The experts are deceiving you

Back before I purchased my business I was an employee whose $14k per month income failed miserably to bring happiness.

I felt incredibly unfulfilled in my work and grew more frustrated at how little meaning my work had with each passing day.

And so I started consuming vast amounts of self improvement content. Some helped, other content directed me towards entrepreneurship content and some of this was great, and this is where my doomed mission of becoming self employed began.

I was an avid listener and watcher of all your usual, big name, entrepreneur podcasts and YouTube channels. And I owned all the typical books that wannabe entrepreneurs read. I discovered lesser known names in the business, and in time I had digested most of the old content out there and was searching with earnest to find new and useful information.

I found, in time, that the big name entrepreneur spruikers typically sell a consistent message:

• buy or build a business
• find good staff to lead key aspects of your business to free up time
• automate as many aspects of your business as possible
• use capital from your business to launch your next venture
• rinse and repeat

That’s the bulk of their content right there. Some entrepreneurship gurus niche down into other areas such as online marketing and so on. And some of that content is great too.

But there’s one key issue with most of these “gurus”

They over simplify everything and fail to highlight some of the real risks and challenges that business owners face every day.

Sure, it’s up to the individual to assess the risks involved in any venture they move into, however these supposed gurus have a great tendency to whitewash the risks and make things seem as if they are simple undertakings that will lead to semi-passive wealth building businesses.

And many of them aren’t even true experts

There have been many occasions where these gurus have even admitted to not being experts while presenting themselves as being experts.

And if you do a little digging, you’ll often discover that the people pretending to be experts are often learning what they need to know (to appear to be an expert) on the fly. Which can lead to some horrendously bad advice if they haven’t actually tested whatever it is that they might be spruiking on the day.

It’s a sad reality

The point that I am slowly making is that it is very easy to get caught up in the excitement that these experts (who are not actually experts) are creating and even easier to disregard or downplay the very real risks of becoming self employed.

Being self employed was the toughest experience of my life

The idea of building a business that would largely look after itself sounds amazing. And I even had that lifestyle for a brief period of time. But it was a short lived experience for the following reasons:

• No staff member will ever be as passionate about your business as you are. And as a result they will never bring in more business than you will.
• Staff come and go. And you need to be ready to lose vital staff members and then take the time to replace and train them. A revolving door of staff members is not at all uncommon in small business.
• A business with staff is a complex beast. Managing staff alone can be a full time job. Which leaves little time for other vital work a business owner needs to complete.
• It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to outsource your marketing until your business is making significant profits. And even then, would you sacrifice those profits to have someone do a sub-par job of your marketing? You know your targeted demographic like no one else, especially a half baked marketing agency that just wants your re-occurring revenue. And how many years do you think it will take to reach these levels of profit? Consider the possibility of never in many cases.
• These experts never tell you just how much of your income will be lost to the various administrative expenses that come with any small business. Think accounting fees, various subscription costs, insurance costs, superannuation, GST expenses (in Australia) and many other costs depending on the type of business that you operate.

So when these gurus talk about the beauty of being an entrepreneur and the costs of doing business, take it with a grain of salt. They are invariably over-simplifying and often exaggerating the reality and making it sound much easier and more achievable than it really is.

And most of the time they do this so that they can sell you some pathetic course

Please don’t fall for their bullshit. Being a business owner is hard, extremely hard. The reality is that you probably won’t take an income for a couple of years.

• You’ll work insane hours for no pay.
• Your stress levels will be unlike anything you have ever experienced before.
• You’ll make many sacrifices that you might deeply regret.
• And if you take on staff, you’re now responsible for the livelihood of another human. Are you ready for that responsibility? Have you considered what it would be like if you had to let that person go?

One of the most destructive things that happened to my feeling of self worth and self confidence was the day that I had to make 7 phone calls to tell my employees that they no longer had a job. That was not a good day. I don’t wish that experience on anyone.

These entrepreneurship “gurus” can on occasion provide great content and valuable information. But it pays to listen to this content with a skeptical mind. Most of their content is designed to sell you something. And they can’t sell you an entrepreneurship course if you knew the harsh reality of being self employed. Small business is a brutal world. If you survive in that world you have my utmost respect.

I, however, was eaten alive.

Image sources:
https://www.fredlaw.com/practices__industries/anti-counterfeiting/
https://equity.guru/2018/05/16/canada-cobalt-works-ccw-v-buoyant-blue-metal-market/bullshit-2/
https://www.asalesguy.com/