How Hard Is It, Really, To Start A Business?

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0:59How hard is it really to start a business? Here it is. It's harder than you think. It's harder than I can even fully explain, to be honest. And I say this as someone who's made it on the other side. You know, I've built multiple businesses. I sold one of them. I currently run a growing media company. And I'm here to tell you the truth. Today, I'm going to tell you exactly what it takes. I'm going to share with you the statistics, the sacrifices you're going to have to go through. I'm going to share with you some of the dark days I had to go through that not a lot of people talk about. And then I'm going to tell you the one thing that makes it all worth it, because it is worth it.

1:36Today's episode is me sharing the real price of being an entrepreneur, because you deserve to know what it is before you pay it. So let's get into it.

1:50Welcome back to The$100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. I got a quick favor to ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff practical business advice that you're getting from this show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey.

2:27Step one, we're going to look at the numbers and we're going to look at reality for what it is. This is what the statistics tell us because the statistics don't lie. The numbers don't lie. It doesn't matter how excited you are about your business. It doesn't matter how brilliant your business plan is or how unique you think your idea is. The numbers are going to tell us a different story. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 22 % of new businesses fail in the first year. Nearly half of them, about 49%, fail in five years. So within the first five years, half of all businesses go out of business.

3:02And by 10 years, about 65 % are gone. So after 10 years, only about a third of businesses survive. Now, a lot of people, when they hear these statistics, they think, oh, you know, that's not me. I'm smarter than that. I'm hardworking. I'm not going to be one of those statistics. I'm going to guarantee that those people that are in those statistics that did go out of business, they're not lazy. They worked hard. They thought their ideas were great, just like you do. And it's just a matter of numbers. When I say a matter of numbers, I mean that it's just a matter of fact that starting and growing and sustaining a business is hard.

3:42There are obstacles that you do not see even coming that you're going to face. It doesn't matter how hard you work. If you don't have answers to these obstacles, you don't have a way around these obstacles, they're going to be really hard for you to sustain your business. So this is why on the show, I constantly try to give you as much information as possible to increase your likelihood of success because the odds are not in your favor. I don't share this with you to scare you off. I want you to succeed. I share these numbers to calibrate you because the person who walks into entrepreneurship thinking it's a two-year sprint to freedom and their life's going to change overnight, those are the people that quit because they expect one thing and another thing happens.

4:23The person, on the other hand, that walks in knowing the odds and chooses to play the game of business anyway is in a completely different kind of position. They understand that statistics are not in their favor, but by knowing that it's going to be hard, it makes it easier for you to expect what you're about to experience. And this is why I like to share this stuff on the show, because most of the Internet shares the glamorous part of business, you know, the hammock on the beach and, you know, enjoying this wonderful lifestyle and the fancy cars and the fancy vacations and the first class tickets and all that kind of stuff.

5:00right? That is not the reality of being an entrepreneur. Even when you do make it, most of your life is going to be solving problems, okay? Putting out fires. And the more that you accept that, the more that you understand that's going to be your life, the more you're going to embrace it and see it as a challenge. Now, even though this first step is just a reality check, I want you to do an exercise so that you can commit before you continue on your journey as an entrepreneur. I want you to write down honestly, what are you prepared to endure for how long? Because a lot of us are not really expecting what's ahead.

5:37I sure didn't expect what I had to face to get to where I am today. I literally did this exercise when I got started in my journey and I wrote down, I'm willing to survive as long as possible on the bare essentials. Like literally, if I can eat and drink and have a place to put my head down at night, I'm happy to do this as long as it takes. If it takes me a decade, it takes me 20 years, it takes me 30 years, I'm happy. And that is kind of easier said than done. But I lived that life. When I left my teaching career, we literally moved to New York City in this dungeon apartment. We had no luxuries.

6:13We barely had heat because the landlord was so cheap, didn't put the heat on. It was freezing cold and we still made it. As long as we ate, as long as we had a shelter, as long as we had each other, Nicole and I, we were happy to continue on this journey. And you literally have to commit to that because it might be your reality. Step two, you need to start accepting that you will suck at this for longer than it feels reasonable. Nobody really shared this with me. I wish they did because I thought I was stupid. I thought there was something wrong with me. Why am I so bad at this? And then I started to realize that, hey, everybody's bad at entrepreneurship, at business, at making this work in the beginning.

