BUSINESS: The Hardcore Reality of A True Entrepreneur

I was born in Brazil. My hometown is Santos, Sao Paulo and I was just a middle-class guy. I was born poor, and poverty was in my life for years. My parents taught me to study really hard at school, so I could, later on, get into a public University to then try to get a job as a federal worker.

Why Public University? Why a Federal Worker?

Well, in Brazil, Federal workers have job security for life. You cannot get fired once you’re approved on the exam and the rest of the hiring process. It’s a safety harbor. And the reason behind Public Universities? They’re free and also THE BEST ones to study in Brazil.

Yes, in Brazil everything is backwards.

The rich guys pay for advanced classes to get into a public university while the poor people have to attend public schools to then pay for their Universities, somehow. That’s the price of having monkeys as politicians. So as you can see, Brazil lacks educational structure and as I like to say, pure logic.

Nonetheless, I was able to accomplish the “perfect plan” my parents taught me since I was a kid. I got into a Public University and in my senior year in college I landed my first job as a federal worker, when I was 21 years old.

Now you might be thinking……

“BUT WHY you’re telling me this if this is about THE REALITY of Entrepreneurship?”

Well, because I executed the “ideal plan” and 4 years later, I LEFT that life to become an Entrepreneur. At least 95% of people around me called me crazy as you can imagine.

“You’re throwing away job security for life, are you crazy?!?!?!”

Yeah. I’m crazy. I couldn’t spend one more week looking at the same table I had sat every single day for the past 4 years. To me, CRAZY was to grow old and let my whole existence on Earth be reduced to one job. One calm life. One easy-going life with “job security”.

But this move came with a price.

THE BRUTAL MINDSHIFT YOU MUST EMBRACE OVERNIGHT
Since every obligation I had in my old, boring world working for the federal government was to work from 9 to 5 and not screw up at work, suddenly you’re in the middle of a complicated situation. Why? Because out of the blue it’s YOU who is in charge of things now. You alone. Everything is your fault: financial management, time management, training, prospecting etc.

You now know that in Brazil, traditional education is very weak. But education, preparation, and promotion of Entrepreneurship is even weaker. You’re not encouraged to become an Entrepreneur. Never.

But that was not a dead end, because I had a few stuff in my favor:

• I had a notebook with Internet which I could use to LEARN everything I needed about my business, my industry, and my customer
• I had good English background since I lived in Maryland from 4 to 6 years old, due to my country’s coin matching the same price of a dollar (1 to 1), which pushed my father to move to America (we had to go back to Brazil 2 years afterwards due to family issues).
• I was bold. I was creative. I knew I could change my world with PURE EFFORT. And I was very angry that my life wasn’t what the world promised me to be, after I completed “the perfect plan” I always heard about.

Now let’s fast forward to 2015 so I can show you how Entrepreneurship really is.

THE BEGINNING — STAGE #1
Everything is NEW. You’re pumped. Confident. You feel like a Superhero. You have an idea and you know you can execute it for sure, if you put the hours into it. You work all excited expecting that the paths of life will open after you accomplish the project you defined in your mind.

Entrepreneurship becomes the best thing in the world.

You evangelize others about Entrepreneurship and you are happy all the time about making progress, which to you can be going from 0 to 10 followers on your official Instagram account. It’s like you’re invincible.

Where’s the source of all that motivation? Well, you have a vision that you simply know that will work. It will. And it’s true, your vision does work in practice but as I said before, this is only the beginning…

THE 1st REALITY CHECK — STAGE #2
After a while grinding, your results start to stop. Everything around you starts to become a routine. A boring routine. Something frozen. Something that doesn’t change much. You then realize that your vision is possible, but demands an enormous amount of WORK.

Remember the “Hard Work” principle? Yes, it’s VERY true. This is not an easy mission.

Next, while in this new scenario you understand that TIME is your most valuable asset. Because with time, you can build anything. You can learn anything. Is quite simple: you just have to devour books, videos and courses and then execute your recent knowledge. Period.

Then obsession kicks in.

You become obsessed about finishing your vision, learning everything you can in a small period of time and you start waking up at 4am so you can sleep less and work hard for several hours straight. If you’re truly hungry, then obsession takes over. Completely.

Suddenly, hacking your sleep and productivity become normal subjects you like to read about, and you end up reading scientific articles about Biohacking and other personal development topics for hours and hours straight.

The goal for all this? To transform yourself into a working machine.

THE 2nd REALITY CHECK — STAGE #3
Your vision is now taking too long to become a reality. You start to be tempted with weak thoughts like finding shortcuts or something. Every day, every hour you fight against negative thinking patterns because you now understand the huge amount of work that is ahead of you, and your mood now is a mix of “I can do it” with “This is impossible”.

Nonetheless, time is ticking and you have limited amount of money and all your bills keep coming at you, aggressively, punching you right in the face over and over to add more weight to your weak thoughts.

The game actually starts here.

But you don’t give up. You view it as a challenge. So you start to study the marketplace with a lot more depth and at the same time, you realize that the only enemy preventing you from accomplishing your vision is actually YOU.

Yes. You. Because you can clearly see that you’re capable of finishing the job, but the amount of work required heavily discourages you.

