everyone talks about ideas funding growth and freedom
but once you’re actually running the business what part hit the hardest
decision fatigue cash flow people stress loneliness or something else
curious what caught you off guard and what you’d do differently now
What’s the hardest part of entrepreneurship no one warned you about?
byu/Storefries inEntrepreneur
Posted by Storefries
24 Comments
Book keeping
Getting paid
For me it was decision fatigue. Not the big decisions, the constant small ones. Pricing, priorities, follow-ups, what to ignore.
What I’d do differently is lock in fewer decisions early so I wasn’t re-deciding the same things every day.
Not having a lambo.
That sometimes it’s both easier AND more profitable to go back to the day job.
The sheer mental exhaustion from constant decision making and feeling like everything rests on your shoulders is tough. I’d definitely build a stronger support network and delegate more from day one.
So for me it was delegation, and getting what I needed from a broader team. Not a natural skill and one I am still developing. As things scale, if you can’t delegate then it all falls apart pretty quickly.
Getting traffic to website and before starting: Validating your business idea !
Over the past three months, I’ve been working on a side project that started almost by accident. While helping a cybersecurity client with something else, I realized there’s no single place that gives a clear, daily overview of relevant cyber breaches.
Following
Knowing when to quit a project
Shitty cofounders
If you’re going at it solo, gotta be the loneliness. Being excited about building/doing something new and exciting and realizing no one else really cares what you’re doing.
For me it was the quiet loneliness. Not being alone, but realizing there’s no one to really share the weight with once you’re the final decision-maker. Friends mean well, but they don’t fully get the stress when things are uncertain and it’s your responsibility. That part caught me off guard more than the long hours or money stuff.
Not for me because I love this part but it’s the thing mentioned the most by friends, decision making. If you find it hard to make decisions, this might not be the path for you. Because you’ll be making decisions with varying levels of information and varying levels of data about if you were correct or not after the fact.
Sleeplessness, being misunderstood and how hard it is to keep going even when it doesn’t make sense.
Loneliness. Didn’t see that coming.
Trying to support a team of people
Great question OP, thank you for posting
For me, self doubt creeps in a lot of the time, think this stems mainly from the isolation myself!
Still, it doesn’t stop me progressing! Onwards!
Thank you again
That sometimes u can work the hardest u have ever done so in ur entire life and it still doesn’t work out.
When your spouse asks you when is this going to end, and your relative ask u to find a “proper job”.
When your friends go for holidays, buy houses but u are stuck in debt with zero idea if this is gg to work or not
When your employees leave untrue or negative Glassdoor review, but u cannot retort back because society think company is always the bad guy.
When you feel like throwing up when you think of work.
When you just go through the motion but deep down you are a zombie.
Delegating
The loneliness of it all. Because it all comes down to you!
What surprised me most was how much I actually *grew* from the hard parts. The constant decisions, the responsibility, even the stress forced me to get clearer, more disciplined, and more intentional. Looking back, that growth alone made it worth it.
acho que a sobrecarga, é sempre muita demanda…
I feel like finding substitutions once youve already grown accoustomed to a certain practice. When i first started with my business it was spread by word of mouth. That worked well for a while but then the demand grew so i had to change my suppliers and machinery. After a while profit stagnated. then i had to lean more into marketing i used some coldemailing services but the return was low, so i switched to emailverifier that’s worked well till now.
It’s been fatiguing making these small decisions again and again it feels like i cant get accoustomed to a particular thing for a noticable amount of time 🙁