If You Have a Chance to Start a Business Young…START YOUNG!

One of the most under-rated stress as a entrepreneur that usually never gets talked about aside from just the day to day business operations is actually stress at home AWAY from the business.  Don’t get me wrong…stressing about how to expand your business and how to manage the daily challenges facing your business is difficult enough…but how you deal with life outside of your entrepreneur journey is equally just as stressful. I’ve been married for just over a year now and I tend to leave my wife out ALL business related activities mainly because she has absolutely ZERO interest in sneakers – and this can be a problem at times.  You see, when you are married you are bound to a lot of commitment to not only maintaining a healthy relationship, but also you got to help out around the house.  I’m sorry to break this to you guys…unless you make millions to hire maids to help you around the house…house work will still be an equal task among you and your spouse.  The argument of you bringing in more money to the family doesn’t cut it. Needless to say… the time commitment into your marriage is literally as much as full time job.

This is why I bring to you today’s blog and here’s my million dollar advice to you. If you have the opportunity to start a business, please do it while you are young.  When you are young, you have literally nothing to lose but your time.  When you are young, the amount of time you have available to you seems infinite instead of finite relative to the future you.  I didn’t start Netmag particular young.  I started around when I was 27 years old and I would consider that pretty late.  Starting an entrepreneurial life is extremely time consuming.  No one will understand the life of an entrepreneur unless they are one themselves.  From outside looking in it looks like we are just having fun and living the life of doing what we love, but the same people never see the countless hours we spend constantly working.  I’m not just talking about the explicit work you see me physically doing such as packing shoes, answering emails or posting on IG sale posts.  I’m also talking about the implicit mental work you are constantly doing.  Like I said before…in the past several years I never really fully enjoyed a movie because I often fail to isolate myself from the business because I’m constantly thinking about the business. Things such as pondering about emails that I haven’t replied to yet, am I short on packing boxes or how much cash I need by the end of the week…  All this is mental stress and work planning in your head that doesn’t get shown.

I’m lucky to have a wife that understands me and fully supports me I say…90% of the time, but in the rare 10% of the time I get the treatment of me not doing enough around the house.  Ever since I started Netmag my social circle of friends has shrunk by atleast 90%.  Not because I don’t want to be social or have fun with friends, but when you are only given 24 hours in a day – you as a human can only do so much.  It’s how you allocate your time is partly what determines your success.  I chose to give up having many friends because I chose to prioritize my family and the business ahead of anything else.  Just these 2 things are enough to take up most of my available 24 hours.  Once again, why I suggest if you have a chance to start young is because if you are young you don’t have to devote as much time to family and having more of that 24 hours available to you.. it allows you spend more time on the business and to be honest…the more hours you spend building a business, the more likely you are able to succeed.  I have a few friends that had kids early in their life and as a result, they are unable to pursue their dreams of being an entrepreneur because they were put in a tough position to weigh family over business.  Man, I have so much more to share from this aspect but for the sake of keeping blogs short from a daily perspective, we will leave it here for now.  If you’re an entrepreneur and you feel me 100% on this one, please leave me a comment below because like I said, only entrepreneurs would understand each other.