An entrepreneur buddy recently was a guest on a podcast, and he shared the recording with me. He told the host about his journey and his learnings to date as an entrepreneur. One of the things he mentioned was that he’d had tunnel vision early on, which was a mistake. He kept his head down and executed as best he could. He didn’t grow up in an entrepreneurial family and didn’t know many entrepreneurs. He used his street smarts and hustle to figure it out . . . the hard way.
Looking back, he now realizes that his journey was more difficult than it needed to be because people who came before him did the exact same thing: built their businesses, heads down. They weren’t sharing what they were learning as they went along. My friend wants to change this approach, which perpetuates a cycle of people making the same mistakes and learning the hard way.
His journey as an entrepreneur is far from over, but he now makes a point of publicly sharing it and what he’s learned. He doesn’t have it all figured out, and he says so. But his hope is that someone listening will avoid some pitfalls and execute faster than he was able to. Or someone on the fence about entrepreneurship will be motivated to give it a try.
Kudos to him for being intentional about sharing his learnings in real time. All too often, successful founders wait until the end of their career to share their knowledge. It’s great that they do that, of course, but I think that doing it along the way gives the people who hear them information that’s more current and therefore more relevant—so it’s more helpful.
I hope more founders start sharing what they learn as they go!