Reevaluating entrepreneurship
Remembering why I ever even started
If you want to sell something and be an entrepreneur but you’re still figuring things out, I feel you. I’ve been creating content online for about 2.5 years. I’ve written a lot, filmed videos, and have changed my mind about niches and digital skills plenty of times.
Today, I’m still not selling anything. It’s not like this is my only goal, though. I obviously crave a large audience that I can provide a lot of value to, whether that’s with my words or what I tangibly sell. I also crave a newsletter that people are subscribed to because they actually want to learn something from me.
I’m saying all of this not to nag or complain. Instead, I’m just sharing my personal journey as an entrepreneur. I’m still going to call myself one haha. I don’t think you’re considered an entrepreneur only when you make your first dollar (which I have, just not consistently with one product or service).
So in case anyone else is going through something similar, I want to put out this article and maybe you can derive some insight from it.
Let’s get started.
Recently, I haven’t enjoyed creating and I’ve been afraid of being my honest self… to be honest. Like, I’ve been afraid to be authentically me. I guess you can say I’ve felt extra vulnerable being vulnerable.
I know I’m throwing around a lot of words here that sound the same, but this is really how I’ve been feeling.
I’ve second-guessed a lot of the ideas that I’ve wanted to pursue. Whether those are article ideas or general business pursuits online.
Not going to lie, I was about to give up.
But for some reason, there’s one thing that keeps pulling me back to just keep going and still keep creating anyways. And it’s God. I’ve seen how God has my back and I know He wouldn’t want me to give up on something that means a lot to me.
Maybe this is just another down from the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur and creating.
This is what I’m doing to move forward when it comes to creating online, building something of my own and in general just relaxing and letting life take its course. Hopefully you derive some inspiration from this.
I’m done forcing things. I want creating to be easy. And it can be. Creating something of your own shouldn't be an uphill struggle every single day. It was starting to become that for me so I decided to stop doing what I was doing, which was this by the way:
Writing 2-3 articles per week
Tweeting every single day
Filming every single day
Networking every single day
Brainstorming ideas every single day
Working on my copywriting portfolio every single day
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I was doing. I think I was just burning myself out. What I’m trying to get at is that I personally wanted a more sustainable way of working towards things without feeling like I’m burning out every day.
I’m sharing all of this because, after all, the whole reason why I started writing in the first place was to share my journey in everything I was going through. Whether that was related to lifestyle or my process of becoming/being an entrepreneur. At some point along the way, I started caring too much about whether or not my writing was “good enough”, which transferred over to my process of creating value to others and questioning whether those things were good enough.
Whenever I would work on creating a free product, I would judge myself too harshly about whether or not it was good enough, or if my article made sense, or if my overall strategies for building online were good enough.
But at the end of the day, I made a promise to myself I’d never give up.
I’m not boasting, cause this is a general statement I’m making, but this is exactly what’s common in successful people/millionaires/entrepreneurs/people who achieve their goals–the relentless attitude towards moving forward no matter what.
On purpose, I’m making building online simple now.
Being a people person
First, I plan on being more of a people person. I can’t say that I already was because honestly I haven’t been. I made a goal to engage with a lot of people under comments and in DMs on X, but I haven’t been. I want to connect with others more because it helps you understand why others are creating and how they’re creating. This does two things for you. First, it clarifies things for you as to why you’re even building what you’re building in the first place. Second, it allows you to network with potential business and/or creative partners.
I’m treating the online space as if it’s another world, a world where you can make friends and have a social circle that you enjoy. It’s possible for it to be like this.
So if you’re building online, consider doing this. Engage with other people and get to know other people’s motivations for what they do.
You never know who’s insight can help you in your own journey.
Bringing the whole personality forward
Second, I think I’m genuinely done trying to control what persona I give off online. I just don’t care anymore. Every time I reevaluate how things are going, I always consider things different for me “this time around” because “now I’m really going to be my authentic self”.
But I never really defined what that meant. The word authentic is thrown around a lot so much that the true meaning of it gets lost when you’re building online or creating anything. Authenticity is letting your guard down sooo much to the point where you don’t overthink absolutely anything.
And I mean anything. Like zero, dude.
How you write is how you write, and how you speak is how you speak (in videos for example). People want the real version of you. Like, not the “real” version of you who just shows 60% of who they are and 40% still faked because you’re still trying to simulate how you think you should be acting. But the real 100% version of you like you would be in real life.
But here’s the catch.
Start being this way in real life. Like when you go to a coffee shop, at work, or you’re with friends shopping, be the realest version of you possible. Even though we think the online space is a completely different world, it’s actually a reflection of who you would be in real life–at least when we’re talking about authenticity. If you can be authentic, like all the way, in real life then you can be that online too.
The more you’re you, the more people will resonate with your brand (if that’s what you’re creating), your offers, your content, etc. Which brings me to my next point of personal branding.
Personal branding
When it comes to building a personal brand, I used to want to have it all figured out to the T. Like I’d obsess over my banner and bios for two hours. But that’s not all there is to personal branding… Personal branding comes from within you first. And this seems insanely cliche to write, but it’s true.
I’d say the core of personal branding is, again, the extent to which you can truly bring out the real parts of you online and how you use that to relate to others that are consuming the things you create.
Easier said than done.
So how I plan on doing this is by first writing (articles, notes, tweets) in such a way that I write how I’d speak.
Second, I plan on sharing parts of my life. In other words, I’ll give you 10% influencer.
Third, whatever I write about will always have one thing that I emphasize a lot and really care about: personality. This is because I just happen to care about personality a lot, not in some naive way but in a way where I believe that if you can leverage it intelligently and wholeheartedly then you can get some pretty great results. In other words, whenever I write entrepreneurship-related articles for example, I’ll lean (more often than not) into talking about personality and emphasizing why it’s important to consider myself as an entrepreneur. But this third point can be anything else for you.
All you have to do is ask yourself what you value as a person. For example, if you really value X, then how can you make that part of your personal branding or online endeavors overall.
It’s not easy to be an entrepreneur. Every time I feel like quitting, I remember one thing. The reason I started. I started because I wanted to prove to myself that I had value other than the knowledge I had gained from studying neuroscience for 4 years in college. I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t just some science guru that had his whole identity centered on becoming a physician. I also wanted to prove I could network with others, that the ideas I had could be brought to life, and that I can successfully change gears in a new direction.
As I keep creating online, I trust that things are falling into place. We can never fully know the outcomes of our actions and the only way we can know those outcomes is if we keep going. No matter what stage you’re in in your creation process, just continue on. It’ll all be worth it the more that you keep pushing forward.