You won’t get rich fast with entrepreneurship

I’m starting a series of articles about entrepreneurship, a topic I’m not talking about a lot (yet) on this blog. The first topic will fight against the common idea that entrepreneurship gets people rich fast.

This series will try to oppose the wrong ideas people have about entrepreneurship, especially ideas some hustlers use as weapons to get audience and grow not-so-cool businesses, selling useless crap so-called “trainings” (more later about it).

If you don’t read this blog on a regular basis, I’m an entrepreneur since 2012, with two main projects I earn money with, a job board LinuxJobs.fr and a newsletter Le Courrier du hacker. But I failed several other projects during this journey and never earn a dime with them.

Do not expect fast revenues with entrepreneurship

The first major wrong idea people have is thinking entrepreneurship will make them rich fast. IT WILL NOT. 99,999% of businesses take time to grow.

Moreover, you will earn the same revenues 5 years later if you don’t make things right, even if you work hard. It is unexpected and counter-intuitive. I know because it happened to me with one of my businesses. You can work hard everyday and not grow. It just means you don’t work hard into the good direction.

Entrepreneurship is hard work and takes time

So many videos on Youtube talk about entrepreneurship and emphasize hard work as THE virtue for the entrepreneur. But it’s not. Hard work is mandatory, you can’t escape it, especially when bootstraping your project.

What the majority of wannabe entrepreneurs don’t understand is: it’s a long run and you will need to work hard as long as your business lives.

And it means working hard for years! Almost everybody can work hard one or two weeks, one or two months. But we’re talking about years here.

Most of the time, if people knew how it was going to be difficult, they wouldn’t start. Ignorance is bliss when starting. But soon you’ll ask yourself if it is normal to work so much for such bad results. And at a time you’ll need the knowledge of what it takes to be an entrepreneur to keep your motivation high.

The experience and knowledge help to maintain the motivation

When bootstraping your project, some days the results will (yes, will) be so poor that it could break your spirit. Knowing it will happen, by reading about it or experiencing it by yourself, will help a lot.

It’s completely dissociated from the hard work you provided. With hard work and good strategies, the results will come. But today, when you didn’t sell anything, your blog post didn’t attract readers, your newsletter and your social networks didn’t get any new follower, you will feel a overwhelming state of failure. Experience and knowledge help to maintain the motivation.

The exceptions

Yes, of course, they are a few exceptions. Some people will succeed from the start, by miracle making not a single mistake, using the right market and growing and earning money like crazy. Yes, it happens. Like the American Dream, sure, it happens. Winning 100 million euros playing Lottery also happens.

It’s very different to consider that anyone can win. It does not mean everyone can win. There is a major difference here.

And success overnight is not for everyone. Working hard and for years is for every serious entrepreneurs.

Fairy tales about the journey

Most of the people whom succeed will rewrite their journey history, telling they succeeded overnight because they were geniuses, trying to hide years of failures. Why? Just because a nice story always attracts more people’s attention than the stories about constant struggles.

Usually people prefer easy solutions with simple schemes: first do that, second do that, follow this recipe and you’ll get rich, buy my training, listen to my Youtube motivational videos, etc.

BS. Plain and simple.

Experience by hard work comes first

Failure after failure you’ll become better as an entrepreneur or you’ll do something else. That’s simple. The toughest ones, the hard workers on the long run, will definitely succeed.

It may not be where they thought to go at first, but it’s going to be where 99,9% of people never succeed to go, making money with a project, gaining independence, creating revenue streams, things people dream to achieve but soon forget when they have to start working.

You’re warned. Have a good journey.

About The Author

Carl Chenet, Free Software Indie Hacker, Founder of LinuxJobs.io, a Job board dedicated to Free and Open Source Software Jobs in the US. Also the founder of the newsletter Le Courrier du hacker.

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