“I failed my exam in some subjects but my friend passed. Now he’s an engineer at Microsoft and I am the owner.”– Bill Gates, Founder, Microsoft

1. You will need plan B, plan C, plan D… plan Z… plan infinity.

What you had envisioned in the beginning will have to evolve once real challenges and nuances become clear.

2. You and sleep will become strangers.

This is because at least initially, you will always be working. A business is certainly not a nine-to-five. It’s a 24 hour job. 

3. You will ALWAYS be on the job. 

When you are running your own venture, you are a representative of it no matter where you go. Even when you are out socialising with friends over drinks, you will need to be ready to give an impromptu presentation about your company because you need to get the word out. 

4. Your venture will be a mode of fulfilment of your dreams, not a money-making scheme.

In other words, money will not be the motivating factor here. The fact that you will be pursuing your dream means that you won’t have to sell your soul for a pay check at the end of the month. 

5. After years of persistence, hard work and sleepless nights, you will get success.

It is easy to give up when you hit the first low of running your setup, when there is no business coming in, your savings are running out and you fear that you will go bankrupt. But if you don’t give up too soon, you will reach the level of success you deserve. 

6. Your friends with 9 to 5 jobs will never understand that you are actually working. 

And they will constantly complain that you don’t hang out with them anymore.  

7. You will realise that the work you actually end up doing has less to do with what your venture is about, and more to do with making your business successful. 

This essentially means that what you love doing will be about 10 – 20% of what you actually end up doing in a business. The other 80 – 90% will involve marketing, making and revising business plans, hiring, firing and managing. 

8. You will have to give up on the idea of perfection. 

The Psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion once said, “In the pursuit of perfection, we often miss the good enough.” When we have a company, we have a vision for it. However, if we get too attached to the vision and want it to materialise perfectly, we might not notice that we are doing well even before we reach that level of perfection. 

9. Every day there will be a new problem to conquer. 

Your list of dilemmas is going to increase to the power of infinity.  

10. It is vital to find the right tools and partners who can help you grow your company to its full potential.

Once you enter the deep waters in your venture, managing everything like sales, marketing and finances will not be as much fun on your own. And soon enough, you will see that a successful business is hardly the outcome of a one-man army. A partner like IndiaMART could make your business function like a pro. 

Listen to the stories of lakhs of such entrepreneurs who have found their business solace through this service.