The mental game of entrepreneurship
It's not about hard work. It's about believing in the ending of your story.
Hi, it’s Melissa, and welcome (back) to “your founder next door”, a weekly publication with stories and tidbits of my human journey bootstrapping eWebinar to $5m ARR. No BS, just straight-up truth bombs on what it’s like to build a company without an abundance of resources or friends in high places.
I used to think entrepreneurship was a game of hard work and productivity. Turns out, it’s just part of the equation.
I thought that if I just kept grinding, showing up, and doing all the things I was supposed to do… eventually the results would come.
I’ve brought ideas to life, generated revenue, and closed sizable deals. I sold a company at 36 years old. By most measures, I’ve done pretty okay.
I wanted more. A lot more. But there was always this voice in my head telling me that I was dreaming too big, and that I wasn’t capable of more because of some external circumstances. Whether that be the absence of an Ivy League education, lack of professional network, or limited experience.
I knew the voice was there. It was loud. But I kept working thinking that I could outwork it and prove it wrong. This even sounds ridiculous as I’m typing it. How can anyone outwork a conclusion they’ve already decided?
The harder I worked, the more the work started to feel like meaningless labor because I didn’t believe it was getting me closer to the place I wanted to go. I was running on a treadmill without a reward in sight.
That limiting belief became an invisible cap on everything I did.
I was reminded of this when I recently read The Productive Attitude Patterns of Billionaires by one of my favorite writers here, Dr. Julie Gurner, who coaches some of the most successful people on earth. She wrote about the mental patterns that separate billionaires from everyone else.
It’s how they move through the world. They don’t see walls. They see problems to solve.
They don’t ask, can I do this? They ask, how do I do this?
They take the shot because they’re focused on what happens if it goes right, not what happens if it goes wrong.
The piece is about billionaires, in theory. But it applies to all of us, no matter what we’re building or where we are in our journey. It’s a glimpse into how hyper successful people think, and we can take whatever resonates from it.
This isn’t all or nothing. It’s a delusional vision spectrum. You get to decide where you sit on it based on how you define success. It’s a frame of reference to see where you are right now compared to where you could be.
💡 Here’s the thing. I consume a lot of founder content from multiple platforms. Nobody ever tells you to work harder. You know how to do that. The people who’ve made it will tell you, almost without exception, that the game is played in your head.
Jesse Itzler, one of the most respected entrepreneurs and endurance athletes alive, has said in interviews that even when he had nothing, there was never a doubt in his mind that he would be successful. It wasn’t hope or optimism. He believed it. That’s how he’s always moved through life.
When you believe you’re on the path to get to where you want to go, the hard work doesn’t go away. But it does stop feeling like labor. You stop seeing the work as something painful you have to do. You start seeing it as the puzzle you’re solving on your way to a destination you already know you’re going to reach.
When you don’t believe you’re going to get there, every hard day feels like proof that you never will. The work becomes meaningless. Why am I doing this? What’s the point?
You want to give up. You plateau. You self-sabotage in a hundred small ways, sometimes even without realizing it.
I know this because I lived it for over a decade.
The greatest thing about perspective is you can change it without changing your circumstances. Yet, that internal shift completely rearranges your external reality. It can be as easy as flipping a switch.
The most successful people I’ve ever known are the ones who keep going when giving up seems to be the only option. All of them have had moments where if they gave up, nobody would say they didn’t try hard enough. But they kept going anyway against all odds. What else is there to lose?
I’m not saying that hard work always pays off. It doesn’t.
But if you believe this is as far as you’re going to go, then giving up makes perfect sense. Why keep banging your head against a wall you’ve already decided is the end of the road?
If you believe the ending of your story is already waiting for you, then the wall in front of you isn’t a wall. It’s a door. You just have to figure out how to open it.
That’s the difference.
You don’t have to be a billionaire. You don’t have to be Jesse Itzler. You just have to be you.
If you want to be successful, but haven’t seen the success you’ve always wanted (like me), then know this:
In order to have the success you want, you have to believe in the ending of your own story.
Till next time,
— Melissa, your founder next door ✌️
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As a first-time founder this line really resonated: "You self-sabotage in a hundred small ways, sometimes even without realizing it."
I sometimes struggle with feeling guilty for "not working" or "doing" enough. But I'm starting to notice that working from "expansion" with an inherent belief of I can do this works better than working from "contraction".
Thank you for writing this!
I really enjoyed the strikeout on the word delusion. I woke up one morning with a thought, that entrepreneurship is simply the process of manifesting our own delusions. It has been my mantra ever since.