What it is REALLY like to own a business and be an entrepreneur?

What it is REALLY like to own a business and be an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship is hot. Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the mainstream media have glorified startup life by showing all of the sexy parts of starting, building and running a company. They have good reason to do so. Entrepreneurs take incredible, outsized risks, but they also stand to benefit from equally incredible, outsized rewards. In this regard, our market functions almost perfectly by providing risk-adjusted returns, creating real-life Horatio Alger (and then some) heroes in the process.

However, there is more to being an entrepreneur than these storytellers would have you believe. LOTS more. 

I'm going to skip over all the glory, fame, and fortune you can find by streaming "Silicon Valley" or "The Social Network" on your AppleTV. Instead, I want to peel the onion back on the less glamorous stuff. The stuff nobody talks about at parties. The hard facts of life that the mainstream media and Hollywood don't like to share because they don't get them the clicks that the sexy stuff gets them. When the Sharks on ABC's "Shark Tank" talk about "rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty," this is what they are talking about.

What follows is this behind the scenes story, in pictures. It is about getting dirty and the less glamorous side of business ownership. However, it is NOT a list of complaints. Quite the opposite. It is an incredible privilege to have the freedom to do these things for our team. Being an entrepreneur may not be as glamorous as Hollywood would have you believe, but it is an awesome, epic journey that I wouldn't trade for anything. 

Being an entrepreneur means washing the dish drainer in your team break room over the weekend. 

Being an entrepreneur means cleaning off desks and emptying trash cans after everyone has gone home. 

Being an entrepreneur means coming in on a Saturday night with your business partner to prep the office for your new cleaning crew. 

 Being an entrepreneur means cleaning up the warehouse to help your team work more efficiently.

 Being an entrepreneur means sweeping up the production floor.

Being an entrepreneur means loading up your truck with flattened boxes to make a run to the recycling center in the rain...you guessed it: on the weekend.

Entrepreneurship isn't for the faint of heart, but it beats the heck out of getting a regular job!

 


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