Entrepreneurs starting out need to prepare themselves for an unwanted reality: It’ll take about 5 years to build a successful business from scratch. The “Zero” to your first $1 million in revenue typically takes time.

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You’re going to need a LOT of GRIT to survive that journey.

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On day one, you likely have a written plan, maybe some visuals in a PowerPoint, and what you believe to be a really good idea.

You’re taking the idea to market to get validation from prospective customers, though you have nothing yet for them to buy. You’re trying to ensure if you build it, would the customer care? Is this solving a problem they would pay to solve?

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👉Usually takes a good six months to get that done.

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Then, if you can't fund it yourself, you'll likely turn to angel or early-stage investors who'll take what you've done to date and believe in you enough to invest. They’ll never give you a lot of money, but they give you a little to get started and for you to go on to prove a milestone or two.

Now, you go build your very first version of your product or service. The first version rarely survives, but it's a prototype.

In entrepreneurial speak, we call this your minimal viable product. Minimal meaning you didn't spend the most money, viable meaning it has to work. The only purchasers at this stage are early adopters who hate the status quo already.

So you get a few customers, but not a lot of customers. Most people won't buy until your product or service looks near perfect and in a pretty package, but those early adopter customers help you iterate that product into versions 2, 3, and 4. You need these early adopters to survive and begin to thrive.

Along the way, you may need to raise more money. So you're constantly pinging between trying to find sources of capital, hiring the team, completing an iteration with your early adopters, delivering on early promises and finding data to help you make decisions.

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👉This phase of the journey usually takes between 1 and 2 years.

• You're beginning year three and finally have a "real" product.
• You have better sources of capital.
• You're ready to take your message to market.

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Now, you have to discover what medium works best to get the message to customers. You’ve got to give them some reason to desire what you’ve built because it's better than what they're doing. And you’ve got to give  them a reason to buy. You need a meaningful point of difference from the status quo.

For B2B services, a customer may take three to six months to make that purchase decision. Sometimes, it can take less time - but you’re not in control of the time it takes a customer to make a buying decision.

You could have a lot of interest, but there are no purchasers yet. So, as you work through this next phase of the startup journey of 3 to 6 months, you start getting customers. You start getting traction. You're trying to change perceptions of people. You're trying to build a team.

Typically, when you start, the team you can afford isn't the team you ultimately want. It's what you can afford. And so you are constantly giving the rallying cry to your team, encouraging them to give you their discretionary effort to help you find success.You're out there talking to customers. You're trying to talk to investors. You're working at night iterating what you're building.

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⏱️That all takes time.

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You may get a lot of ‘attaboys’ and even some local or regional press in years two and three. But I see a number of entrepreneurial companies in the US that are getting positive press with no real earnings. The earnings often don't show up in any meaningful way until years 3, 4, or 5.

I say all this because many entrepreneurs quit at the eleventh hour. They were close to the breakthrough. They had a good idea, but they just got worn down by all the failures and long hours.

They didn’t have the GRIT to keep going because their expectations didn’t meet reality. They entered entrepreneurship thinking it’d take months, not years. In my experience, it rarely happens that fast.

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It always takes longer than you think, it's harder than you think, and it takes more money than you think to move from concept to success.

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Entrepreneurship requires a massive amount of time-based GRIT. You're going to get knocked down dozens of times, feel like you're at the absolute end of the rope, and nothing's going to work.

So unless you're willing to commit years of your time into something, it's unlikely to turn into something significant.

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