Being an entrepreneur is not always easy, well actually, most of the time it’s not easy. There are number of reasons why we become entrepreneurs. For some it’s a desire to create something, for some it’s a problem with authorities, for some it’s the feeling of freedom etc.
Well, after you have made the decision to become an entrepreneur, you soon realize that it’s not all fun and games. You start worrying about money in ways you never even dreamed of while getting your monthly salary from your former employer. In case you’re hiring staff suddenly you start losing your good night sleeps towards the end of the month figuring out where to get the money to pay salaries. Your values change from “changing the world for better” towards to “I will sell what ever they buy”, and so on.
So, is there a time when you should just give up and stop trying? Well, the simple answer would be “no”, but perhaps it’s a little more complicated than that. Maybe you realized that being an entrepreneur was not for you, and that you would be better off by working for someone else. In that case, maybe the right answer is to do so, and perhaps while being an entrepreneur your contact network grew and you met the right people and you would be getting a lot better position in some company than where you were before.
But, for most, it isn’t that simple. There was something that drove you to become an entrepreneur in the first place, a desire that wouldn’t be served by going back to where you came from. For those the answer is “you should never stop trying”.
There is great a real life example of R.U. Darby’s uncle who lived during the gold rush time. He bought a gold mine, and after several tries and money loans, stopped digging and sold the gold mine. The new owner found gold three feet onwards, where Mr. Darby had stopped digging. Not only that, but this mine turned out to be the largest gold mine in Colorado. The story has a happy ending. Mr. Darby learned his lesson from this and went on to be very successful businessman later on – always remembering those three feet, which kept him going whenever he felt like quitting.
Another example: It took Thomas A. Edison 10 000 failures to invent the light bulb, or as he referred to it: I found 9 999 ways of how not to do it. There are tons of good examples of persistence and how many of the successful entrepreneurs have used it in their advantage. Virgin Group did a motivational infographic about it, covering also their very own Richard Branson:
