More people are pouring into the arena of small businesses to earn the right to call themselves entrepreneurs, but how many of them stay in the game long enough to seethe small businesses thrive?
An entrepreneur sounds like an important title, even more so now, but successful ones know the staggering amount of work and sacrifice required is what defines entrepreneurship.
We are at a time where entrepreneurship is overly glamorised and there seems to be an unrelenting fascination associated with it.
It is made to seem cool and celebrated.
The cottage industry is booming more than it did before.
From customised scrunchies and coffee cups to thrifting, there are thousands of concepts that are earning people a living or that extra dime and this is brilliant for our economies.
The problem, however, comes with the aspect of glamour associated with running your own business.
The goal, for many entrepreneurs today has been to reach this golden stage filled with accolades, keynote speeches and the millions.
However, if we are being honest, the need to be seen as successful or to be associated with success is thoroughly underwhelming the quality of services and products being produced.
Entrepreneurs today, unlike before, want overnight success and are not willing to put in effort.
A lot of small businesses on social media look rosy, well organised and running like a well-oiled machine.
There is little need to produce long-lasting and impactful products and more need to produce goods that will fly off the shelf continuously.
This is rarely sustainable and it causes damage to your mental health, your finances and sometimes the environment.
Working more than you rest leads to physical and mental exhaustion.
Being busy all the time does not equate to being productive and it is very much okay to want an 8am-5pm job.
It is very okay for you to want to work in an environment where work is divided into different departments so you don’t have to carry all the work burden by yourself.
You don’t have to kill yourself trying to achieve motivational page quality success.
Work on providing value to your customers and above all, remember to rest.
There is no reward for chronic exhaustion and mental exhaustion could make you resent something you are passionate about.
Try and find a balance between working and resting and understand that a lot of things on social media are staged.
People and their businesses are not that glamourous and it is completely normal for your businesses to take some time to take shape.
Understand that you need to filter out the fakeness and the glamorised hope from reality and use it to build yourself up.
Journalists
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
