I went to a business event in London a few weeks back and was stunned at the way some speakers were promoting entrepreneurship. One speaker stated that you have to know your ‘why’ and then flicked to a slide of what we can guess was her new shiny BMW. Others frivolously promoted the glamour of quitting your nine to five without highlighting the consequences and the rest seemed to pray on the enthusiastic yet vulnerable rookies by getting them sign up for expensive hosting, business seminars or to take out loans for something they hadn’t yet created.
Entrepreneurship like anti-aging cream comes with both the dream and the reality and it’s the space in between that many unsuspecting young people can fall victim.
Although the events popularity was a great reflection of the amount of young people who are out there looking to carve their own paths in life, it hurt me to see how unwaveringly some ‘fellow’ entrepreneurs look to earn a quick buck from those starting out.
One of the reasons many entrepreneurs fall for these kinds of traps is because they come in to entrepreneurship with too much emotional baggage working against them not for them. Pain can be a great motivator for taking action but when you start from a place of scarcity or lack, entrepreneurship can come loaded with a shit ton of irrational behaviour.
Insecurity in entrepreneurship is inevitable but it can also open you up to a world of get rich quick schemes and procrastination because you don’t yet trust in your own abilities. Instead, you spend a whole load of time and money on courses, seminars and whatever else trying to convince yourself that you’re worthy.
In the same way that there’s no quick fix solution for losing weight, there’s no secret bullet for finding success through entrepreneurship (whatever success looks like to you). Entrepreneurship at its core is a medium for giving and so part of the process is learning to chip away at your ego, that way you’re not relentlessly trying to validate yourself from the outside in order to give yourself permission to create.
Whenever you become too focused on what’s in it for you, you lose, or you end up at stupid events be prayed on by those that smell your fear.
