The fantasy of entrepreneurship is easy money and a quick win. The reality is hard work, no guaranteed rewards, and a ton of uncertainty. In this video, Matt dives into why growing a business is a deep personal development practice that forces you to confront yourself—and why that’s a good thing.
There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series, watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!
Video Transcript:
Business Advice Video:
People don’t talk about this enough, but like growing an online business is the deepest personal development you will ever do. It forces you to come face-to-face with all of your own insecurities, your limiting beliefs, your desire for instant gratification. All of that stuff is going to come to the surface and become very obvious to you. And most people are just not willing to go through that process to get where they want to go, because it goes against their whole operating system. Like think about a nine-to-five job. You go to work, you trade your time, and then you get a paycheck. There’s a very short gap in between when you do the work and when you get the reward. But with an online business, it’s very different. You’re often going to be working really, really hard and doing a lot of stuff without any immediate reward. You might not get any financial rewards for months or even years, and that is very hard for most people to come to terms with.
Matt’s Review:
I would definitely say that growing a business is challenging. It does not offer instant gratification; it does not offer the assurance of gratification, right? You’re taking a chance, you’re putting money at risk, time, and money at risk and hoping for a reward. That’s the definition of entrepreneurship. It’s not for everybody for sure. And a lot of people imagine the part about being rich, and that’s what motivates them. But as soon as they run into the hard work part, they realize this isn’t what they thought it was gonna be. What they thought it was gonna be was easy, fun, quick, and then a lot of money. And it turns out to be hard, complicated, uncertain, not fun a lot of times, and certainly not a lot of money or any money. And that’s enough for a lot of people to drop out. The people who make it are doing it for a reason that’s more than just money. They’re motivated by a passion for the space that they’re in. It aligns with a hobby or an interest or a skill set that they have, they know they can deliver value. Or they’re motivated to do something better than what they’ve seen other people doing, or maybe they’ve worked for somebody who they felt like wasn’t doing it, whatever that business was the way it could or should be done, and so they wanted to prove that they could do it better. Almost always, in my experience, when you see a successful business owner, the motivation was more than financial. Yes, there’s certainly an aspect of being able to control your own financial destiny, but that, by itself, wanting to be rich, wanting to have a lot of money, it’s just not enough of a motivation to get you through all the hard stuff. So there’s got to be something more. So to his point about this being a personal development experience in growing a business, it is. You find out what you really care about, you find out what really motivates you, you find out how hard you’re willing to work on something. And the answer sometimes may not be what you were hoping to hear or hoping to find out about yourself, but that’s okay. Then you find out, and you go in a direction that does make sense for you. But if it is a fit and you do want to do it and you can push forward, then it can be a really amazing experience.