Business success is the dream goal of any entrepreneur. However, the distance between your ideas and goals requires hard work to leverage.

A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.

~ Colin Powell, former U.S. Defense Secretary

We all read about business success and it looks glamorous to behold, especially when such businesses have attained a certain level of societal acceptance and have been able to attract a good sum of investment in dollars.

These businesses make building a successful business look like a “stroll in the park” until the need arises to ask what happened behind the scenes before the glory the world knows.

What They Don’t Tell You About Business Success

You are often told that having a business idea is the easiest thing to do. Nobody tells you that starting and running a successful business requires a different set of attitudes such as grit, perseverance, and critical thinking.

In reality, most people love the idea of starting/owning a business. This feeling is heavily prevalent in the society today because there is an abundance of motivational tapes and books that tells everyone they can do it.

They tell you that you can go ahead to start that business. However, nobody tells you that motivation is just 2% of all that you need to start/run a successful business.

The business landscape is a very tough one and it will drain all the motivation you have in you. This leaves you with only what you truly believe in.

Starting and running a successful business is not for everyone

This is the part where most people fail to agree with. However, it is a bitter pill that must be swallowed irrespective of your bias.

Not everyone is willing to pay the price of hard work and commitment for the prize of a successful business. That’s okay because such persons are not expected to be found trying to build a successful business.

Building a successful business is not for everyone and it only requires a special type of people. This people are those who are ready to handle the ups and downs that comes along with this quest.

You can ask yourself the question: Am I willing to do whatever it takes to make this business a success? If you find yourself answering a yes to the question, then you can proceed to the next stage of testing your answer.

Business success takes a lot of hard work and smart work

The media talks about the “Rags to Riches” stories because it helps them sell and attract the eyeballs. Nobody takes a camera around the entrepreneur when he is in the trenches digging out a solution. Nobody fancies him while he builds a survival strategy to get his business off the ground from a position of financial lack and low manpower.

Hard work will always be a major component of a successful business. This adage has been said over and over by all successful entrepreneurs. The need to work long hours and commit all of your energy to get the job done is not excusable.

There is also the story of that entrepreneur who understands that there is a limit to how hard he/she can work. Hence, the need for you to have a perfect combination to do the right thing effectively at the right time.

Every entrepreneur must consistently answer the questions of “Am I doing the right thing” and “Am I doing things right”.

Money isn’t all you need for your business success

Financial revenue is very important for any business to remain operational. However, most auccessful businesses do not focus intensely on these metrics in their early days. It is always about the customers before the money.

Money is not always the most important factor. You need to build your business around the satisfaction of your customers/users. This is so because a happy customer/user is the biggest asset any organization can have.

Jeff Bezos once revealed that Amazon has always been and will forever be a customer-first organization. This is a very relatable concept. Any business that focuses heavily on making profits without focusing more on creating a satisfying customer/user experience, will only end up spending a whole lot more driving marketing campaigns instead of making the product/service better.

The early days of a business are filled with lots of financial pains and torment.

There will be lots of disappointment along the way to business success

You can put in all the work and focus heavily on building for the customer/user. Everything might still go wrong at some point.

There will be days when nothing seems to be working despite doing all you can. Times like this could be caused by your own mistakes, insufficiency or other factors beyond your control. What remains super important is for you to know that every great entrepreneur once had days like this when nothing seems to be working and they were almost throwing in the towel.

Friends and family might fail you. Key members of the organization might leave at crucial moments when the organization needs them the most. You will lose money, and other things that you never thought could happen will happen.

Days like this should be for you to reflect and ask yourself questions. You should try to discover what else could be done or sustained while having a firm understanding that such a time will pass if you are committed to doing what needs to be done.

There is no freedom in starting a business

If your reason for starting a business is freedom, then you should stick with a 9-5 because that is where the true freedom lies.

The startup race of building and running a successful business is a 24/7 race. This demands that you to think of your business all the time irrespective of whatever you might be doing. This is because you will find a part of yourself attached to the success and the failure of the business, hence every thought will be geared towards how the business can become a success and how the business can leverage every opportunity available.

Are you ready to work a 128 hours workweek both mentally and physically?

Building a successful business requires you to wake up and go to bed every day only thinking about the success of the business.

You will find all of your energy and time fixated on that business alone and nothing else.

Business success takes longer than people think

Yes, there are stories of businesses that start today and become a success tomorrow, but the exception for most of those businesses is that they are usually led by entrepreneurs who have failed over and over again trying to build a business.

This fact is one of the most difficult to accept especially for those just starting. Most starter entrepreneurs usually plot a straight line graph from start to success and hence think it will go that way.

It takes time and effort to get a business to a place of true success because nothing worthwhile is going to happen fast. Your business is not an exception. You should pay less attention to the stories of startups that managed to raise 7-9 figures valuation in a few months. There is always more to these events than we all know.

Your product/service will go through a lot of iteration before you find the perfect fit for the market, but the goal is to stay committed during this period and keep putting in the required work.

It will take anything from 12 months upwards before you begin to see some real results. Know this and know peace.

You might also find this read interesting: Launching a Tech Startup in Nigeria: The Founders Guide

Conclusion

The Hard Truths About Business Success is that it takes a lot of sweat, tears and work. You will need persistence, grit, determination, dedication and an undying resolution to overcome every setback placed in your way through a committed process of critical thinking and a resourceful network.

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