How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue
Authors: Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
Success Isn’t a Straight Line
This is probably the first thing that any pursuing entrepreneurship needs to read and know. This chapter (19) opens with the statement “Overnight success stories make for great news, but how people achieve – and perceive – success can be complicated in reality. Have a plan, but hold it lightly.”
I could technically stop the reflection right there because that is a whole message! I hate to be like the rest of the world and blame everything on the internet, but perceived overnight success is so relevant. It’s empowering, but it can also be misleading to believe someone gained their success overnight.
If you go back far enough in an overnight success Youtubers videos, you can see that their success wasn’t literally overnight. In some cases these online personalities have YEARS of content before that first viral video. We truly have no real idea what it took for them to get there. Some level of anxiety and depression was probably a part of the equation.
We don’t talk about metal health enough. I am so glad that they included a section about Depression and Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs just think differently and all the time. It takes a lot for me to turn my brain off. Sometimes I’m thinking about marketing, brand development, product development, customer services, or the biggest one success.
Reviews can be one sided – leaning towards the negative side. This can be detrimental to a business owner’s mental state. One way to reduce overthinking is a great quote from Ross and Lemkin:
“Don’t obsess about getting to success so fast that you ignore your inherent interests.”
