Dreams of launching a start-up are often times quite magical, inspiring, yet very misconstrued. The first investor you may approach might not fund you, and in turn the accelerated growth you may have hoped for, may take the backburner for a while. Truth is entrepreneurship is far from all flowers and rainbows. As a matter of fact, the top 3 reasons why most start-ups fail are (1) Your product or service does not meet a real need, (2) Running out of cash and (3) Not having the right team. Launching a start-up is always a challenging and draining experience that requires sacrifice, dedication, and hard-work well before you can dwell in the luxe life. Heading a start-up is full of brick walls, costs, and rewards, even when business is booming.

Envision a to-do list so full of work the font is illegible. Now, double the amount of tasks on that list. That is what awaits you. In your first year of business, you will have to deal with way more than you thought you ever would. Since you likely won’t have enough capital to hire employees at this stage to help with the workload, you will have to take on designing your website, writing blog posts, implementing marketing strategies, looking for investors, dealing with taxes, and so much more. Chances are that you might simply not know how to do most of these things, which will leave you doing hours’ worth of research about how to do tasks such as embedding social media links to your website. In such situations your best bet would be to find resources available to entrepreneurs for help. Luckily, countless such resources are available for entrepreneurs in Montreal.

At the early stages of business development what you will soon realize is that you won’t be able to master every aspect of your start-up at once. Yes, you will quickly become an expert juggler but beware not to get so caught up in your work that you lose sight of what matters for your business to remain afloat. The aforementioned top 3 reasons of why most start-ups fail can help keep you on track as well as having a clear vision of where your business is heading.

This last tip is probably most important. As an entrepreneur you may find yourself complaining that 24 hours in a day is just simply not enough. You will have so many things to do, yet so little time to do anything. 10-hour sleep nights will become a notion of the past, along with breakfast and two hour lunch breaks. Time management is key, as well as, being surrounded by a supportive network of peers, mentors and family members.
If this hasn’t scared you off from starting your own business, great. This post is not meant to discourage you from following your dreams of being an entrepreneur. To the contrary, it is meant to prepare you for what awaits. Being an entrepreneur is difficult due to the uncertainty of the future that lies ahead and the amount of risk you must be able to take on.

Hopefully, for many of you with great risk will come great reward. The financial, emotional, and personal gains of entrepreneurship are countless, and it is a very fulfilling experience when you realize that all your sacrifices and hard work have paid off. ProTip: don’t give up on your entrepreneurial dreams. Truth is, it will never get easier, but you will get better.