Recently, I was speaking with a good friend who was considering leaving his long-term employer (financial services industry) and starting a business around his life passion of wine. He has become quite the expert in the space and has a unique idea centered on education and an online inventory platform. From a 10,000-foot viewpoint his concept appears to offer value to the market and he has a following of fans that love his content within this wide space of the wine industry.

During several of the conversations, he mentioned that to ensure against “burn out” he would focus on focused efforts during the normal workweek. This all sounds good, but many times the “fun and excitement of entrepreneurship” take a wrong priority over the actually required work effort to boot strapping a company. I have seen this time and time again. I can remember every one of the multi all night sessions when launching my companies to get them profitable – it’s non-stop hard work and is as simple as that! However, this is not to say there are exceptions (however, very rare!) when a business concept or innovation is so unique that growth occurs quickly with significant business results that offer the ability to have a “weekend”.

5 Entrepreneurship Reminders

1. Weekends– There is no such thing as a defined weekend or time off for a start-up entrepreneur. When launching a new business, it’s 24/7 and non-stop work mindset to generate revenue and establish customers.
2. Freedom Mindset Challenge – The often-discussed benefit of being your own boss, is you call all the shots and have freedom of the most valuable thing – time. However, it’s a huge eye-opening experience for new entrepreneurs that freedom is not defined as freedom when you have a job with an employer.
3. Over-work mindset – It’s sounds great to read the entire various entrepreneurs’ who enjoy time for “freedom and flow” and this mindset of work hard during business hours and then play hard in free time. This is a big eye-opener for new entrepreneurs, as you must live, breathe and focus constantly on the business and in every entrepreneur client I consult with it’s always the same – Massive Work Effort.
4. Family/Friends Time – No matter how well your time management skills are – bottom line is you will be extremely busy and your commitments must be limited to start a business.
5. Passion – The most often over-used term today with entrepreneurs, “I want to start a business around my passions.” This sounds great and for many it can absolutely work, but passion does not guarantee success in business. Many times, I meet individuals with this mindset and their passion is just a hobby without any real value to the marketplace, no revenue model and not actually a business.

One of the biggest real life changes for new entrepreneurs that have spent years receiving a paycheck from an employer is that the extreme work required establishing a profitable business.  The process is extremely taxing! It’s great hearing success stories for sure which will increase motivation, but ultimately it comes down to work effort and managing the crucial aspects of time. Postponing vacations and many “weekends” is imperative to building long term success in the business.

Successful entrepreneurs know that the word “No” must be in their regular vocabulary to ensure they remain focused on building the business and customers.   Down time is important to avoid complete burnout to a certain degree, but eliminating the word weekends (meaning time off) must be engrained in the mindset for would-be entrepreneurs coming from a “normal” job.