6:51I'm telling you right now, if you haven't heard this already, you will be bad at this for a long time. Longer than it feels comfortable. Longer than it feels reasonable. It kind of feels like, hey, shouldn't I be good at this by now? It took me years. I'm talking about three, four, five years to start getting any kind of real traction where I could say, okay, I can have a sustainable life with this journey, with this business that I'm building, with what I'm doing. It's going to feel longer than it feels fair, okay? And at first, your offers won't sell. At first, your marketing is going to fall flat.

7:27At first, all your hires are going to be mistakes. At first, your pricing is going to be all wrong. Why? Because it's the first time you're doing it. You know, you're not going to be great. One of the things I talk about is if you want to become a successful doctor, okay? Let's say you want to be a successful surgeon, somebody that is sought after, a highly acclaimed surgeon. How long would it take for you to be a great surgeon? Well, first of all, you'd have to go to university, and then you'd have to go to medical school for a few years, and after you graduate from medical school, you still can't become a doctor yet.

7:58You have to do residency, right? You have to do some practice runs, right, and learn from other doctors. And then once you do that, it's going to take you about a decade for you to have on-hands experience as a surgeon to become a well-renowned surgeon, somebody that is sought after. So we're talking about 20 years. And that's being a doctor, which is very common, okay? And being a successful entrepreneur is not as common as being a successful doctor. So you gotta be willing to put in the time and the effort so that you can learn how to be good at this. The crazy thing is, is that with most jobs, you have to learn a few skills and just be very good at that.

8:33With entrepreneurship, with being a business owner, you have to learn a plethora of skills. It's a combination of a lot of skills put together and you have to do it all right at the right time for the right people, for the right customers so that this can all work out. So you have to be patient and you have to understand that you have a learning curve you have to get over. That learning curve, those years where you are learning how to become an entrepreneur, you're learning how to find your voice, find your customers, understand how to put an offer together, how to sell, how to market, all those things.

9:06I call those years the years of eating glass because that's what it's like. You're eating glass and you're chewing glass and it's painful and you're swallowing it and it just nothing feels great. It all feels uncomfortable. It feels strange because it is strange. You haven't done this before. You're out of your element until you start to get used to it. So you start getting some traction. And the thing is that most people quit before they even get any wins. So you have to be willing to endure those tough days. And let me be very specific when I say tough days. This means giving maximum effort with zero results.

9:42That's what a tough day looks like for me. When I look back at the days, and I still have these days, by the way, where you're working so hard, you're trying so hard, you're doing everything you can, you're sacrificing, you're committing yourself, you're learning, and you're trying as much as you can and you still get no results. That is what it's like being at the beginning of your journey. Everybody's journey is different. But for me, I would say it was about four years of experiencing that. That was my experience. Four years of working 12 hour days, 15 hour days, sometimes six, seven days a week.

10:16There was a period of time where Nicole and I did not take a day off for over two and a half years. And we were just grinding it out to try to make this business work. Right. We would watch people that we knew from high school, university, getting promotions and buying houses and having nice cars. And we were struggling to pay the rent. And this is the moment you will be tested in those moments where you can just say to yourself, you know what? Why don't I just get a job? Why don't I just, you know, hang up this dream for a moment and just get back on my feet and I'll come back to it later? Well, later never comes.

10:48OK. And we had that moment. Nicole and I had that moment where we couldn't figure out how to make ends meet. And one of Nicole's friends back home said, hey, why don't you just get a job and so you could pay your bills? Right. And I knew in that moment, if we got a job, that is time and attention away from the business. And we had to figure out a way to just maybe spend less money or make it happen. Because if we took a job, we would lose our focus. That's a painful moment. That's painful for me to share because we were not winning. It was very difficult, but I'm glad we made that sacrifice because the funny thing is, is that it was just a few months later when we started to see some progress.

11:28It's like right when it's the darkest, it's when the light starts to come in, when things start to shape up, things start to change for you. And I can't tell you when that's going to change for you. It's different for everybody. And I got to be honest with you, it's like torture in a lot of ways. It's like, why am I putting myself through this? But I got to tell you, one of the gifts of entrepreneurship, yes, the money is great. Yes, the success is great. The accolades, the awards, all that stuff is great. But what I have to say, the biggest reward, it's what you become, is who you become in that process through those challenges.

