Play The Long Game and Plan for Success
When you start a company, when you start your entrepreneurial journey, you have to be ready to play the long game, because success doesn’t happen overnight.
Start Right
So many new entrepreneurs or wantrapreneurs that I talk to have these ideas that they are going to achieve some massive success in the first year of business. So many people have this artificial timeframe of one year that they attach to things. And while it’s very possible to have big wins early on, make no mistake, as an entrepreneur success is the long game.
One year is a milestone on your way to success but it’s by no means the measure of success. Think about if Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Mark Cuban or any other great entrepreneur had used their first year as the ultimate marker of success.
Being able to create a business that is sustainable over 5 or more years, a business that you can grow and scale. Because a lot of times it takes at least 5 years to start experiencing sustainable success.
Those early wins might feel good, but those are by no means the end game.
Jumping into an idea for 6 months or a year and grinding away for a relatively short period of time doesn’t mean that you are going to be able sit back and relax as a business grows itself, that's not how it works.
I don’t know a single entrepreneur that has started a business, put in the hard work at the beginning and then was able to sit back and let it ride.
Formulate A Plan
I bring this up because I think the misconception is important to highlight. Entrepreneurship is a journey, an expedition of your ideas, if you don’t have the long game in mind from the beginning then your shortsightedness is going to bite you.
I’ve talked before about formulating a plan and executing it, If you’re not getting into your idea with a plan to see it through to the end, or even an idea of what the end is then you are setting yourself up to lose perspective and fail, I think that is where a lot of this one year timeframe I have been hearing comes from.
So take the long view don’t, plan for your success.
Until next time, Keep taking action and make your ideas reality.