Mike Andes explains why many small business owners quit within their first 3–5 years: early-stage entrepreneurship often means making less money and working more hours, causing emotional, psychological, and physical pain with no evidence of success. He uses the "digging a foundation" metaphor to argue that this difficult, demoralizing period is necessary to build a successful business.
The reason many small business owners will quit within their first three to five years is because when you're first getting the business started, you actually are going to make less money and work more hours and it's going to be painful emotionally, psychologically and physically. And you have no evidence of success as a result of that pain. And so your bank balance is going down, you're pouring the money into the business to be able to make more cash, improve it higher advertising, etc, but your bank balance is going down, you're working crazy, crazy hours. I think of it as digging a foundation. You actually have to go below the ground level and that's so demoralizing is there's a point in time when you're actually down inside the foundation. You're down in the hole looking up and seeing other people that are making more money, more successful, more work life balance. They're at on the weekends at the lake, having a great time and you literally are making less than them and working harder and it's demoralizing. And this, that foundation is what is required to actually build an awesome building.
