The Raw Truth of Entrepreneurial Life and Overcoming Startup Struggles
Mar 01, 2024
Anthony & Jhanilka Hartzog
As we peel back the curtain on the entrepreneurial lifestyle, we're confronted with the harsh truth that time freedom is often a mirage in the desert of business ownership. The emotional rollercoaster doesn't stop at the gates of personal life; it can consume every waking moment, often at the cost of rest, family, and mental well-being. We share vulnerable moments from our own journeys, where the pursuit of success meant working through festive family dinners and absorbing the blow of negative feedback. This episode isn't just a discussion – it's a heartfelt storytelling session that exposes the delicate fabric that weaves together the entrepreneur's personal and professional existence.
Venturing into the uncharted territories of starting a business, we face the stark statistics head-on: many startups won't see their fifth anniversary. With a blend of brutal honesty and supportive guidance, we talk about the financial tightropes and the indispensable fallback plans that could mean the difference between a freefall and a safety net. We also navigate through the infamous 'valley of despair', arming you with the strategies to emerge on the other side. This episode is a must-listen for anyone poised on the brink of their entrepreneurial leap, providing a clear-eyed view of what it truly means to be the architect of your own destiny.
As we peel back the curtain on the entrepreneurial lifestyle, we're confronted with the harsh truth that time freedom is often a mirage in the desert of business ownership. The emotional rollercoaster doesn't stop at the gates of personal life; it can consume every waking moment, often at the cost of rest, family, and mental well-being. We share vulnerable moments from our own journeys, where the pursuit of success meant working through festive family dinners and absorbing the blow of negative feedback. This episode isn't just a discussion – it's a heartfelt storytelling session that exposes the delicate fabric that weaves together the entrepreneur's personal and professional existence.
Venturing into the uncharted territories of starting a business, we face the stark statistics head-on: many startups won't see their fifth anniversary. With a blend of brutal honesty and supportive guidance, we talk about the financial tightropes and the indispensable fallback plans that could mean the difference between a freefall and a safety net. We also navigate through the infamous 'valley of despair', arming you with the strategies to emerge on the other side. This episode is a must-listen for anyone poised on the brink of their entrepreneurial leap, providing a clear-eyed view of what it truly means to be the architect of your own destiny.
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Speaker 1:
prioritizing your family, prioritizing yourself over the business, it becomes hard. I'll say that for myself. So if you're someone who was like I want to go into entrepreneurship because I want to control my time, yes, you can control your time to a certain aspect, but there are times where we have to be available, just because the nature of the business. Now you might say, well, I can start this other business where I'm not always available, but it's always going to be on your, your mind, yeah. So even if you're not actively working in it physically, it's always going to be on your mind. You're going to, you're going to take on a new lifestyle, whether you like it or not.
Speaker 1:
Once you turn on that entrepreneurship switch and you get that first taste of income outside your nine to five, you could never go back to working a normal job and even if you do, you're always going to be thinking about the next step for you, always going to be grimy, you're always going to be. Your mindset will never be the same after that. So it will technically never be off. Even if you say I'm on vacation, it will never be off. So you got to be okay with that. If you're the type of person that's like nah, I want my free time. This might not be it. So that's something to be very clear about. If you're thinking about I'm getting this entrepreneurship for my free time, mm-mm.
Speaker 2:
Well, along the lines of along the lines of the work life balance. I also feel like at the beginning and maybe throughout, it really depends. You're emotionally attached to your business, right, and it could ruin, like I have. I have scenarios where it has ruined our day. We do was one time was Valentine's Day and we had got a client negative. I remember if it was a post or something, if they wrote a negative review and we're like moping the house because it impacted us and we're like let's just go out because we can't change this review right now.
Speaker 2:
We had times where a time where we was at an Airbnb cleaning that Newton on New Year's Eve, before the ball dropped but it was New Year's Eve that we're cleaning somebody's home and it was some Sunday. So there were days where your whole mood changes based on you know, a customer or something going wrong or something like that. So you become emotionally attached and not mind you I'm not an emotional person, but if you are, just know that maybe something that really triggers you or gets you upset and just having to deal with that and navigate because you got to move forward, obviously, but navigating that is important as well. The emotional side of the business is not just, like you know, I'm just focused on this and that.
Speaker 1:
So that emotional side. If you're an emotional person, this ain't for you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, this could be a roller coaster. But I say at the beginning but it depends. Some people say you know the business is their baby and anything that happens affects you forever.
Speaker 1:
So but then even I think once you get into it and I'll talk about the other side of it too, maybe down the line once you get into it you understand it and some of those things kind of roll off your back. But in the very beginning this is your first business and you're like I'm an emotional person. Somebody was like I don't like talking to people.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I happen to say that's a different section. That's not even about If you're an emotional person, like.
Speaker 1:
It's about the work, like that Meaning and now I'm not saying you can't take a barrel of it, like if something happens in your business and you are going to physically break down, this is not for you, like physically, I've seen it where people like, oh my God, they start crying. Like I've heard it, I've seen it, they start crying. This is not for you. Business entrepreneurship may not be for you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah it goes up and down.
