It might be slow, but trust it!

“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast!”

I believe it’s fair to say that from the day we could count we’ve been on the grind to achieve. Driven by social conditioning and possibly pushed by our parents, most of us strive continuously to do better, and perhaps even do more than we are capable of. From good grades, to meeting performance goals at our workplaces and keeping up with the joneses, it’s a never ending struggle. Add to that the pressure fueled by social media.

The travel vloggers, the crypto bros, the YouTube OGs, they all seem to build up this expectation of a lavish lifestyle that requires little to no work and makes you constantly wonder what on earth are you doing stuck behind a desk 8 to 16 hours a day, living an absolutely tasteless life. The seconds tick away, eating at you while you wonder where you went wrong. You took the leap of faith, you put in the hours, you did what they said would work. But you have nothing to show for it! At least not yet!

All good things take time

While it may be true that some of us tend to strike gold at the first attempt, we need to keep in mind that the statistics of success cannot be measured by outliers. The tens or even hundreds of entrepreneurs and prospectors that take the risk and make it big in the first few attempts are but a merely insignificant percentage out of all those who try.

As a statistic, 0.01% to 0.05% of all channels on YouTube were able to earn more than a million dollars, and it is estimated that less than 1% of prospectors made life changing fortunes during the California gold rush.

So what does it take to be in this successful few? Taking the leap. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take! So simply, put in the effort, diversify your options, take risks, try new things, tweak, rinse, repeat, until you reach your goals. I believe your mentality should basically be to either make it or die trying. And as long as you’re willing to put in the effort and keep working through your failures, a door will eventually open, which leads me to my next point. The “Luck” factor.

The “Luck” factor

Success follows effort, but effort alone is not sufficient. In my opinion success is a product of “Effort” and “Luck”.  Giving it all you got but not being at the right place at the right time gets you nothing or at least very little. This has been the case more times than not. And being at the right place and time depends on multiple factors, including economic, geopolitical and even social and emotional. We are after all emotional beings and tend to take decisions based on how we feel. All these factors working out at the same time and also aligning with the effort you put in, could be summarized as luck.

 

100% Effort x 0% Luck = 0% Success

 

Similarly all the luck and no effort brings you a big fat zero as well. The equivalent of the least effort and most luck could be exemplified by a person winning the lottery, and even in that case he needs to put in the effort to go to the vendor and pick the winning ticket.

 

0% Effort x 100% Luck = 0% Success

 

That being said, if you put in the max effort consistently over a long period of time, you give yourself a higher likelihood of being in the right place and right time at least once to be blessed with the luck you need to strike gold!

The goal is the journey

Then the question arises, how do you consistently give your max effort without burning out? My answer to this is to focus on the journey. When I launched T-shirt GEEK with my best friend we sought after the advice of a successful entrepreneur in the Sri Lankan fashion industry who owns a major high fashion brand, and the first question he asked us is are you sure you have what it takes? He asked us if we believed we’ll be driving Porsches in five years, and asked us if we have the guts to keep going even if our dreams end up in dust?

And like he rightfully said, my Porsche never came in five years, instead I was faced with many challenges. I have achieved very few of the original goals I set out to achieve. But with time I realized that I cannot compare myself to entrepreneurs from different markets, doing different things than I did. There were reasons I made the decisions I made and reasons why they were not as lucrative as I would have liked them to be. But here I am fifteen years later, still going on, still keeping the faith that someday I will drive that Porsche.

So how do you do it? Keep your focus on the road ahead, one step at a time and take the path you enjoy the most. Build a business around things you are passionate about, add things you enjoy doing to your everyday to do list and build your ventures in a way that makes everyday fun and something you would love to wake up to. If you’re building a team hire individuals that are pleasant and exciting to work with.

Of course there will come times when you have to grit your teeth and face many storms, but having the right team and mindset will help you get through them as if they were a mere breeze. I no doubt enjoyed my journey here and there is many a found memory. There definitely were times of anxiety and dread along the road, but that comes without saying and the people I surrounded myself with helped me weather the storms.

Just don’t give up

At the end of the day, I believe that you are still looking for the answers to the many questions of life just as much as I am, and the doubt possibly is setting in, whether you made the correct decision to perhaps be an entrepreneur or go your own way, or whether you will ever get to where you want in life. To that I say, “Just don’t give up! Keep moving!”. If the going is tough, grit your teeth and claw your way through. The light at the end of the tunnel will inevitably come. The stars will align to bless the toil of your hands, your “luck” will soon show up and the next strike of your pickaxe will be on a vein of gold!

Being honest, it does require a certain a degree of delusion to keep yourself going when the darkness seems never-ending. Still trust yourself to pull your weight through and trust the process. It will build you, it will mold you, it will guide you and reveal the way. Keep the faith and push on through!

Wishing you all the luck as always! Until next time!