12:00They say that if you divided all the world's money, all the money in the world, they divided it equally against everybody. Everybody got the same amount that in a few years it would end up in the same pockets again. It will find its way back to the same people because they have the skill. They have built that skill of knowing how to earn more money and how how to build a business, how to be valuable, and how to be able to create value for the marketplace. So I love this idea of like, hey, in order for me to be successful, I have to learn how to be successful. I have to learn the ways of success.

12:31I have to become something new so that I can make something new, so I can create something new for my life. So as an exercise for this step, I want you to ask yourself a really hard question. And that question is, if you work as hard as possible and sacrifice everything that you can sacrifice for three years and still see no results, will you still be working on your business? Will you still try to be successful as an entrepreneur? Or will you quit? The honest answer is gonna determine everything. Because like I said, when I was at the start of my journey, I was just happy to be on the journey, to be an entrepreneur, to try to build something new, to try to be something new, to create something for other people.

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14:20Step three is understanding the real sacrifices. And let me be very specific about this, because there is a price to any kind of success. Because it's not just long hours. You will also lose people in your life. You will lose friends. You will go through some difficult conversations. Your relationship, even with your own family members, might change. Why? because you're changing. Anytime there's a change in any relationship, including the person, one of the people in the relationship changes, you're going to have a riff. You're going to have some friction because they're not getting what they're expecting, right?

14:56They're expecting somebody that's happy to hang out all weekend or go out drinking. And that's not your jam anymore because you're working on your business. That's going to create some friction. So you got to be ready to sacrifice even the things that are dear to you. Because I have found that I only got traction in my business, in my journey, when I prioritize entrepreneurship. I know that sounds a little bit crazy. I know that sounds a little bit, maybe a little bit narcissistic, but I had to say, hey, this is the most important thing for me right now. And this comes from, again, from my background.

15:28I didn't grow up with money. My parents were immigrants from Egypt. And all my life as a kid said to myself, I want to solve this whole money problem. When I grow up, I don't want money to be an issue anymore. So I got to my 30s and money was still an issue for me. And I was like, I'm going to solve this once and for all. So I made it my top priority to be successful as an entrepreneur, to build something that would make me financially independent. And that means saying no to a lot of fun things, a lot of things that my family wanted to do, outings with my friends, you know, game nights, whatever it might be.

15:59And I know that sounds a little bit unreasonable or maybe it sounds a little bit crazy. But the truth is that if you don't prioritize this journey, If you don't prioritize success in entrepreneurship, it just will never happen. There'll be something else that will come before it. So you have to make it your number one priority. When I look back at the start of my journey about 20 years ago, a lot of the friendships I had did not survive. A lot of the family members I used to hang out with, I don't hang out with as much. I'm still very close to my close family, my nucleus family, my sisters and my mom and dad and, you know, Nicole, my wife.

16:32But a lot of my extended family, I'm not in touch with anymore because they weren't really helping me get to where I want to go. They were actually dragging me down. I'm telling you, there are a lot of people in my life, especially my family, thought I was crazy. I lost my mind. And all you care about is money. All you care about is this whole business thing. And the honest truth is, is that in that moment, yes, that's all I cared about, right? Yes, I had to focus on that because I felt like I would never get out of the cycle of where I was in my job or with my career or where I was financially if I didn't take it that seriously.

17:05You're going to hear some things that you don't want to hear. You're going to hear people telling you that you're a dreamer. You're going to hear people saying that you're being unrealistic. You're going to hear people say that you're too old. You're too young. They're going to say a whole bunch of stuff that are going to hurt and it's going to make you feel bad. And you're going to have to just say, we're going to have to wait it out. We're going to see what happens at the end. You know, and they say the best revenge is success, right? And that's really the truth when it comes to this journey.

17:31And you don't need to throw it in their face. But the point is, is that you're going to have to endure and sacrifice a lot of things that you probably are not imagining you're going to have to sacrifice at the start. I would say one of the things that I had to sacrifice was really my ego. Because when you are starting on this journey in business, you are not very good at it, like I mentioned. So you automatically start to feel bad about yourself. You start to not feel as confident about yourself because you're just not winning. And it really doesn't feel good when you're losing and losing and losing.

