For some reasons, I have stumbled upon many articles touching on stories of various entrepreneur’s journey in the startup scene – the lonely, depressive state of mind. Speaking about the law of attraction of negativity. Anyway……
I have met many people/students lately who claims and expressed their strong desire of wanting to be an Entrepreneur. Can’t blame them, with so many government initiative lately to foster startups, it’s no surprise that many people have decided to step up. Positively looking at them with a smile while reflecting back my journey made me meant what I meant when I say “Good Luck”. As much as many people would say it’s good to be naive and fearless when you start something, there’s a lot of responsibilities to bear on your shoulder if you decide to choose this route. Then again, everyone has a choice at the end of the day.
What is unsaid or unseen does not mean that is unfelt. For most times, the media has made a lot of their readers felt motivated/inspired to start their own thing without really reflecting grassroots relatable emotions in the article. Multi-million dollar funding, investors pitching, IPO. All these are usually the highlights of the media, blurring the lines of what the founders’ motivation behind are.
Yes, there are medias on the other hand that share positive advice of various entrepreneurs, with the recent popular Jack Ma’s article and sometimes we ended up taking them literally even without knowing how to flex/shift our minds when different situation crops up. A good example would be the ever famous quote by the late Steve Jobs “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them”, have indeed left many people feeling over confident and taking them literally. If you study the meaning and elements behind the inception stage, you will know there is a certain level of grounds that have been tested before the people think they so called don’t know they want the iPhone!
Why often times, the genuine feeling of an entrepreneur are often filtered by what is the overachieved rather than the actual feeling. Entrepreneurs are humans after all. I used to express all sort of feelings – love, joy, sadness, anger in my blogs back in high school days. Would admitting that I made a mistake or feeling afraid now would be a sign of weakness or incompetency. Again what is unspoken or unsaid does not mean that I am not scare. In fact I am more afraid of what is like to admit that I’m afraid – on whether people would judge or affect my organisations’ outlook. Would admitting it look weak or would it look like a sign of asking for help for a journey taken.
Yes I am afraid, I do feel lost at times too. I stare away sometimes wondering what would happen the next day, wondering whether we could make it through tough times, wondering about the welfare and future of each staff from ground level to the management team, wondering how we can better manage cost to keep prices low for the customers despite uncontrollable rising cost from the dominant. These are the never ending pounding questions for the prices we got to pay when we sign up for this journey.
There’s enough funders around the world really. And there’s a lot of news in the world about successes. If I could offer something to a buddy aspiring entrepreneur, it would be my shoulder that I could afford and I know that is what entrepreneurs just need at times, including myself. Not the funding, not the media coverage story, but a genuine shoulder to lean on. That is probably why most of the real successful people in the world are humble, down to earth individuals, cause they know the feeling of climbing up and down a mountain.
The next time you see an entrepreneur/business people, know that they are neither more successful or wealthier than you. They have feelings too! Plus, success is measured differently for different individuals anyway. It is their choice to take on a different journey of responsibilities, but that does not mean you could have a 1 hour “How are you” conversations to support them. And to be honest, sometimes that is what we need instead of talking about our business, we are kinda tired of that sometimes. We just want some pure genuine conversations of what’s inside our hearts at the moment.
To all entrepreneurs out there, embrace the feelings you have there, for it is normal. We will learn to live another day and shift anyway, but embrace it, and not suppress it.
#ihavefeelingstoo #ifeelafraidtoo #ineedashouldertoo