Bryce Mathis, President, Endless Holdings, Inc.
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Kenny Chesney is one of my favorite artists. I’ve listened to him in good times and bad, and every time I do, I learn something about myself and my journey – the journey of an entrepreneur. His 2020 album, Here and nowinspired me to think about my journey and where I am, where I want to go and what I want to happen along the way.
‘Long’, ‘stressful’ and ‘tiring’ are words that many entrepreneurs of this world are all too familiar with. About a third of the companies fail within two years, about half fail within five years, and about two-thirds fail before the decade, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy’s “Frequently Asked Questions.” An entrepreneur can certainly understand the reasons for this, and be the successful ones who have overcome the hurdles that many others encountered along the way. But why? Why is entrepreneurship so difficult? Why does it seem like the odds are constantly stacked against you, and your own luck is under attack?
You might say, “It’s me against the world,” and while that may be true for some, you’ll probably learn along the way that this kind of excessive individualism can lead to even greater challenges. So, what causes failure? Why do entrepreneurs wake up day after day, pushing, striving and working to grow their businesses into self-sustaining, fully functioning entities, knowing they could fail?
Ironically, I think it’s part of that pursuit of happiness. If you really examine yourself during the start-up process – through all the headaches, tribulations and pain – at the end of the day, you will probably find pride and happiness in the thing you are building. But some entrepreneurs lose their spark along the way – that light and happiness. And that’s when companies can fail. If you can’t find the joy in what you’re doing, a domino effect sets in and the thing you’ve worked so hard on can crumble.
What causes some founders to lose that spark? I think the answer is much simpler than you might think. A quote often attributed to Paul H. Dunn puts it this way: “Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Happiness is found along the way, not at the end of the road, because then the journey is over and it is too late. The time for happiness is today, not tomorrow.”
This is a powerful concept when you think about it. The correlation between happiness and entrepreneurship is uncanny. I think if you changed that quote a little bit, you could phrase it like this: “Entrepreneurship is a journey, not a destination. Entrepreneurship should be enjoyed along the way, not at the end of the road, because then the experience is over and it’s too late. The time to enjoy entrepreneurship is today, not tomorrow.”
From my perspective, some leaders find themselves getting so caught up in the prospects of the toil of their jobs that they don’t enjoy the journey—the here and now. I believe that the companies that experience longer life have founders who have found a way to enjoy the journey and accept the outcome.
With this in mind, I encourage entrepreneurs to do the following to enjoy their own journeys in building a business.
• Meditate on the positives. If you are constantly preoccupied with the negatives, it will cloud your view of the great strides you have made.
• Celebrate every win. The small victories eventually grow into big victories, and while the big victories may be the minds of others, it is ultimately the small victories that lead to those bigger achievements.
• Also remind your team that a win, no matter how small, makes sense. Do this weekly. Don’t worry about the losses; learn from them. Enjoy the victories, but don’t let them distract you from the end goal.
As I completed my basic training for the United States Air Force and looked back over the past eight and a half weeks of what seemed like sheer misery at this point, I found that even during what may have been one of my darker times, there were still moments of joy. It is through those joyful moments that you can learn to find happiness in the ‘here’ and ‘now’.
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