The Accidental Entrepreneur, The Survivor Edition

12Show me the money!

I see starting a business as a very maternal process. Just like you can’t be half-pregnant, you can’t be half-hearted about starting a business; you have to go all the way! A business can be very consuming, and it will take all your time, all your money and your entire soul to make it work. Sometimes the main thing that stands between the winners and losers is simply the ability to keep going. If you are serious about achieving success in your field, you can’t just shove your business on the backburner every time you want to take an overseas holiday or when you’ve just had a big weekend and want to sleep in the next day. You’ve got to put your business first. It’s your new baby and it needs you. Many people are simply not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to allow their business to succeed. For me, this type of obsessiveness was the only way to make the business work.

People are often attracted to the Branson and Zuckerberg success stories, and are keen to reach dizzying heights of success — along with all the trappings — as fast as possible. I have seen people who start a business with a flashy office, pay themselves a top wage and simply burn money. We’re living in an era of ‘NOW’. Everybody wants to have everything immediately and nobody wants to wait. But these businesses are often in the four out of five businesses that fail in the first five years. The reason for this failure is that businesses are hungry for cash and they need every cent ...