 Every long weekend, my wife will be hassling me about asking me, hey, where are you gonna bring me? And I think a lot of people, they have the misconception of the fact that just because you're an entrepreneur, you have the flexibility of your schedule and your time. But in reality, as an entrepreneur, you don't take days off just because it's a long weekend. You don't get to do that because you are fully responsible for your own business, right? You can stop, you don't have to work for weeks. It doesn't really matter. No one is there to tell you to go to work. No one's gonna tell you what you need to do. So the misconception that a lot of people see is that, oh, you can control your time. You can go on a long weekend. Yes, I can, but I choose not to because I'm fully responsible for my business. That's the reason why we don't take days off, right? We take long vacations. Like every year I take around two months off. I just go travel, right? And it's my choice to do so. But through all the rest of the years, I hustle hard because of the fact that I know I need to hit these milestones in order for me to have the flexibility and the freedom to travel whenever I want to When people are still working, I can travel. I can go to Europe. I can go to Asia. I can go anywhere I want. It is because I'm truly responsible for it. Another misconception that people have of entrepreneurs is that you always see people who are taking pictures of them in a jet and that they're happy hanging out with all their friends. And once you're in the business, you realize it's complete opposite that you're basically the only one in this journey that no one truly cares about you and that no one's gonna give you the answers, that you're in it all by yourself. You may be in the office or in your bedroom at 11 p.m. trying to figure shit out while your friends are at the movie theaters or it's a weekend and everyone's out in the beach. And yet you're the one that's in the office trying to figure this thing called entrepreneurship out. Or it's a birthday party that you miss because you have to figure out how to get your product to launch. These things no one sees. These things no one understands and there's so many times as entrepreneurs you just feel so trapped and so lonely by yourself and that this journey sucks and that no one understands you. That's the truth about entrepreneurship and you're gonna have these feelings of helplessness and that is just really worth it. That's just the truth. Some people make it. On the other hand, they see the light at the end of the tunnel and that's when they can really thrive because their business picks up. Now they have a little bit more free time. They have more freedom of their time to choose now that they can go out to these places and they're a little bit more ahead of time. They can see the reward. They can go on travels. Now you see the pictures. That's the minority of the entrepreneurs. Majority of them never really see that light at the end of the tunnel. So this trade is definitely glorified in so many means and so many people have this misconception coming into this, thinking that it's all about teamwork. You know, a proper culture. Oh, you guys go on like happy hours together. No, it's not like that. It can be like that, but a lot of times it's not like that. When I first started, I still remember I was in my office, my old tiny office and I would be doing role-playing because the only thing that I really wanted and really hoped for was to have someone to bounce ideas off with me. I'll be at the office at like 10 p.m. trying to figure out how to get my tutoring academy to work and how to strategize for it. This was like 10 years ago and I'll be drawing on the board and I'll sit down pretending I'm the other business owner or my partner. I'm like, huh, that's a good idea or no, that's not a good idea. You cannot attack. You can't, like people won't buy your product like this or, hey, you know what? I don't think the marketing strategy works and then I'll go back on the drawing board. I'm like, huh, if that didn't work, how about this? And I'll role-play it all the time. And the only thing that I really hoped for was having a partner that can bounce ideas off with me. And it sucked a lot because the business doesn't have enough traction in order for me to have that. But whereas everything I see on Instagram, everything I see as successful entrepreneurs, they have group meetings all the time. They have, they're writing on their whiteboard and people are bouncing ideas off with each other. They're in this war room and they get super energetic and crazy things happen. Magic happens in these rooms. But as a budding entrepreneur, that was really not the case. It was lonesome and it was lonely for the good first three years of the journey because I wasn't able to afford to onboard anyone. And it sucked a lot, right? My friends were going out having drinks and I'll be in the office because frankly, I couldn't pay for drinks at that time. Everything was invested into the business and I knew that I need to make it work because I quit my $60,000 job to focus on that first business and I've got to make it work. Another misconception about running a business is that people think it's all about the idea. People think that they're very protective with their idea, that, oh, crap, that is amazing. That's the idea that's gonna kill it. No one has ever thought of this. I'm gonna bring it to market because of this idea. It's gonna make me a millionaire. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, that's not the case. That's not how it happens. Just because you have an idea doesn't make you a millionaire. Ideas or a dime, it doesn't. It's all about the execution. What I mean by that is what sets you apart from the 10 million people that has the same idea is how you do things. That's what people buy into. Before Facebook, there were so many sites that existed that were the same concept as Facebook. Myspace, Zanga, so many of them. Yet none of them took off. Facebook took off. A lot of times when we think that this idea is gonna be the killer idea, we go ahead and we have this thing called the confirmation bias. And what that means is we ignore everything that market is telling us and we go with what we think is right. We go with what we think is a brilliant idea and we go to market with it. And the market tells us, fuck man, we don't want this. We don't want your product or we don't want your service. And you would think that's the time to stop. You would think that, oh damn, my idea didn't work. It's not about that. It is about taking that market knowledge and pivoting to a different angle and bring it back to market again. If people stopped right from the first idea, then you would never be able to see success. You'd never be able to see what really sticks in the marketplace. It's all about finding the right angle to bring your product or service to the market. So it's all about pivoting all the time. For me, I've done more than 50 different businesses. And yet what really worked, maybe three of them. Only three out of the 50. And I consider them as projects, not businesses, because it never took off. When we first started our tutoring academy, I was stuck with it for two years. I had the idea of membership editing, charging people $10 for every 250 words that they need to edit. And that I would charge them $100 and give them 15,000 words per month. So then that way I can have a recurring fee and it's a membership. And we were selling on the idea that a lot of people communicate through email. And a lot of times the message is not being delivered because of the lack of grammar or whatever the case may be because English is not my first language and I was suffering from it at that time. So I thought it was a brilliant idea. I did that for two years, never took off. Wasted so much time. Market was telling me, nope, this is not what we want. But I thought it was a brilliant idea. And I was stuck to it. I was so stuck to it that I wasted two years of my time trying to get it to work. Never took off. I pivoted. Instead of editing, we started writing for people as a service, as a reference. And our business took off within three months. That was the difference. It's pivoting and actually listening to what the market is telling us. And at that point if we thought our idea was so brilliant and if at that time we did not pivot and we gave up because we were so honed in with our idea that is brilliant, that it's never been seen in the marketplace, then I wouldn't have built a business that I could have sold. It is all because of the fact that we listened to the market. We understood that running a business is not about having your own idea and bringing it to market and shoving it down the market slope. No, it's not. It's about listening to what they want and pivoting. So at the end of the day, me sharing with you about building a business that has impact rather than something that's just exploiting the market. Sharing with you that this whole journey is just lonely and it's not as glamorous as everyone paints it. It's not about the Ferrari or Lambo that you drive. And it's not about that one idea that it always requires you to always pivot. Me sharing this with you is setting the right expectation that when you are to enter the field of entrepreneurship, this is exactly what you're gonna face. And after all, even knowing these things, looking back, I would choose the exact same path. When you can actually bring a solution to the market, when you can actually solve problems for people, it is very, very rewarding. And on top of that, you get rewarded financially and you get rewarded by having the skill set to know that you have done something better for the world.