This is where you realize your biggest limitations like shyness or pride (examples), due to your endless search for finding a way to win the game honestly, like a real man. You then understand that overcoming your mental limitations is where the next step of progress lies.

You need to become limitless. Fearless. A Machine.

Because you know that IF you could take THAT ACTION which is outside your comfort zone, then things would change. It’s you against you.

And you feel a little bit alone and hopeless sometimes.

But hard work, bills and personal limitations are not yet the whole package in Entrepreneurship. There’s more.

THE UNEXPECTED HITS — STAGE #4
While on the stage before, a few hits also come to punch you right in the face to add another layer of “problems” to your business life. What is a “hit”? It’s losing money for not understanding the law right, or losing customers out of nowhere, or losing a relationship or someone throwing a lawsuit at you. That’s a hit.

Something that either subtracts money from your pocket or crushes you emotionally.

Fun, isn’t it? This whole Entrepreneurship thing. And do not be mistaken here. A TRUE hit puts you down in the first time it happens. Seriously. You’ll know when you got a nice, cold hit. Then, after taking the hit, you feel a bit lost, discouraged, and you start to have some crazy thoughts about life itself and why life is like this.

“Is LIFE suppose to be just this? Is this all there is in life?”

Hard times.

But you don’t give up. You build up your strength and you lift yourself up once more to start pursuing your goals again. You get up much stronger because you’ve now learned something for sure: The road is only for the Champions.

Aren’t you a Champion? Of course you are.
But here comes the Big Boss.

THE ABYSS OF INSANITY — STAGE #5
You’ve worked for months, maybe YEARS and yet, you’re not getting the results you expected to get after putting all the work. You then start to lose hope and faith in your business and at the same time, you cannot put any more work hours since you feel like it is simply useless.

This is where things start to get REALLY complicated.

Why? Because the very results you got so far start to drop. Bit by bit you are losing the willpower to work like a machine and you try to solve your “production deficit” with different moves. The hunger doesn’t last forever. You need some results. You need progress.

The thing is, that MANY of those moves don’t work. They just don’t. And the reality about you putting useless work hours in your business start to be reinforced in your mind, pushing to you more negative thinking into your head.

At this point, you’re probably experiencing the following:

• serious money problems, you’re in debt for months in a row
• suddenly, you are reconsidering your whole vision as a real business
• you make dumb moves due to desperation and lack of solid confidence
• low-energy levels which don’t allow you to work harder, bringing more desperation
• you find yourself in a dead end where no strategy and no action brings any results at all

You then enter in a warfare against your own mind to maintain your posture, confidence, work ethics and beliefs as an entrepreneur and EVERYTHING you do demands an enormous amount of spiritual energy to be accomplished.

I mean…….EVERYTHING. Even posting a single link in your social network starts to become heavy-lifting because you don’t believe that it will bring you results.

So getting things done, especially new strategies or new moves that may be the way out for you become even harder to execute because you’re getting a physical and emotional beating. Here your faith and endurance are both being tested.

Next? You hit rock bottom. Your mind gets heavy and you experience the darkest, craziest thoughts that you never taught YOU could ever have. Nonetheless, these thoughts are now flooding your mind by the second.

“What is THE WAY OUT? How do I win? What do I have to do next?! WHAT WILL WORK??”

New achievement unlocked: Insanity.

No work, no strategy, no new move seems to be able to get you out of this stage. You feel like you’re falling into an endless pit……..until you realize something.

THE RISE OF THE FENIX — THE WIN
You were in a place where you couldn’t find a way out. There was no logical move to make anymore. Somehow, out of nowhere, either by walking at the park or watching a beautiful sunset, you suddenly get knocked down by a GREAT IDEA!

This is THE BEST PART!

So of the sudden, every inspiration and willpower juice you had at the beginning begins to pump in your veins again like if you were on drugs. Or steroids. Or both. You now VISUALIZE clearly where is the way out. You find a way to reach success to get your prize.

Good news. Salvation awaits you.

Now all the challenges don’t matter anymore because you know how to beat them. The mental blocks begin to fade away very very fast and you couldn’t care less about any barriers.

You’re now in Cyborg-mode.

You just take action. Massive action. You execute what is missing with power, faith, and energy at its peak. And then, the world becomes a NEW PLACE.

And once again…..out of nowhere……

YOU’RE NOW A WINNER!

People wanting to talk to you all the time, massive attention from everywhere, and you finally feel that all the work you have put in secret gets rewarded in public. Awesome feeling. Awesome.

Time to celebrate because you deserved it. Completely. You endured the process.

People start calling you an “overnight success” which instantly makes you whisper to yourself, inside your own little head:

“Right. ‘Overnight success’…Do you think all this was overnight? Stupid.”

But that’s ok, they don’t know the ride. Only you know how it feels.

DO YOU WANT TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR?
Well, Entrepreneurship is awesome once you get to win. Incredibly awesome. A DREAM. Nonetheless, you’re in the real world and you need to be honest with yourself. Therefore, you know what’s the only question you need to answer? Honestly?

“Can I really handle the path of the Champions?”

That’s it. A path of Hard work, Sweat, and Tears.

Can you handle it? Because that’s entrepreneurship my friend.

Take care.