, I had four weeks annual leave. I was able to buy another four weeks of purchase leave. I had one rostered day off a month and I have my public holidays. So I always was planning accordingly to make sure that I could work on continuing to grow my business while at the same time we still had vacations. All of our day to day needs were met, but I still had a business that was growing and then I started to step back. Alright, so reality number three, 99% of the people you are going to need to have some sort of day job, night job doing Uber, I don’t care what it is, but don’t get yourself in a financial strain where it’s going to ruin your marriage, relationships with family, et cetera. So really think about that.
Reality number four, nine to five does not exist. Those people that keep shoving it down your throat saying, “No, no, no. You can live like the life of luxury again and be on beaches and sipping mojitos,” and dah, dah. Yeah, maybe eventually, but at the beginning you are working typically long hours. No, I’m not saying hustle because that’s something that we’re going to talk about here in a minute. What I’m saying is is you are going to work extra hard, and sometimes you might have to work weekends at the beginning, and sometimes you might work until midnight, and sometimes you will start working at 4 AM because you gotta meet with a potential distributor or potential client over in Dubai or somewhere. Okay. Nine to five doesn’t exist at the beginning, so get that through your head. All right? And even someone who’s been in business now with both of my businesses for collectively for almost nine years, I’m telling you now, it’s still nine to fives don’t exist because for example, some of my wonder one VIP coaching clients, they work a full time job. So I accommodate not everyone, but there’s a few of them that I still meet at seven o’clock at night to nine o’clock at night and that’s okay. Because I am the boss and I get to make the rules, but please reality number four, nine to five typically does not exist.
Reality number five, hustling is not a business strategy. Again, so many fricking people are out there, “Hustle this, hustle this. If you hustle, you’ll be successful.” Hustle. The only thing that hustle is going to get you is burnout, burnout, burnout. Which will potentially lead to stress, stress, stress. which will potentially lead to drinking problems, drug problems, mental health problems, or a combination of problems. I’m telling you, reality number five, hustling is not a business strategy.
Reality number six, at some stage there will be a physical, mental, and emotional toll on you. So the sooner you can put strategies in place in order to try and prevent or minimize the physical, mental, and emotional toll, the better off you’re going to be. Physically, people theoretically, a lot of entrepreneurs will start to gain weight because they are not getting outside and being active or going to the gym or drinking green smoothies or doing yoga. I don’t care what you do. I happened to be one of those people. I gained an enormous amount of weight when starting my business because I was focused solely on my business and forgot about my physical health. Also, not necessarily a direct correlation because of my job, but I also suffered depression and anxiety for over two and a half years and it was hell. And ultimately that led to the emotional toll, not only on me but on my family. So at some stage, the reality is there will be a physical, mental and emotional toll. Be ready for that.
Reality number seven that people don’t talk about, relationships will go on the backburner. Whether or not that is your marriage, whether or not as your best friends, whether or not that is your extended family. Alright? Be Clear with your friends when you’re starting your business or even if you’ve been in it for a while, that you may not see them as often as they would like, but when you are with them that you spend quality time with them. but at some stage the relationships will go on the back burner. Alright? Reality number seven.
Reality number eight is change is inevitable. There’s going to be change within your business and sometimes you have to pivot. There’s going to be change within your own mental mindset. There’s going to be changed within your family dynamics about whose roles or what. There’s change. Change is everywhere. You just need to learn to be adaptable to the change because it’s inevitable. It’s coming. Don’t push against it because it’s going to make growing your business even harder. But be open to reality number eight, change is inevitable.
