Every entrepreneur starts out with big dreams and excitement. As an entrepreneur, you control your own destiny, and with the right ideas, the right skillset and unflinching dedication, you can build wealth or establish an enterprise to serve as your legacy.
This is the bright side of entrepreneurship, but unfortunately, there is also a darker side. The rigors of entrepreneurship demand sacrifices, and if you do not make those sacrifices, you’ll never be able to succeed. Business is, at its core, a give-and-take process. The more you invest, and the more you are willing to part with, the more you will reap in rewards in kind.
These are five common sacrifices that every entrepreneur needs to make:
1. Stability
You are starting a new venture, and there is no guarantee you’re going to succeed. The foundation of your company, even if your idea and plans are solid, is rocky at best, and there is no telling which direction your business is headed until you are several months, or often much longer, into running things. If you have not already sacrificed a comfortable, well-paying, stable job to follow this route, odds are you will have to sacrifice some other kind of stability before you can move forward.
Entrepreneurship is, by nature, an unstable path to follow. Do not be surprised if you encounter multiple, unpredictable shifts in your fortune as your work progresses. It is natural and part of the process. Eventually, if you work hard with a clear vision, things will stabilize.
2. Work/life split
When you become an entrepreneur, the lines between your working life and your personal life will blur. You will start thinking about business even when you’re away from the office, sometimes because you want to and sometimes because you can’t help it. You will also get calls and emails urgently needing your attention because you’re the boss and there’s nobody else to answer them.
Your downtime will become “light” business time, but the flip side is that your time in the office will feel more like personal time because you will want to be there. Remember, it is still important for you to balance your work priorities and your personal ones -- always make time for your family and your mental health -- but the firm split between personal and professional time is going to go away no matter how you try to handle it.
3. Income
This goes along with the stability sacrifice, but for the first few years of your business, you are probably not going to be making much money. In most businesses, entrepreneurs and their families end up investing heaps of their own money to get the business going. If this is the case for you, you will be making even more of a sacrifice since your potential safety net will be gone.
Since you will be deciding where the money goes, you can set your own salary, but many entrepreneurs do not even take a salary during their first several months of operations, at least not until there’s a steady line of revenue backing them up. Be prepared for this. You will need a strong marketing plan to overcome barriers to entry and gain a share of the market in your industry.
4. Sleep
Sleep is vitally important, but no matter how hard you try to preserve healthy sleeping habits, you are going to sacrifice some sleep-in order to run your business. In some cases, you will be pulling all-nighters to get that last proposal together. In other cases, you will be getting up super early to make a meeting or get all your tasks in order. In still other cases, you will be lying awake at night, restless and wondering about the future of your company.
Whatever the case may be, your sleeping habits are going to change when you become an entrepreneur, and you will have to make the best of them no matter how they end up.
5. Comfort
Being the boss of your own company means the buck stops with you. You are going to have to wear dozens of hats, make decisions you’ve never made before and delve into subjects you’ve never before considered. Part of being an entrepreneur means stepping out of your comfort zone, often multiple times every day.
The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who approach uncomfortable situations with confidence and a degree of excitement. Learn to thrive in uncomfortable environments, and you will find yourself much more at peace with your job.
Do not think of these sacrifices as literal sacrifices. You will be giving something up, sure, but try to think of it as a type of investment. You are giving up intangible luxuries in exchange for something better down the road. You are paying for the opportunity to find success in your own enterprise, and your sacrifices will be rewarded many times over so long as you stay committed in your chosen path.
Remember, as an unidentified student of Warren G. Tracy said, “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”
