The life of an entrepreneur: 3 realities

Being a freelancer or entrepreneur requires a very high consumption of resources, which few can sustain in the long term. Those who are entrepreneurs know this!

I know that the image of people who are freelancers or entrepreneurs is highly idealized, especially on social media.

There are pictures of people buying Ferraris, spending all day in Dubai, promoting freedom as the core value. And that’s okay.

You know the message: be your boss, no more tight neckties, stuck in a 9 to 5 schedule. Wake up when you want, work from wherever you want, and choose your collaborators, and clients. And of course, have money.

The dream.

With an obsessively emphasized lifestyle, often forced, we forget the other side of the coin: the invested work, effort, unused vacations, assumed financial risks, empty accounts, and often, sleepless nights. These are the most important traits of freelancers or entrepreneurs.

Most people desire the lifestyle of an already successful freelancer or entrepreneur. They are not always willing to pay the price to get there.

They treat this topic like a Swedish buffet. A place where they can only choose what they like, leaving aside the dishes that don’t suit their taste.

The realities of an entrepreneur

It’s a bit peculiar what I’m sharing here because I’m trying to synthesize an experience of almost 20 years, from the first company I founded until today. Adding to that the experience of coaching and coordinating teams ranging from tens to hundreds of people.

I continue to learn. Freelancing and entrepreneurship is precisely that, a continuous school that ruthlessly shows you, often, the limits of your abilities.

If I were to say what you need to build a company from scratch, I would stop at three essential elements without which you have no chance:

1. Survival Mode

It’s like having an acute sense that everything can collapse at any moment, that you’re not prepared, that the market you’ve entered is ruthless, that your energy is finite, and that no one has patience with you if you’re not “fit” for survival.

In my opinion, if you can’t induce this hunger, the feeling that you might end up on someone else’s table better prepared than you, in the form of a blood-soaked cutlet — you can’t move things.

Most freelancers and entrepreneurs I’ve met in this life, regardless of the turnover, money in the account, or lifestyle — woke up every day thinking it could be their last. A kind of existential fatalism that gave them an uncommon vitality and set them in motion.

The level of anxiety on this operating system is very high. But it’s part of the game, and if you don’t have it, you feel dead inside.

2. Learning Curve

Every entrepreneurial project is a race against time, where the goal is to understand how the market works, how customers think, what they want, how the competition works, how you differentiate yourself from it, etc.

Most freelancers and entrepreneurs, when they set out, allow themselves to be naive in their approach at the beginning. They embrace a dose of ignorance; they need to believe in what they are doing and that they can build a company from nothing.

But from that moment on, they absorb immense amounts of information. That’s why they need to get into EVERYTHING, at least initially. Most entrepreneurs are generalists in approach, with tendencies to become polymaths over time.

You have to know how to do everything better than average because you have the drive, hunger, and desire to cover distances considered inhumane by others.

This learning curve is different for everyone but is essential because, after being in everything, you will have to let others take your place.

Where most entrepreneurs die is where they don’t differentiate between a good employee and a bad one because they don’t understand what each means.

3. Massive Effort

It complements point 2 — and means being willing to put in above-average effort, considering that you also have to put your mind to work throughout.

I haven’t met freelancers and entrepreneurs who aren’t workaholics, whether they admit it or not. I see so many, especially on social media, promoting the idea of smart work and that you should work 2–4–6 hours a day in your business. As if they played football in the morning in front of a family and a couple of friends, followed by a barbecue.

The same people, if you look at what they do (not what they say), you’ll see that they are industrial in their approach. They’ve had their moments of burnout. Their stress resistance level is much higher than someone waiting for their salary at the end of the month.

They talk a lot about wanting to work smart. But through “brains,” you only get the learning curve (see point 2) if you shovel coal to keep the locomotive moving.

Is it worth it?

This is the biggest question of all. Because the answer should never be one you doubt; it should be a resounding YES, with your entire being. Otherwise, you have no chance.

Doubt creeps in at the joints and spills into your entire being until all your actions are subjected to perpetual self-sabotage.

I don’t know if it’s worth it for others. Everyone needs to answer their own “Why” if they want to have the fuel to move forward. It’s the only question you can’t cheat, someone can’t teach you how to answer.

You wonder, you answer yourself. You carry out the process of clarification. Especially because you never know if what you’re trying to piece together will work. Especially because you must be willing to start over if everything falls apart. Especially because beginnings involve a level of sacrifice incomprehensible to others.

I’ll just tell you this: for me, it’s worth it.

I don’t know how to be otherwise. I don’t understand another reality.

That’s me.