Embracing the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: Sometimes the Only Way Out Is Through
I had a significant realization the other day…I came to it after hiking with a friend in the Arizona desert. We shared our challenges as business owners, and I want to share what I discovered.?
As I climbed the mountain, I felt like I could view my life like the desert landscape before me.?
In August, I took the bold step of leaving my secure job to relaunch my business, Alecci Media, a boutique marketing agency. Everything was on the upswing until some significant setbacks with a client and change of management. While I was fully engrossed in their marketing strategy, I had inadvertently neglected my own. When the contract dried up, I found myself searching for new business opportunities.
I have helped numerous companies scale globally, attract investors exceeding $90 million, spoke on stages from here to Asia, and yet I’m not receiving a single inquiry for my own services. How could I help so MANY other businesses and fail at marketing MINE??
The world is going to keep turning, time is going to keep passing, and it’s what we do with that time that matters. Honestly, no move is the only wrong move. A former colleague once told me, “Perfection is the enemy of momentum.” In the words of General Patton, “A good plan violently executed Now is better than a perfect plan next week.”?
Reflecting on those words in the context of my business, this thought struck me and reverberated hard, “Sometimes the only way out…is through.” In other words, the only way to move forward is by pushing through challenges. Oftentimes, we think success looks like a single pivotal moment in our life. The reality is, it’s the incremental moves that lead up to the big shift. It’s the micro decisions that inch us towards achieving our goals.?
Why are we so hesitant to take action and try? If success is indeed a numbers game, the more we do and learn, the quicker we accelerate our progress.
These are WINS even if I’m just planting seeds right now. But what is the difference between those who fail and succeed? It’s consistency in the face of all adversity. It's easy to become derailed when results are slow to materialize, making it challenging to focus and find creative solutions.Which led me to my realization…
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When I was a kid, 1 - 2x a year our PE teacher would create this insanely elaborate obstacle course in the gym. I looked forward to it the WHOLE year. I looked forward to these challenges, which required creative problem-solving and physical prowess. When did that excitement wane?! Applying this perspective to my current situation, I realized that I should view my business obstacles with the same enthusiasm.
The efforts I have made have been made in a short amount of time. Those rejections are where the learning happens, every client pitch that I suck at is a way to sharpen my skills. What if our barometer for success wasn’t based on the WINS, but it was based on the losses??
Thomas Edison famously failed (or the myth goes) to make a working electric light bulb 999 times, but was successful on his 1,000th attempt! What does this tell you? Perseverance is vital to any organization’s success. We have to keep trying till we figure it out. What worked today might not work tomorrow. Thoughtful experimentation at scale really is the key.?
What if we kept trying until we got desensitized from the pain of rejection, and since it’s a numbers game, we focused on accumulating the losses? Every time it’ll get easier or at least a little less scary. In the end, it’s 50/50, but we lose 100% of the shots we don’t take.?
What if we looked at our life as an entrepreneur like a video game? Each level we experience different and more complex obstacles. We may not get through that level as fast as we’d like, but if we persevere, apply the knowledge and skills we’ve learned from previous levels, we can eventually overcome the obstacle or we can simply walk away from the game.?
Life is filled with peaks and valleys, problems, and we can experience hardship so debilitating we want to close up shop. But like all things in life, problems are temporary. Everything is fleeting. We need to trust the process and look at challenges as opportunities to level up.?
From managers to entrepreneurs, their life is filled with problems. If they can’t solve them, they’ll die. Not everyone is built for battle. Sometimes you have to put down the sword or hand it to someone else to solve the problem for you. We can't be the captain, the warrior, and the strategic planner all at once. Occasionally, we find ourselves in an echo chamber, and it's essential to look outside for help and guidance. Every step counts. It doesn’t matter how small or if it was the first one…it’s that you keep trying with every move, falling forward, and not giving up.?
Imagine Edison giving up on that 999th time, if Van Gogh stopped painting, and Michael Jordan quit basketball after being cut from his high school team. Why stop now??