📈 Impatience Kills Your Business

Read time: 4 minutes

Last week, I spent 2 days at a VC fund's founders retreat leading sessions on how to use social media to grow their businesses.

I had a couple conversations that stopped me in my tracks. I met two founders who were 4-5 years in and are doing >$50m in revenue between them.

But each of them had spent 2 years iterating their products before they really took off.

2 years!!

It made me reflect on my own impatience.

Despite knowing better, I find myself wanting that hockey stick growth now, not in 2-4 years.

I know I’m not alone here.

It's so easy to get impatient when your feed is full of overnight success stories.

"ChatGPT hit $1B in revenue in 10 months!" → No, OpenAI was founded in 2015. They spent 7 years building before ChatGPT.

"Shopify became a unicorn overnight!" → No, they were founded in 2006 and didn't hit $1B valuation until 2013.

"Canva is worth $40B after just a few years!" → No, Melanie Perkins pitched investors 100+ times over 3 years before even getting funding in 2012.

We see the hockey stick growth, not the years of iterating before it.

Real success takes years, not months.

The Uncomfortable Reality

But most normal people can't spend 2 years building side projects without making money. We have mortgages, families, real life.

So we have to play both games at once.

We need to pay bills today (through our job, client work, or both) while building something bigger for tomorrow.

The tension hurts. Every hour on 1:1 client work is an hour not spent on your 5-year vision for your life. Every safe paycheck is another month not going all-in.

But those "distractions" aren't optional for most people. They fund your experiments and buy you time to figure out the thing that will actually last.

So you can't resent them - they're your runway.

What This Actually Looks Like

I've watched this play out with a lot of people I’ve met on LinkedIn.

Tobi was posting for 4 years while working other jobs before going all-in. Now, he's made more than $3M from LinkedIn.

Justin stayed in corporate for the first year of his LinkedIn journey, writing content from 5-7am before work.

Jade worked at Google for >3 years while building her creator business on the side.

Keep the money flowing while you figure out what actually works.

Your day job isn't killing your dreams. It's funding them.

Making It Work

Let me be clear: this period is hard.

Maybe it's 5-7am writing content. 7-9am with your kids, then 9am onwards at your day job.

Then you're wondering if you're moving too slowly.

The trick is always taking small steps forward. And you will have to push yourself.

You will have to keep taking steps forward. Even when you're tired. Even when you can't be bothered.

The size of the steps doesn't matter as much as the consistency.

Because while burning the boats and going all-in from day one is glamorous, it doesn't give most people enough time to figure things out.

It's not sexy. It's not the story that goes viral.

But it's the story that actually works for people with real responsibilities.

The Long Game

The compound effect is invisible until it isn't.

You'll feel like nothing's happening for months. Maybe years.

Then suddenly, your side thing starts matching your main income. Your experiments start clicking. Your audience starts growing.

And you realize all those "wasted" hours were actually buying you the time to get it right.

So stop beating yourself up for not moving faster.

Keep paying your bills. Keep shipping your experiments. Keep playing both games.

The years are going to pass anyway.

Might as well spend them chasing the life you want.

See you next time,

Will

P.S. I use Saywhat to write all my posts. It's helped me get >401,877 followers by standing out from the crowd. You can get started here.

Will McTighe

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