A couple of days ago I met a friend I hadn’t seen in a while on my way to work. She made a remark along the lines of “I saw you recently won an award. You’re living the life. Some of us are stuck at the same company”
I quickly made her know that people usually only saw the nice parts of the startup life. Friends, today, the entrepreneurial path has become amazingly glamourized.
Entrepreneurs are portrayed as a special breed of people defying all odds and living the good life. The truth entrepreneurship is not a bed of roses. It’s not easy to start a business and grow it to the point of profitability.
For one every entrepreneur who succeeds, nine others fail, quit or give up. But you don’t hear about those. There are times I’ve wondered how I’ll pay my team at the end of the month.
For one every entrepreneur who succeeds, nine others fail, quit or give up. Click To TweetThe successful ones you see today started putting in the blood, sweat and tears years ago when no one knew about them. Not everybody is meant to be an entrepreneur. Not everybody can stand the frustration and pressures associated with running a company.
Some people excel at working for others and being given tasks to do. If you’re tempted by the apparent glamor of entrepreneurship please know that the grass on the other side is not as green as it seems.
Be original. Find what works for you and stick with it. #entrepreneurship
Hello Mr Sesi, I enjoy reading every piece of you’re write-ups and highly admire your efforts to elucidate young minds on Entrepreneurship.
I get inspired each time i read from your blog and facebook wall. Thanks for sharing those masterpieces from your journey as an Entrepreneur. Currently am working on becoming an entrepreneur but the business idea i have isn’t an innovation, but will require huge funding(am talking millions of Dollars) and that scares me a lot. Please any advice?
And just a personal question, would you have still chose be an entrepreneur had the grain mate project not worked out?
Hello Ibrahim,
Thanks for your comments. Glad to know you are on your path to becoming an entrepreneur. I hope you find good success in this area. ABout your venture, I suggest you start gradually by building out a proof of concept prototype of your idea. After the proof of concept, if it turns out that your idea works and has very good business potential, you will likely be able to find partners who might come on board as investors. The good thing is, you don’t need millions of dollars to prototype your idea.
There are many innovative ways to raise money for your new venture. I suggest you read the Ghana Investment Guide, which is a comprehensive guide on different financing options for new ventures in Ghana. Also check out my post on How to raise money for your new business.
About your last question, Sesi Technologies/GrainMate is the 4th company I started so I was already an entrepreneur before that came in.