Dear Ash...

The following is what I’d write if I could send a letter to my 21 year old self before he started his entrepreneurial journey…

Dear Ash,

What you’re about to embark on will be the most difficult, eye-opening, rewarding and exciting journey you’ll ever experience. 

Entrepreneurship is an incredible life choice, but isn’t without its challenges. 

Remember these 5 things and you’ll be well on your way to a long, successful and enjoyable life as an entrepreneur.

1. Have faith

When you’re in business, you constantly worry about how you’re going to get from A-B. 

You have far more responsibility than if you were taking on a role as an employee. Not only do you have to take care of your own bottomline, you also have to take care of all your employees.

Throw in meeting client demands, keeping stakeholders happy if you have them, looking after employee wellbeing, and making time for life outside of work, and it quickly becomes a heavy burden to bear. 

It’s easy to get stressed and scared.

However the one thing that will never help you in that situation is fear. 

In fact, if you’re constantly fearing what will happen in 1, 6, 12 months down the line, where’s the fun in entrepreneurship? 

You have to have a huge amount of trust in how the world will come together. 

2. Do not sacrifice your health or family

You’ll have to sacrifice a lot as an entrepreneur, but health and family (including friends that are family) should not be on that list. 

There is nothing more important than your health and your family. 

You could have the biggest, best, most profitable business in the world, but if you haven’t got those two things, there’s no way it will be complete. No amount of money or ‘success’ will replace them.

Truth is, there’s no way you’d actually be able to build that business without your health and family in the first place. 

You need to balance your career, your health and your relationships. They all support each other and work together, not against each other. 

They’re not competing.

3. Make the right sacrifices

So if you’re not supposed to sacrifice your health or family, what should you sacrifice?

• All the shiny objects.
• That other new business idea.
• Maybe that new Netflix series.
• Probably a party or two (but I know you like them, Ash).

Look, I’m not saying you can’t enjoy letting your hair down every now and then. However you need to avoid falling into distractions. It will take a certain amount of discipline. 

You’re much better off picking one thing and giving it your all.

Instead of pursuing multiple ideas half-heartedly, pick one and focus all your attention on it.

This will be tough. You’ll feel like you’re missing out. 

However sacrifice means giving up something you really want to do, not giving up something that doesn’t matter.

4. Be proactive in dealing with problems. 

If there’s one thing you can be absolutely sure of when you begin your entrepreneurial journey, it’s that you’re going to face problems.

Lots of them. 

Again, it will be uncomfortable. 

You’ll feel like ignoring them. You’ll want to distract yourself.

“I’ll sort that later” 

Try to resist that temptation as much as possible or it will come back to bite you. 

By putting it off you’re giving the problem time to grow and become more serious. 

Instead, be proactive in solving problems - or better, prevent them at source. 

You’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the long run. 

5. Do the work… 

I’ve never met a successful entrepreneur that hasn’t worked hard. 

If you want to succeed you’ll, quite simply, have to do it. 

To reiterate, that doesn’t mean working 18 hours a day every day and sacrificing your health and family… But if you think you’re just going to cruise to success, you need to think again.

There’ll be times when you do need to put in extra hours.

There’ll be times when the work you’re doing is unfamiliar, uncomfortable and difficult.

There’ll be times when you want to stop but have to keep going.

The toughest part is that you won’t see the results straight away. 

However the correlation between hard work and success is strong and clear. 

It will pay off somewhere down the road. 

Think back to the first point - you have to have faith that it will pay off. 

This is by no means a comprehensive guide to entrepreneurship, but it’s a pretty good start. 

You’ll learn many more lessons along the way. 

Soak them up, put them into practice, and most importantly...

Enjoy it. 

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