I have an employee who I have treated like dirt for years.
He’s been with my company since the beginning, but he’s always been the one I trample on the most.
Other workers have come and gone and I’ve treated them well, listened to their needs, and tried to cultivate them into better people and employees, even if their plan was to eventually leave.
I’ve told this employee that he needs to be quiet, put his head down and work harder. We don’t have time to pander to his wishes.
While other employees have normal five day work weeks, I make him work seven days a week. I also haven’t seen the need to give him holidays off, let alone vacation time.
I make him stay late and do multiple jobs that others won’t even think to touch.
I even asked him to take on personal debt for the company, and at one point he personally guaranteed loans in excess of $500,000!
He worked the first four years with no pay, but I recently began paying him a little. He just only gets paid after everyone else and only if there’s enough left to pay him.
Still want to be an entrepreneur?
This is our paraphrase of a post we recently read on LinkedIn from a successful CEO of tech company. We hadn’t heard of the gentleman before, and honestly can’t find his post again, or else we’d mention him here. We didn’t even recognize the name of his company. But a quick view of his profile suggested that he had been fortunate to create a profitable company.
At first, his post struck us as super negative. But the more we digested what he was saying, we began to understand the root issue he was trying to get at in his own way.
Entrepreneurship isn’t easy.
In the last decade, entrepreneurship has become popular and is seen in a positive light. This isn’t the same way it had been seen for decades prior. But the problem is that often times, well intentioned people jump into entrepreneurship dreaming to create a better life and the freedom of working for themselves without realizing what it really means.
What the commitment really looks like.
The sacrifice.
The work ethic required.
The early mornings and long nights spent doing seemingly everything else except for what you wanted to do just to keep things moving along.
Now, please, for those of you who know us or have been following our journey – do NOT think that we are complaining or being any bit negative. We love this journey we are on, and wouldn’t trade it for anything! We are just speaking a little bit of reality into the situation.
When we look at entrepreneurship, we like to look at things in a more positive light. A successful entrepreneur we follow, Gary Vaynerchuck, recently pointed out that there is no valid excuse for those who want to pave their own way! There’s no background whether it is economic, ethnic, or religious that we come from that prevents us from chasing our dreams in the United States. You just have to be willing to put your head down and work! We are truly blessed to live here and enjoy that freedom.
But here’s the deal.
Especially for those of us entrepreneurs in the creative space – we tend to project something that isn’t quite yet reality. And for good reason! The best way to attract your ideal clients and opportunities is to project the confidence and expertise you have in your field. But if we can be honest, things are a whole lot more messy than our Instagram feeds and Pinterest boards make them seem to be.
Entrepreneurship is just plain hard.
The struggle is definitely real.
So we’ve decided that it is important for us to be open about it collectively, as a community.
We can be real, right?
That’s why we have decided to begin documenting our journey and our story. Our wins. Our losses. Our bests and our worsts. The days we feel like shouting from the rooftops, and the days we don’t even feel like getting out of bed.
Honesty is scary, but it’s real. It’s authenticity at the highest level – and that’s who we want to be. We know we aren’t alone, and we hope you’ll join us as we build our dreams and document the journey.
Because nothing will feel better than looking back years from now, and remembering where we started, and just how far things have come.
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