Small Business Success Requires Personal Sacrifice.
Achieving small business success requires personal sacrifice. What are you willing to sacrifice to launch and grow your small business?
This is a re-release of Episode 239 of The How of Business podcast with additional new content and edits.
Outline of this episode on the personal sacrifices required to achieve small business success:
- Definition and Meaning of Sacrifice: Henry Lopez, host of The How of Business podcast, defines “sacrifice” in the context of small business success: Sacrifice is defined as the destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else. Henry Lopez emphasizes that sacrifice is essential for small business success, particularly when launching a new business.
- Willingness to Make Sacrifices: A major obstacle to business success is the lack of willingness to make necessary sacrifices. Aspiring small business owners often struggle with giving up their current lifestyle, free time, or comfort in pursuit of their business dreams.
- Examples of Sacrifices: Sacrifices might include giving up hobbies, free time, sleep, and even time with friends and family. Henry explains that launching and growing a business often requires significant dedication and effort, sometimes at the expense of personal life.
- Financial Sacrifices: Aspiring business owners must have their personal finances in order to start and sustain a business. Henry highlights the importance of reducing debt, improving credit scores, and being financially prepared to go without a paycheck during the early stages of business start-up.
- Actionable Advice: Henry encourages listeners to list 2-5 specific things they are willing to sacrifice and allocate the time saved toward starting or building their business. He stresses the importance of being honest with oneself and remaining focused on these sacrifices to achieve long-term business goals.
Sacrifice – what are you willing to personally sacrifice to become your own boss and start your first business? If you are already in business, what are you willing to sacrifice further to grow it? On this episode of the top-rated podcast for small business, Henry Lopez shares his thoughts on the kind of sacrifices that, based on his entrepreneurship experience, you have to be willing to make in order to succeed as a small business owner – particularly when launching your first business.
The questions to ask yourself include:
- What are you willing to sacrifice in order to realize your dreams of becoming your own boss?
- Are you willing to sacrifice your quality of life today for something more in the future?
- Are you willing to give up hobbies, free time, family time and friend time all to devote to your business?
- Are you willing to work harder than you ever have at something?
The late Felix Dennis, author of “How to Get Rich” and other works, put it this way when sharing his thoughts on the type of people who become rich: “...a capacity to work so hard that your best friends mock you, your loved ones despair and the rest of your acquaintances watch furtively from the sidelines, half in awe and half in contempt.”
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Transcript:
The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.
Henry Lopez (00:42):
This is Henry Lopez, and welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is a short episode on the topic of personal sacrifices, the kindest sacrifices that in my opinion and experience you have to be willing to make in order to succeed as a small business owner, particularly when you’re launching your first business.
Henry Lopez (01:42):
Thanks for listening. So I want to start with the definition of sacrifice, not the religious definition, but the other definitions that I looked up. And one of them is the destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else. Another definition is something given up or lost. I do kind of like that first description or definition rather destruction or surrender because that’s why the sacrifice word, that word has the impact and the meaning that I think it does for most of us. A sacrifice is a pretty significant thing. It’s something that we really have to want to do to sacrifice something for something else. And I think at the heart of it, in my experience, in my own experience personally and in working with my clients, that is one of the things I’ve found to be one of the biggest obstacles to achieving success.
Henry Lopez (02:35):
Certainly I see it and observe it as one of the big obstacles that keeps people from getting started with launching their first business. What are they willing to sacrifice? We have a dream. A lot of us do. We have an idea? We certainly have that vision of what we’d like our life to be like if we were our own boss, but often we’re not willing to make the sacrifices to get that we’re not willing to delay gratification or change our habits so that it puts us in a position to actually launch our first business. So the question is, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to realize your dreams of becoming your own boss? Are you willing to sacrifice your quality of life today? How you live your life today, your lifestyle for that dream of something in the future? Is that something you’re willing to do?
Henry Lopez (03:27):
Are you willing to give up hobbies, free time, family time, friend time and all to devote to this new business that you’re trying to launch? Those are big items. Those are big sacrifices. Are you willing to work harder than you ever have at anything? That’s often, I think one of the misconceptions is that immediately when you launch your business, you’ll have time off and you’ll get to pay yourself this big salary. Well, in my experience, and for most small business owners, that’s nice if that happens early. But the reality is that we usually have to sacrifice some period of time and some of that money so that we can bootstrap our business so that we can start small and then grow over time. One of my favorite books is How to Get Rich by the Late Felix Dennis, and he’s got quite a few quotes out of that book that have stayed with me on this topic.
