"If it were easy, everyone would be a gajillionaire."
It's something I find myself telling business owners nearly every week.
-When a brand owner tells me they are struggling with high ad costs, or a plateau.
-When a service business loses a big customer or account.
-When an owner is struggling with inventory management, or faces a cash flow crunch.
-When market conditions change and a startup that seemed destined for the moon suddenly ends up on life support.
It's probably my favorite aphorism because it's so obviously and observably true. Most entrepreneurs are not gajillionaires and never will be. Most of them fail.
And the fact that succeeding wildly in business is so hard is actually great news for you.
Why? Because if you do succeed in your business, you create a whole lot of value.
Think about it: value is driven by scarcity.
And real winners in the world of business are scarce. So if you defy the odds and do win big, it's worth a lot both to you, and to other people.
Meanwhile, if winning were easy, the outcome of winning would be far less valuable for all.
So thank God that succeeding in business is hard.
And also, thank God that you get to experience that struggle.
Because it means you are in the arena...
Fighting for your life...
And that's exactly where you're supposed to be.
The struggle isn't an unpleasant side effect of entrepreneurship, it's the entire point.
And when you start to realize this...
The struggle no longer feels like one. It's just the nature of what you do.
That's a powerful reframe. You stop operating from a place of panic or fear....
And you stop experiencing crises.
The truth is that crises are virtually nonexistent in business.
Instead, what most people call crises are simply problems or challenges that need to be solved.
And solving those problems is how you succeed while others fail. The better your solutions, the more you win. The more you win, the more complex your challenges become...
And the only real limiter to your growth and ultimate economic upside here...
Is whether you can keep solving challenges at an increasingly higher level, or if you hit a wall.
You...and your team. Because that's the other part.
As you grow, the challenges become too complex, too numerous, or too multifaceted to solve on your own.
Which is why you need to build a team and focus on hiring great people.
That alone is its own challenge. It's also hard. Which is why a great team is so incredibly valuable.
I don't know if it's fair to say that what I've described here is the whole game in business...
But it certainly is a big part of it...
So the more deeply you embrace the struggle, the better your chances are of defying the odds.