DON'T QUIT: Your Breakthrough Is Almost Here

If you're an entrepreneur, you can't quit. You can't throw in the towel. It's going to be tough. It's going to be one of the hardest things you've ever done in your life. You're going to doubt yourself. You're going to wonder why you don't go back and get a job. But you can't quit because starting a business takes time. Even if you model success, even if you're the smartest person in the world, it still takes time. And you need to make sure that you're around when that success comes. Something you do right now may take a year before it comes back and that momentum grows, and you need to make sure you're still here. You can't quit. Milton Hershey, who started the Hershey Chocolate Company, he started his business when he was 18 years old. Philadelphia. He borrowed $100 from his aunt because he had no money to start up, and he started in caramels, and he worked 15, 16 hours a day. He'd make the caramels at night, and then he'd sell them on the streets during the day. The business in Philly failed, so he moved to Chicago and did the same thing, and that failed. He moved to New Orleans and did the same thing, and that failed. Then he moved to New York, tried it up again, and one day he got robbed on the streets in New York. He lost all his inventory. He had to close down the business and return home to Philadelphia. He had spent 6 years building these businesses in different states, and they all failed. He came back home to his family, and they disowned him. They said, "You're a failure. You're not part of our family anymore. You're not meant to be an entrepreneur." And so the only place he could stay was at the house of one of his former employees, Henry. And Henry gave him a place to stay and a little bit of money to keep going, 'cause Milton Hershey had a new idea for business. He wanted to get into chocolates. People said he was crazy. Like, "Hershey, this isn't for you. You're not meant to be an entrepreneur. You've worked 15, 16 hours a day for 6 years and you just had 4 failures. Go do something else. Go get a job." But he couldn't do it. He couldn't quit. He knew it was in his blood. He had to go after it. Chocolate at the time was only for the rich people, and he had discovered a machine that could make it affordable for everybody to do. And to consume. So he started chocolate, and the rest is history. He stuck around so he could achieve his success, even when people didn't believe in him, even when he had failure after failure after failure. He lost everything. He lost his family, but he kept going. He didn't quit. I know it's tough. I know it's hard as an entrepreneur. You may doubt yourself every day, wonder if you should stop. But just when the times are toughest, when it's darkest around you, you have to go one more day. You can't quit. If you're following your passion and you're helping people, you can't quit. The light is around the tunnel. It's there, I promise you. Even if you can't see it now, it's there. And you have to take that one more step, go one more day, so you can achieve it. Good luck.