Reality number nine that so many people out there, 10 realities of entrepreneurship that people don’t want to talk about is doing it cheap now will cost you later. I can’t tell you how many one to one coaching clients or even in my eight week coaching program, Profit Pillars with Angela Henderson, the amount of people that want to do things cheaply and when they do things cheaply, they then come back later on and go, “Anj, why didn’t I listen to you the first time.” No, I’m not saying you need a fourteen thousand twenty thousand dollar website, but what I am saying is you need a website that is going to convert, a website that is going to tell your customers what you do, how you do it, and why they should choose you versus anyone else. But yet so many people will spend hours trying to build their own website. They know nothing about how it needs to convert, where their lead magnets need to be, what their primary call to actions are, what their messaging is. And then they spend three, four, $5,000 on Facebook ads driving traffic back to a website that is not set up properly because they chose to do it themselves or paid someone off of Fiverr and upwork who didn’t know what they were doing and they wonder why their business isn’t being successful. Right? Doing it cheap now will cost you later. Alright, people? Get that through your head. I would rather you do something really, really well and chunk it. So you might spend for the first quarter, money on a new website. And then you might do second quarter, you might spend money on SEO. And next quarter you might do something, I don’t know, say coffee. Next, whatever that looks like for your business. But just be mindful that I tell you now, hand on heart, if you do it cheap now then two or three years from now, if that’s what you chose to do, you’re like, you’re going to say, “Man, that chick Angela Henderson from Angela Henderson consulting warned us about this and I chose not to listen.”
And reality number ten, you will need to pay to play. And you might be thinking, well, what does pay to play mean? Pay to play simply means this: at some stage in your business, if you want to have exponential growth, you’re going to have to pay with the big people. You’re going to have to pay to go on business retreats like I have with my coach James Schramko, I went to the Maldives last year. I’ll be going again. Yes, it’s a $10,000 slice. However, what has come from that, I’ve met some of the most amazing people. My business has flourished because of that. I’ve got speaking opportunities. You name it. I also went to Chris Ducker’s event over in the Philippines. I’m going to Social Media Marketing World. You’re going to have to pay to play with some of the people who have already made the mistakes you are probably trying to avoid making. It’s when you pay to play, you get connected with a bigger people. It’s when you pay to play, you see opportunity and get opportunity. When you pay to play, your business will grow. So if you’re sitting there whining and complaining because you know, “oh my businesses is’t growing,” ask yourself, how much are you investing from your overall revenue every single year to pay to play? What masterminds are you going to? What live events are you going to? what retreats are you going to? Because you’re gonna have to pay to play when you pay to play. Like I said, those people will help connect you with other people. Those people will help grow your business. Those people are your allies. Those people will help you to grow both as a person, but also with your business. So reality number 10, you will have to pay to play. Now I know it’s kinda like one of those, it’s not like like a super energetic like, “Whoa, that was like mind blowing! Whoa, that was super inspirational.” Because it’s a bit of a Debbie Downer kind of podcast, but it’s something that I think needs to get spoken about because people are starting businesses left, right and center with false security, false hope and I think it really, really needs to stop. Like I said earlier on, 60% of small businesses fail within three years in Australia, and 20% fail within the first year in the United States. I would love to be able to do post interviews on those businesses that have failed and ask them how many of my “top 10 realities of entrepreneurship that all businesses need to know,” did they actually know when they were starting the business because I would guess a lot of people don’t. And I know I don’t even have to guess. When I bring on my VIP clients and I start working through their business strategy and their plan in order to grow sustainable and profitable business, I can see right away – they didn’t know how stressful business was going to be. They didn’t know that they were going to go without pay. They didn’t know that they may need a part time job in order to pay for that business to grow. They didn’t know that they would be working until midnight some nights. They didn’t know that hustling was going to lead to physical, mental, emotional burnout. They didn’t know that relationships were going to go on the back burner. They didn’t know that change was inevitable. They didn’t know that doing a cheat was going to cost them later and they didn’t know that they needed to pay to play. Again, things I hope that a few of who are listening to, taking notes, and looking at, “Man, there’s a few things that I need to change.”
So that’s it for today’s podcast and I look forward to connecting with you all again soon. Bye from Sunny Brisbane, Australia. My team and I will be putting together the whole transcription for this episode at angelahenderson.com.au and, of course, I cover all sorts of related business and life topics inside my Facebook group, The Australian Business Collaborative, of close to 5,000 amazing business owners. So be sure to head over to Facebook and join the community as I’d love to see you in there. But for now, have a beautiful day no matter where you are in the world. And as I said, I look forward to connecting with you again all very soon. Have an awesome day. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the business and life conversations podcast with Angela Henderson, Realities of Entrepreneurship. www.angelahenderson.com.au.
