Sprinting Can’t Be A Side Hustle

It’d be wonderful if we could read a few books on sprinting, its style and its histories, and then simply walk onto a track and, by some innate ability, run a competitive 100 meters.

Most of us, of course, would need a ramp-up period to compete, and some might not even finish.

The same is true for entrepreneurship. You can’t learn it fully in the classroom; you must get out and start running.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t study business. In fact, you’d better be solid on all the fundamentals if you want any hope of survival.

I highly recommend reading the following books:

• The Lean Start-Up
• Scaling Up
• The Great Game of Business
• Slicing Pie
• Never Split the Difference
• Getting to Yes
• Everything is Negotiable
• Lean Thinking
• Drive
• Anti-Fragile

Stuff your head with everything you’ll need for a running start in business. Once you do, you’ll have vastly increased your practical knowledge.

The first actions you take that involve selling and landing customers will teach you more about how business works and what makes a business succeed than any seminar. You’ll learn how to hone your message, respond to skepticism, and prove you can deliver on what ultimately matters to the customer: value.

Once you start collecting checks from those customers, you’ll experience a steep learning curve in managing cash flow. When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re committing your time and expertise, but also your capital. You’re taking the risk. You make your own rules and your own schedule, and the benefits and rewards are yours to claim, but in the end, cash is king. If you don’t make more than you spend, you won’t last.

But the problem is, to really, truly succeed full-time, you’re going to have to be sprinting at full speed comfortably every day.

There’s no way to learn how to do it except by actually doing it. And there’s no way to do it but at full speed. So I advise you to dive in with full commitment, but keep a life raft handy in the form of another source of income. You’re going to need time to ramp up, to test out your ideas, to start managing money and your business before the stakes are too high to fail.

This is best-practice advice. It’s not intended to be discouraging. We need entrepreneurs for our economy to thrive. Studies consistently show that the majority of job growth comes from companies less than five years old. We need people willing to take on the responsibility of generating sales and depositing checks, but we also need to give those people and their ideas the chance to succeed.

Many may have jumped in too deep, too soon, underestimating the financial strain, operational complexity, and relentless demands that come with building and sustaining a successful business.

I encourage a learning period to extend the chances of success for aspiring entrepreneurs. This doesn’t apply to everyone, or to every idea. Some are more explosive than others. But for most people, you’ll need to be ready to sprint every day if you hope to keep pace with the best runners.