17:59it's just easier to be like, oh, let me just go back to my career where I feel like a winner, where I feel like I'm important, where I feel significant, where I feel like somebody cares about me or I'm being praised constantly, right? Nobody's praising you as an entrepreneur. No one's cheerleading you or giving you any kind of motivational speech when you get up in the morning, right? You have to push yourself. And one of the things I had to sacrifice is this feeling of needing to feel good about myself constantly. I don't have to feel good about myself. It's okay. It's okay if I stink. It's okay if I suck at this right now.

18:27It's okay that I'm not winning, right? This is my season of losing right now, okay? I'm okay with that. But as long as you just understand, I'm gonna have to delay gratification for a little bit in order for me to start getting better at this and start seeing some wins, having that patience and sacrificing your ego is gonna make things a lot easier for you in the long run. Now, you might be saying, hey, Omar, what if my business is not working out? What if I am not making money? What if the product is not selling? Shouldn't I just quit this business? Is that bad? should I never quit? And my answer is, is that you don't really quit until you quit on being an entrepreneur.

19:04So for me, the definition of quitting is quitting on this career, quitting on the journey of being a business owner, as being a business builder. The business itself may not be doing well, and you might have to pivot, change it, sell it, close it down and start a new thing. That's fine. You didn't quit yet, right? You're still in the game. You're still playing. That's what's most important. It's okay for you to lose these battles, but the war, you got to win at the end. You have to be able to sustain yourself and continue to push yourself and grow and become a better person, a better entrepreneur so that you can build that better business that's going to take you to the promised land.

19:39Hey, I hope you're enjoying this honest and raw episode. I really encourage you to subscribe to the show because we have an upcoming episode that I don't want you to miss. We are sitting down with Taki Moore, who is the coach of coaches. He is like the OG coach of coaches. Every coach that you know in the world that's successful, he has coached them. And he's going to show us how he helps other people build seven, even eight figure businesses in the coaching industry. Taki's a good guy. He's a good friend of mine. We're going to have a lot of fun. He's actually a pretty funny guy and an interesting person.

20:10So you're going to enjoy the episode. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it when it comes out. Step four is to find your unfair advantage, which is having nothing to lose. Listen, once I got this, this changed everything for me, okay? You might be in a career right now. You might be in a job that you've maybe worked in for the last decade like I did. I was teaching for over 10 years in the university I was working at. And I realized in a moment that, hey, if I left this job, there's a good chance that I can always go back to it. I can get this job again if I wanted to in another place or even the same place if I wanted to.

20:43And I asked myself, what do I have to lose if I fail? Embarrassment? At least I tried, right? Most people don't even try to become an entrepreneur. I don't really have much to lose. Yes, there's going to be some sacrifices financially that you just have to come to terms with. But once you get into the mentality that you have nothing to lose, you have an unfair advantage. One of the best things about being a beginner is that nobody's watching. When people post their first post on Instagram or their first video on YouTube and it doesn't get many views, good. That's great. You're not good yet. OK, you're probably not so good at that craft yet because it's your first time you're doing it.

21:20And there's not a lot of people watching. It's kind of a blessing in disguise. And as you get better and better, more people watch. And therefore, you can start to get better and start to improve and start taking on that feedback and improving your product or service. For me, I just had this mentality where it's like, hey, I already experienced being poor most of my life. I didn't have much. I didn't have luxuries. and yeah, I could have a job that is going to give me a paycheck and give me a few niceties once in a while and I'll feel good about myself with a little treat here or there. Or I can just go back to being very basic in my lifestyle and go after my dream.

21:56My dream is worth more than that, right? To go after what I wanted. Nicole and I decided we moved to New York City, which was a dream of mine. And the reason why we chose New York City is because everybody in New York is chasing their dream, right? And being in that environment really helped us because everybody's going after it. They're trying to be an actor. They're trying to be a startup founder. They're trying to be a musician. They're trying to do something. No one's there to relax and retire, all right? Everybody's in the city to chase a dream. And it's good to put yourself in an environment that makes it conducive for you to go after what you're going after.

22:27So even if it means moving location, like literally moving where you are, maybe you can't do that. But even if you want to do that, just to give yourself a little bit of a push, that helps. Even if it's changing the people that you're surrounded with, joining a community, joining a mastermind group, joining an online program or an online community that can support you. The point is that there are going to be some moves you have to make where you're going to realize that, hey, the worst thing that can happen is I fail. And when you fail, you'll learn. They say failure is feedback, and it's good.