What does it take?

Week 16: How much do you need to give up

Something that I’ve found myself thinking about time and time again recently is this concept of sacrifice. The entrepreneur’s journey basically only starts once you’re ready to embrace risk without any guarantee on what lies on the other side of the journey. You have to be set to embrace whatever comes along with it, stress, emotional rollercoasters, failure...all of it.

No one wants to be broke, be in debt, or lose that feeling of freedom and independence you’ve worked up until this point in your life to create. But the entrepreneur’s journey often leads you right back into a battlefield facing all of the above.

What are you willing to give, or rather, give up, in order to pursue the thing you’re passionate about? Is sacrifice really the only way?

Sure, some people have a family fortune to fall back on, a partner’s support, or a few decades of savings to keep them afloat in those early, trying times. But for the rest of us, the foreseeable future doesn’t look so sweet.

I’ve been personally trying to gauge what sacrifice actually is, and what’s “enough” to give up during the process. Is it not buying any luxury items? Not spending any money on holidays? Not eating out more than once a month? Cancelling memberships and subscriptions? What defines the correct parameters of sacrifice on the little (or not so little) luxuries of life, the stuff you’re apparently meant to endure while building a business?

I was listening to Emma Grede’s podcast this morning where she was interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk, and he brought up this exact notion of sacrifice in the entrepreneurial journey. His take, essentially, is that most people are too concerned with changing their lifestyle and keeping up with the Joneses to ever become entrepreneurs. Sure, those people clearly aren’t built for it, but the point he’s making is that so many people are more concerned with living with certain status or lifestyle in the present than with living with less for now, in order to take a chance on a life fulfilled with more purpose and, potentially, a lot more access to luxuries later on.

When framed that way, my immediate reaction was, ok well obviously it’s better to go for the latter. But again, easier said than done. For me it’s less about the “obvious” answer and more about understanding what the actual parameters of sacrifice “needed to succeed” are, and the very human desire of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

What is enough and what isn’t? Do you genuinely need to be struggling HARD to reach a certain level of success?

Here’s where I’ve landed, at least for now.

I don’t think sacrifice is one big grand gesture. I think it’s a series of small, boring, unglamorous decisions that nobody claps for, and honestly, most of them don’t even feel like sacrifice in the moment. They just feel like Tuesday.

What I’m slowly figuring out is that the sacrifice that actually matters isn’t the iced latte or the dinner out, it’s TIME. I could cut every small luxury out of my life for a year and it wouldn’t move the needle half as much as being honest about where my hours are actually going. That’s the harder question to sit with, not what am I willing to give up buying, but what am I willing to give up doing.

I also don’t think it’s meant to be permanent, and when positioning it like this, makes it digest a lot easier. I’m in a grind season right now is a completely different mindset to I will deprive myself forever or ‘til who knows when, and somewhere along the way those two things get blurred into one. The first is sustainable. The second is just a slower route to burnout and resenting the very thing you built.

And maybe the most honest thing I can say is that comparing my sacrifice to someone else’s isn’t useful at all. And envying people who can build with a whole support system at home paying their bills, is just their situation, not yours.

My best takeaway on this as it stands is, to be honest with yourself about what you’re actually optimising for, purpose and upside later OR comfort right now? Because trying to fully have both at once is usually how people end up with neither.

Honestly, if you guys have thoughts on this, I’d love to hear how you’ve framed this situation for yourself. Let me know in the comments.

A Final Note

Another book recco this week for ya…

If you want the full counter-argument to the “grind forever, sacrifice everything” mindset, pick up Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. It’s not really about entrepreneurship, but it completely reframes how you think about trading your present for your future, and it made me question whether some of the sacrifices I default to are actually necessary, or just a habit dressed up as discipline.

xx KP