Henry Lopez (04:23):
He wrote that book and many other books. He was a wealthy British man who was a publisher, a very successful man, and he said this about his thoughts on how to become rich, how a person becomes rich. And he said that you have to have a capacity to work hard so hard that your best friends mock you, your loved ones despair, and the rest of your acquaintances watch furtively from the sidelines, half in all and half in contempt. I love that because I think it summarizes it so well. You have to be willing to put in the effort that most other people are not willing to. You have to be willing to make the sacrifices that most people simply are not willing to, and it’s a matter of how bad you want it, I think. And that’s why I think people achieve their success of transitioning into small business ownership at different points in their lives because it’s not so much about whether you’ve got the skills or the training or the education or even the money.
Henry Lopez (05:30):
It’s about when do you find it in yourself to make the sacrifices necessary and that are going to be required to get started on your journey to owning your own business. So I want you to think about, and I want you to take away from this, and what I’d like you to do, either now or later, you might be listening remotely, but I want you to list even right now if you can’t write it down, I want you to mentally think about two to five things that you are willing to sacrifice specific things either to get ready to launch your business or when you start your business, maybe you’ve already started your business. What are the things that you want to or need to continue and are willing to continue to sacrifice or to begin to sacrifice? Then I also want you to relate it to those things that you identify.
Henry Lopez (06:20):
I want you to list next to them how many hours per week specifically, I want you to be as specific as possible, how many hours per week you’re willing to sacrifice in those specific areas and dedicate them to launching your business or growing your existing business. And by the way, watching less tv, that’s a common and an easy one. So I challenge you to go beyond that. That’s I think is an easy one and an obvious one. That’s definitely time you could sacrifice. But think beyond that. Think about the time you spend with your friends. That’s a big one because again, we all believe, and certainly rightly so, that spending time with our friends and family is important to us, and it is. But are you willing to sacrifice some of that time that you might spend golfing this weekend or going out for a drink or whatever the case might be In your personal situation, are you willing to make a sacrifice there?
Henry Lopez (07:20):
Are you willing to sacrifice, sacrifice some rest and sleep? I know that’s another one that people would say, oh, you got to get your rest and your sleep. But you know what? Sometimes what it takes is staying up late and getting something done after you’ve put the kids to bed or after you’ve finished your day’s work, and that’s when you have time to put in an hour or two on developing your business plan or doing some of the tasks that need to be done to get ready for that business or doing some more research. So are you willing to make that kind of sacrifice? Time spent on hobbies is another one. Again, do you look at it as, well, I can’t give up these things because this is what keeps me sane and keeps me fit. All of those things are valid, and I’m certainly not telling you to sacrifice your health and fitness, but look at the things that are hobbies and are you willing to sacrifice some of those things at least temporarily to open up the time and the energy to focus on starting your business, the time you’re currently doing nothing like during your commute or on the ride to work.
Henry Lopez (08:29):
Are you instead leveraging that time to listen to a podcast or to read a book or to listen to a book on tape? Are you willing to make that kind of a sacrifice, that kind of an investment in that case and in one of the biggest ones, and nobody wants to hear it, but to, I believe you have to get your personal financials in order, your personal finances need to be in order. And you know what I mean by that? You’ve got to get that debt taken care of. You’ve got to get your credit score up. And part of it is, are you willing to sacrifice the lifestyle that got you there, perhaps to put yourself in a financial position so then you can invest the time and effort into a business? And sometimes that money or that financial position is about being able to go without a paycheck, for example, for a period of time while you’re opening, launching, and growing your business.
Henry Lopez (09:29):
So many times I chat with clients who just are not in the financial position to get started with the business. And the question then is, are you willing to make the sacrifice? And maybe it means that you can’t start your business today, but are you willing to diligently with a plan work on improving your personal finances? So let’s say a year from now or two years from now, you are in a financial position to launch your first business, are you willing to make that kind of a sacrifice?
Henry Lopez (10:23):
So again, to summarize what I’d like you to do, what I want to challenge you to do, if you’re in that place right now where you’re either frustrated because you haven’t been able to get started with your small business, or you just don’t seem to have enough time to keep growing your existing business, then I want you to write down two to five things, specific things that you are willing to sacrifice, and then identify how many hours a week that represents and be honest with yourself.
Henry Lopez (11:37):
Some of these things might be just a half hour or 15 minutes, but it adds up obviously, as you might as well imagine as you’ll see. And then keep that piece of paper or whatever you write it on where you can see it. Ideally on a daily basis, stay focused on, and this is for yourself, so be honest with yourself. What are you willing to sacrifice to get to where you want? What are you willing to give up?