Speaker 1:
So if you're not okay with that roller coaster where you're like everything's going to be perfect all the time We've had some of this as well where things are, things are glorious early on and we're like this is. I'm like, oh, this is fantastic, this is great, but I'm here to let you know that it will be a burden of bad news that something bad will happen, and how you get over that.
Speaker 1:
That humping your business or that challenging your business is going to determine what this looks like. Not today, not this year, three, four, five, six years from now. Because, if you are like, all right, I'm high, I'm hyped now, cause the thing about it the thing about it as well is that there's a lot of you got the high highs and you got the low lows. It's easy to deal with the high highs, but when those low low, when those low lows hit, you know what, while high lows hit, and when high lows hit and you're trying to figure out what the next step is, for me, that's going to determine how you're going to proceed from there.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
High, a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows, and then sometimes it's just sometimes it's coast, sometimes it's just like regular, like coasting when it's coasting, you like you wait. It's like that's the emotional roller coaster is like you're waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Yeah, when you think about a roller coaster the way it is, you're waiting for your stomach to drop waiting for your stomach.
Speaker 1:
You're like this is this is too easy, it has to get hard right. That's the challenge. When you start up too fast, you start up too hot, sometimes you don't even recognize that that drop is going to happen. And when you're not prepared for that drop, oh, your stomach is going to be in your forehead. Yeah, you can't take rollercoaster or nothing. I got this picture. It was me, her, my little brother and we were on a roller coaster.
Speaker 2:
I'm, but I make it clear, I'm cheese.
Speaker 1:
My little brother's like holding on to Joe Cause, like I'm like dying.
Speaker 2:
The feeling of my stomach dropping does not feel good, but either way, if you don't like rollercoaster.
Speaker 1:
It's not for you. How about that? How?
Speaker 2:
about that. Yes, that's what I'm always hesitant. But you don't like rollercoasters either.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, no but you'll get on it.
Speaker 2:
I'll get on it, but I'm not excited. The height don't bother me, it's literally the stomach dropping. That I don't like for me.
Speaker 1:
Like scary movies. I don't like them and I don't even try to wash it.
Speaker 2:
I love scary movies.
Speaker 1:
No, I don't like scary movies. This isn't. If you don't like scary movies, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. What are you talking about? This isn't get that bad. Scary movies are scary. Back to your notes, all right.
Speaker 1:
So, back to my notes. So you had some stats, so the reality check, so stats on failure rate of startups and small businesses. So if you are of the mindset that I'm going to succeed, I absolutely love it for you. I'm excited for you. I have that excitement as well. We didn't go into any business thing that we're going to fail. Yeah, we understand that it's a possibility.
Speaker 2:
It's a possibility and I think we have an episode on that of like, when it's time to let it go, we definitely do. It's a possibility that it can happen. But I feel like a lot of times when we're on and that's a scarcity mindset and I guess I can't blame you, but a lot of times when we're on calls where people are asking us questions, they're like but what if this happens? But what if this happens? And at one point I'm like then it happens, you deal with it, right. So when we started out in our cleaning business, there was no one to ask questions, so we just had to deal with it. It's it happens, you deal with it, it's your business, you deal with it. But then sometimes it feels like that's what's stopping us from getting started as people. Sometimes we're just always having this scarcity mindset.
Speaker 2:
However, there are some stats out there that kind of speak about businesses, right. So I got this one from Bureau of Labor Statistics which they say may not necessarily be true, which is very weird, but approximately 20% of new businesses failed during the first two years of being open, 45 during the first five years and 65 during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more, which I think that's, I mean, listen, if you make it that far, I think that that that's great. But we see on our own, because we have partnerships with some of our people, that we recommend that some people are shutting down business within like three months, and so it has us, you know, question what's the reason behind that? Did they jump it and not have the money for it? Did they think it would be a quick fix, like, what is the reason behind it?
Speaker 2:
Because for us, when we felt like we were failing, at least in the business, we were about eight months in and we said, okay, let's give it a year to see if this thing works. So I think that's another part of it of being real with yourself, and that cushion that we spoke about of not just relying on it, makes a difference as to if you should jump into a business or not. Do you have the money to know that I may not make money right away Many of our students do but if I don't make money right away, can I sustain the business still? That's essentially a question that you need to ask yourself.
Speaker 1:
That's why it's even more important, especially if you have I would say like if you have the nine of five to fall back on, you have the financial stability, meaning the nine of five is holding me down. I'm also creating a cushion of emergency fund for my personal. I would always recommend that, my personal and my business. And then now it's like okay, I'm going into this thing with the mindset Can I at least do this for a year? Do not start. There's another thing. So this is under the reality check Do not start anything, a lesson I wouldn't to commit. I would say at least a year to it, because that first year you're going to go through that valley of despair where the first couple of months you may be super excited and then you got the uh well, this is not as easy as I thought it was. And then you go on until the the deepest dip is like okay, is this for me, is this not for me? That should have happened within the first three months of your business.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for tapping in with us again. As you know, we always ask if you guys can, please, please, go ahead and leave us five star review. Go ahead and write something. If you're enjoying what we speak about, if you listen to us week to week, please be sure to let us know that helps us to continue to grow and for other people to listen to our show as well.
