7 Reasons You Can’t Give up

I called my dad in tears. I’ve been hustling, building my coaching practice and freelance writing business, working 10–12 hour days. Most of that work doesn’t see compensation. I was in the early, proof of concept days.

My friends who were also laid off due to the pandemic were getting back into jobs and earning salaries again. Meanwhile, my savings kept getting lower and lower with each month.

“Should I go apply for jobs?” I asked, in tears.

“Pff, don’t do that,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“You haven’t put this much work in to quit at the end of it.”

“I just don’t know if this is the end of it.”

“We’re always at the end of it. Plus, you’re learning something. February is shit for everyone.”

My dad is an entrepreneur himself, with more than 30 years of experience, and has provided an abundant life for himself and his family. That blood runs in my veins. His encouragement means everything.

Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who doesn’t believe in me. I am surrounded by support. I’m encouraged to be in business for myself and I haven’t had a negative comment from a single person or anyone try to dissuade me. But somewhere along the line, I internalized the common narrative that I’m a spoilt millennial and I’m wasting my time.

Sometimes I need a reminder of why I do this. If you need a reminder too, this is the article for you.

I know that what follows might come off as hustle porn, and although I like Gary Vee, I don’t want to encourage hustle culture for the sake of hustle culture. What critics of hustle culture don’t get is that some people really aren’t made for anything else. There’s a Gary Vee quote I’ll paraphrase because the video I saw it on is somewhere in the bottomless Instagram rabbit hole: It doesn’t matter if I make no money, as long as I can keep going, I’ll be happy. Doesn’t matter if the business is great, or if the business is terrible, this is what I love to do.

I feel the same way. I love what I do. I know it’s needed. I’ve seen the results with my clients and it’s just the beginning. I’m hustling because this is my life’s purpose and it brings me joy.

With that clarified, let’s get into the seven reasons you can’t give up when entrepreneurship, coaching or freelance writing gets hard.

1.Ready is a decision

I don’t know enough. I don’t have enough experience. I’m not ready. LIES.

How do you get experience? By doing the thing. How do you learn? By doing the thing. How do you get ready? You decide. If you wait for the right time, you’ll never start. There will never be the right time, enough money, enough time, the perfect idea, or perfect conditions. The best time to start was yesterday, and the second-best time is today. Decide you’re ready, be honest about your skills with potential clients, and work your ass off to get them results. Plus, the more life you live, the more you’ll realize that no one knows what the fuck they’re doing, and we are all just figuring it out one day at a time.

2. You’re working a plan

This is why you hear actors at the Oscars thanking “the guy who let me park in the gas station when I was sleeping in my car for three months” or the breakfast place that “let me wash dishes for a free breakfast”.

You’re going to go through it. That’s part of the process. There’s an entry fee that most people won’t pay. There are hard sacrifices up front, and more in the years to come. Get ready to pay the price, make it part of your plan. Plan for it to be harder than you think. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But it’s not.

3. Failure is not an option

Some people aren’t made for the 9–5. Which honestly doesn’t even exist anymore; truly it’s more like an 8–5 or a 9–6. For me, the idea of going to work in an office is like facing my own mortality. I don’t care if it will always be 12 hour days — as long as I’m the one calling the shots, I will be content to work my ass off until the day I die. Just please don’t make me follow someone else’s arbitrary rules to build some else’s dream, even if the working hours are more regular.

I heard this quote from Rachel Bell: Easy choices equal hard life; Hard choices equal easy life. And that’s true to a point, however I don’t expect my hard choices to lead to an easy life, just a rewarding one. Sure, there are different rewards for different choices. Pick your poison.

4. Life has a lesson plan

Life is the curriculum that teaches you how to be the type of person you need to be in order to live the life you want. Rock bottom teaches more than mountaintops ever will. It’s going to be messy at first. You are not the type of person that can run a multi-million dollar company yet. You aren’t the type of person to run a 3-hour marathon. No one was born fully formed as the person who could achieve their goals. The journey is necessary for success to happen. The struggle to get there is the curriculum that will help you evolve into that person.

Life has a lesson plan. Study, fail some tests, get back up, brush yourself off and keep going. After all, C’s get degrees.

5. Fast forward

Fast forward to your death bed, and ask your future self: are you glad you did this? Even — especially — if it doesn’t work out? Would your deathbed-self wish you had played it safe, hadn’t lived so loud, hadn’t tried to chase those dreams? I bet not. This struggle is what is contributing to a life well-lived. Fast forward to the gratitude for the experience that you will feel down the line.

6. You are serving others

Whether you are writing, selling a product, coaching or offering a service, you are serving others. There is a need that you are filling. If you went back to an office job, you would be letting down the people you are passionate about helping. If you’re a writer, your voice would no longer be out there, offering guidance or humor when readers need it most. If you’re an entrepreneur, the products you’re producing and selling are making people’s lives easier or improving the quality of their lives, whether it’s a spill-free sippy cup or a graphic tee company. Everything has a purpose. When you are a coach like me, you see the direct impact of your work on your clients’ confidence, breakup recovery, career, and more. Keep doing the work the world needs that you, out of anyone else on Earth, was called to do. You’re called to do this for a reason.

7. Seven falls make a rider

In the horseback riding world, there’s a saying that taking seven falls off a horse makes a rider. But I want to underscore that you only get to seven falls if you keep getting back on the horse seven times. Get back on the horse. A winner is just a loser that tried one more time. Keep going.

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Persistence and devotion will let you achieve anything. Success is inevitable if you never stop trying. Remember, not everyone would choose this path. Most people are content to do their job, collect their 401K and watch the game on the weekends. But not you. The fact that you WANT this means that you can do it.

Keep going, my friend. You’re made for more. You’re built to off-road, baby! Now, go blaze your own trail.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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