Every long weekend, my wife will be hassling me about, asking me, "Hey, where are you going
to bring me?"
And I think a lot of people, they have their misconception that just because you're an
entrepreneur you have a flexibility of your schedule and your time.
But in reality, as an entrepreneur, you don't take days off just because it's a long weekend,
you don't get to do that because you're fully responsible for your own business.
You can stop, you don't have to work for weeks, it doesn't really matter.
No one is there to make you go to work, no one's going to tell you what you need to do.
So the misconception that a lot of people see is, "Oh, you can control your time, you
can go on long weekends."
Yes, I can, but I choose not to because I'm fully responsible for my business, that's
the reason why we don't take days off, right?
We take long vacations, like every year I take around two months off, I just go travel,
right?
And it's my choice to do so.
But throughout the rest of the years I hustle hard because of the fact that I know I need
to hit these milestones in order for me to have the flexibility and the freedom to travel
whenever I want to.
When people are still working, I can travel, I can go to Europe, I can go to Asia, I can
go anywhere I want.
It is because I'm truly responsible for it.
Another misconception that people have on entrepreneurs is that you always see people
who are taking pictures of them in a jet, and that they're happy hanging out with all
their friends.
And once you're in the business you realize it's complete opposite, that you're basically
the only one in this journey, that no one truly cares about you, and that no one's going
to give you the answers, that you're in it all by yourself.
You may be in the office or in your bedroom at 11:00 PM trying to figure shit out while
your friends are at the movie theaters.
Or it's a weekend and everyone's out on the beach, and yet you're the one that's in the
office trying to figure this thing called entrepreneurship out.
Or it's a birthday party that you miss because you have to figure out how to get your product
to launch.
These things no one sees.
These things no one understands.
And there's so many times as entrepreneurs you just feel so trapped and so lonely by
yourself, and that this journey sucks, that no one understands you.
That's the truth about entrepreneurship, that you're going to have these feelings of helplessness,
and that, is this really worth it?
That's just the truth.
Some people make it.
On the other hand, they see the light at the end of the tunnel and that's when they can
really thrive because their business picks up.
Now they have a little bit more free time, they have more freedom of their time to choose,
now they can go out to these places and they're a little bit more ahead of time.
They can see the reward.
They can go on travels.
Now you see the pictures.
That's the minority of the entrepreneurs.
The majority of them never really see that light at the end of the tunnel, right?
So this trade is definitely glorified in so many means, and so many people have this misconception
coming into this thinking that it's all about teamwork, you know, a proper culture, "Oh,
you guys go on happy hours together."
No, it's not like that.
It can be like that, but a lot of times it's not like that.
When I first started, I still remember, I was in my office, my old tiny office, and
I would be doing role playing, because the only thing that I really wanted and I really
hoped for was to have someone to bounce ideas off with me.
I'll be at the office at like 10:00 PM trying to figure out how to get my tutoring academy
to work and how to strategize for it.
This was like 10 years ago.
And I'd be drawing on the board, and I would sit down pretending I'm the other business
owner or my partner, I'd be like, "Huh, that's a good idea."
Or, "No, that's not a good idea.
People won't buy your product like this."
Or, "Hey, you know what, I don't think the marketing strategy works."
And then I would go back on the drawing board.
I'm like, "Huh, if that didn't work, how about this?"
And I would role play all the time.
The only thing that I really hoped for was having a partner that can bounce ideas off
with me, and it sucked a lot because the business doesn't have enough traction in order for
me to have that.
But whereas, everything I see on Instagram, everything I see as successful entrepreneurs,
they have group meetings all the time, they have their writing on their whiteboard and
people are bouncing ideas off of each other, they're in this war room, and they get super
energetic and crazy things happen, magic happens in these rooms.
But as a budding entrepreneur, that was really not the case.
It was lonesome and it was lonely for the good first three years of the journey, because
I wasn't able to afford to onboard anyone and it sucked a lot.
My friends were going out, having drinks, and I'd be in the office because, frankly,
I couldn't pay for drinks at that time.
Everything was invested into the business.
And I knew that I needed to make it work, because I quit my $60,000 job to focus on
that first business, and I've got to make it work.
Another misconception about running a business is that people think it's all about the idea.
People think that they're very protective with their idea, that, oh crap, that is amazing,
that's the idea that's going to kill it.
No one has ever thought of this.
I'm going to bring it to market because of this idea, it's going to make me a millionaire.
Sorry to burst your bubble, that's not the case, that's not how it happens.
Just because you have an idea doesn't make you a millionaire.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's all about the execution.
What I mean by that is, what sets you apart from the 10 million that has the same idea,
is how you do things.
That's what people buy into.
Before Facebook there were so many sites that existed that were the same concept as Facebook,
MySpace, Xanga, so many of them, and yet none of them took off, Facebook took off.
A lot of times when we think that this idea is going to be the killer idea, we go ahead
and we have this thing called the information bias.
What that means is, we ignore everything that market is telling us and we go with what we
think is right, we go with what we think is a brilliant idea, and we go to market with
it, and the market tells us, "Fuck, man, we don't want this.
We don't want your product, or we don't want your service."
And you would think that's the time to stop, you would think that, "Oh, damn, my idea didn't
work."
It's not about that, it is about taking that market knowledge and pivoting to a different
angle and bringing it back to market again.
If people stopped right from the first idea, then you would never be able to see success,
you would never be able to see what really sticks in the marketplace.
It's all about finding the right angle to bring your product or service to the market,
so it's all about pivoting all the time.
For me, I've done more than 50 different businesses, and yet, what really worked?
Maybe three of them, only three out of the 50, and I consider them as projects, not businesses,
because they never took off.
When we first started our tutoring academy, I was stuck with it for two years.
I had the idea of membership editing, you know, charging people $10 for every 250 words
that they need to edit, and that I would charge them $100 and give them 15000 words per month,
so then that way I can have a recurring fee and it's a membership.
We were selling on the idea that a lot of people communicate through email, and a lot
of times the message is not being delivered because of the lack of grammar or whatever
the case may be, because, you know, English is not my first language, and I was suffering
from that at that time, so I thought it was a brilliant idea.
I did that for two years, never took off, wasted so much time.
Market was telling me, "No, this is not what we want."
But I thought it was a brilliant idea and I was stuck to it, I was so stuck to it that
I wasted two years of my time trying to get it to work, never took off.
I pivoted, instead of editing we started writing for people as a service, as a reference, and
our business took off within three months.
That was the difference, is pivoting and actually listening to what the market is telling us.
And at that point, if we thought our idea was so brilliant, and if at that time we did
not pivot and we gave up because we were so honed in with our idea, that is brilliant,
that has never been seen in the marketplace, then I wouldn't have built a business that
I could have sold.
It is all because of the fact that we listened to the market, we understood that running
a business is not about having your own idea and bringing it to market and shoving it down
the market's throat, no it's not.
It's about listening to what they want and pivoting.
So at the end of the day, me sharing with you about building a business that has impact
rather than something that's just exploiting the market, sharing with you that this whole
journey is just lonely and is not as glamorous as everyone paints it, it's not about the
Ferrari or Lambo that you drive, and it's not about that one idea, that it always requires
you to always pivot, me sharing this with you is setting the right expectation that
when you are to enter the entrepreneurship, this is exactly what you're going to face.
After all, even knowing these things, looking back, I would choose the exact same path.
When you can actually bring a solution to the market, when you can actually solve problems
for people, it is very very rewarding.
And on top of that, you get rewarded financially, and you get rewarded by having the skillset
to know that you have done something better for the world.