Lessons I Have Learned as a Young Entrepreneur – You Have To Persevere

I hate to say it but I believe its best to always be honest – if you plan on starting a business, it is extremely likely that more people will doubt you than will believe in you.  It is also very likely that you are going to face critiscm, a lack of capital, major setbacks, poor decisions and a whole host of other negative occurences with your business.  How you handle these will be a huge factor in the ultimate fate of your business – this is why perseverance is critical for entrepreneurs.  Here are just a few examples of the obstactles I personally have faced and how I persevered through it:

A professional editor and family friend reviewed my book manuscript and told me to take it and put it in my top desk drawrer for at least 3 years so that I could “gain perspective” and then maybe take another shot at the book idea.

How I Persevered – After about 15 minutes of being angry/sad/depressed/furious/doubtful and every other negative emotion you can image, I re-read the letter and came across one sentence that made this letter mean absolutely nothing – the person that wrote this letter to me had a book idea but never had the courage to have it published.  I thought to myself “Why in the world would I ever take advice from an editor that didn’t have the courage to get their own book published?!?!”.  I put the letter, not the manuscript, in my desk drawrer and got back to work publishing my frist book within 3 months of receiving that letter.

A mentor tells me that I’m making a huge mistake by starting my business

How I Persevered – I told him that I respected his opinion and appreciated him looking out for me but that I believed in my heart that I had a message and a business that would ultimately reach millions of people and I wasn’t willing to keep it bottled up inside of me because of the “risks” involved with it.

I have many others as well, some of which were much harder to deal with, that I will share at some point in the future.  Who knows, maybe I’ll write an entire book about some of the world’s most successful people and who they proved wrong on thier road to success.  Do you think anyone ever told Michael Jordan that he should quit basketball?  You betcha someone did!

I used the above examples to show you how I personally persevered through these difficult situations.  I want to use them as an example of the difficulties you could potentially face on your road to becoming a successful entrepreneur.  By no means were these easy situations and I’d by lying if I said they were simply to handle, but I ultimately found it within myself to persevere through the because I knew in my heart that what I had to offer needed to be shared with the world.  I expect you to do the same and believe in yourself no matter what obstacles are in your way of your vision of success.