Entrepreneurship is non-linear

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Fasten those seatbelts: the ride of entrepreneurship comes with ups and downs—many of them. From unexpected logistics problems to sourcing, staffing, financing, and quality issues, you never know what challenges a new day will bring.

When Janna and Shira started Flourist, selling premium quality, traceable grains, beans, and freshly milled flour, they didn’t anticipate so many uphill battles. In the early days, they shipped their goods on Greyhound buses, hand-sewed packaging bags, and went through never-ending hoops before getting their business permits.

Sometimes the lows feel like the whole world is conspiring to keep you from succeeding.

“It could be little, like our mixer breaking the week before Christmas, or a whole batch of bread not working out, or it could be major like the city revoking our occupancy permit on the day we opened our bakery over one missing check mark on a form,” Janna adds. They admit that the highs and lows take a toll on their mental health, typically manifesting in stress or sleepless nights.

How to build resilience
While entrepreneurship may always be fraught with uncertainty, the early stages of starting a business are likely to come with more lows than highs. It’s important to persevere through those bumps, as they typically switzerland phone data entail solving foundational problems that are key to getting your business up and running, like figuring out complicated logistics or finding the right suppliers. Getting those early, hard problems right will pay dividends in the long run.

For Janna and Shira, sourcing and shipping their products are problems of the past. But they’ve learned to expect that other lows are bound to show up just as much as the highs. Luckily, the larger their business gets, the more things steady out. Janna remembers reading a quote recently that said ‘How do we build endurance? We endure.’ “I think that’s just it. You just need something, anything, to get you to the next step,” she says.

“Flourist
Flourist founders Janna Bishop and Shira McDermott at their warehouse in Vancouver, Canada.
Natalie Gill of Native Poppy knows the importance of resilience, too. When she started her flower business, she drained her savings, plunged into debt, suffered staff shortages, and experienced failed expansion attempts that impacted her health, sleep, and personal relationships.

“There are good days and there are bad days, and to get to where you want to go, you’ve got to climb through a lot of shit piles to get there. It’s not glamorous,” she says.

To be able to grow, you have to be okay with being uncomfortable. And I’m uncomfortable all the time. But it’s fulfilling in a way that no other job has ever been to me.

? Learn from eight resilient entrepreneurs who’ve recently had to flex this muscle.