The Persistence Of An Entrepreneur

When building your own company you will inevitably encounter obstacles to overcome, but it can become difficult to keep going when you’re not seeing instant traction and success for the work that you are putting in.

That is why it is so important for entrepreneurs to be persistent in their efforts in order to achieve their goals. You are bound to make mistakes, big and small, it is part of being human, but the way in which you learn from these mistakes and improve on them is how you truly build something from nothing.

All too often, entrepreneurs will give up too early and will lose out on the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. That is the real difference between failure and simple mistake.

Take Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin for example. He was rejected by more than 90 venture capitalists when he presented his idea for a crowdfunding platform. They all believed the idea of people funding somebody else’s idea through online campaigns was unrealistic. Rubin could have easily given up on this idea, but at the end of the day he believed in this business and was determined to see it through. And that is exactly what he did. Last year Indiegogo raised a $40 million Series B and is poised for great success moving forward.

Behind every successful entrepreneur is a persistent individual. They don’t expect someone to hand them an opportunity because at the end of the day, nothing worthwhile is that easy. When things take longer than planned put your head down and keep moving forward. If you are working on building a business, it is your job to convince others that what you are doing is important with a sense of urgency.

If you find yourself to be a person that is unwilling to sit with the status quo and have a feeling of impatience when it comes to what you are doing then it means you have the drive and determination to succeed. A leader has both vision and passion, but is also compelled to make their ideas a tangible reality and is eager to take down any obstacle that stands in their way.

The title of this post comes with a few caveats, since the meaning of the word “better” is mostly subjective, if not entirely. But I think most people who have gone into business on their own probably enjoy the freedom that comes with it too satisfying to ever feel anything but constricted in a typical 9-5 setting, in which you have much less autonomy, and generally much less excitement. But on the other side of each benefit of entrepreneurship, the very benefits that make it “better” than a 9-5, are the risks that keep many people from ever entering this world in the first place.

“As an entrepreneur you have the incomparable thrill of freedom. Not only the freedom to make your own decisions and do things the way you want them to, but the freedom to work when you want and to make what you want,” writes Timothy Sykes in this article from Entrepreneur magazine. This is definitely true, but what makes something thrilling? Answer: Danger, and more specifically in this case, the danger of failure.

Comparatively, there is much less risk in sitting behind a desk for eight hours than there is in being an entrepreneur. While freedom and self determination are the big draws of entrepreneurship, this lack of risk is the big draw to a more typical job. They are the two sides of the same double-edged sword. People should be honest with themselves and should make informed decisions before pursuing either of these paths, since, clearly, both come with their benefits and their drawbacks.