If you’ve traveled in entrepreneur circles for any period of time, you’ve likely heard one or more of the following declarations:
- You’re not an entrepreneur unless you work 80+ hours a week.
- Building a product business is so much harder than building a service business.
- Building a service business is so much harder than building a product business.
- Not a multi-million dollar company? Well, you’re just building a “lifestyle” company.
In conversations, presentations and social media, people are awfully quick to toss these statements around. Statements like those feel very exclusionary to me.
Do you want congratulations for working almost a hundred hours a week? It’s not a badge of honor.
Who cares if it’s harder to build a service or product company? Building and scaling any type of business is no walk in the park.
Ask business owners with five-, six- or 10-figure revenues what keeps them up at night, and I bet you’ll find more commonalities than you might assume.
Instead of stroking your own ego by bragging about how hard it is to build your company, how many hours you work or how your business is more “serious” than a smaller company, just stop. Please. What if you channeled that energy and time to build up a fellow entrepreneur, instead of passive-aggressively putting them down? Perhaps someone in your network could use some words of encouragement or constructive feedback? Be that person. Do well by doing good. And then get back to work. After all, you’re right: Building a company is hard.
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Photo credit: jinterwas, via Flickr Creative Commons