Building my company was one of the most rewarding, challenging, and humbling experiences of my life. I am proud to be part of that dysfunctional class of individuals called “entrepreneurs” who show the strength of character to pursue their vision and meet all challenges along the way. Being an entrepreneur is not just a job, it is an identity. There is no personal life and business life. It is your life. It is your soul. It is your oxygen.

There are few feelings like building something from nothing. All the work seems worthwhile when our vision comes to life. We revel in the triumph, big or small, that comes from determination and devotion to a craft. We remember our first logo, office, and investment; our first customer; our first profit; and the first press we got—it might have been a mention in the St. Lance Gazette with a circulation of 1,000, but it still felt great.

Sounds good, right? But entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. You’re heading into uncharted territory without a map or the right supplies. There will be days as an entrepreneur when:

  • You question what you are doing
  • You don’t know what you are doing
  • You know what you are doing but are not sure why
  • You are not proud of yourself
  • Success seems so near
  • Success seems out of reach

Life would be manageable if we were simply making business decisions. It is much more than that. As entrepreneurs, we take this stuff personally. We question our purpose, character, will, motivations, capabilities, and ability to bring our visions to life. The happiest day can also be the loneliest one. This is the nature of the beast.

So ask yourself: Why does one company succeed, and another with the same idea fail? It’s how we manage the struggle of being the entrepreneur. When we are under the pressure, chaos, and burden of being the entrepreneur, we develop damaging “perspectives” on the business and personal issues we face. While it is natural for us to develop these perspectives, they can obscure solutions, blind us, and undermine our progress.

Why do we develop these damaging perspectives? Because we are under the influence of the “4 P’s” of being the entrepreneur: pressure, passion, pleasure, and pain. When under the influence of these 4 damaging P’s, we:

  • Don’t think we can set priorities
  • Believe we have to do everything
  • Expect others to live and breathe the business as we do
  • Think others don’t understand what we are going through
  • Get frustrated that others don’t work as hard or as good as we do
  • Don’t know what a weekend or holiday is
  • Don’t take a day off or get a full night’s sleep
  • Fear missing payroll
  • Feel like the world is resting on our shoulders
  • Feel like we are running in quicksand event when we have a great idea
  • Feel very, very alone

Though I didn’t know it at the time, the discovery of The Lonely Entrepreneur methodology was conceived in the middle of my own struggle in a perfect storm. On October 15, 2008, after ten years of blood, sweat, and tears building my company, IncentOne, we closed a large private equity investment. We should have been celebrating our success. Instead, the financial crisis and its aftershocks bankrupted our biggest clients and hit us like an enormous, crushing wave. What took us ten years to build was gone in ten days. I didn’t know if the business could survive, but if it did, it was going to take two years of twenty-four-hour-days to save it.

I turned to traditional business solutions and the tools available to entrepreneurs: business plans, advisors, tips, and more. But in this storm, these familiar strategies failed. I was forced to think differently—and I made a remarkable, yet simple, discovery. The solution to our problems was not a tool. The difference between thriving under the pressure—and barely surviving it—always depended upon my perspective.  With the wrong perspective, even the simplest of tasks seemed impossible. But with the right perspective, solutions came to life.

Same issues. Same resources. Different results.

It was empowering to gain control of my business in a chaotic environment simply by changing my perspective. This led to creative strategies, a different approach to my team, and a game-changing epiphany about what was possible. We not only weathered the storm, but sold the company in 2013 and were lauded as the pioneers of the health rewards industry.

Soon after, I began coaching entrepreneurs. These were people who had the right stuff—great ideas, passion, smarts, and a desire to realize a vision. But despite everything they had going for them, they were overwhelmed, emotional, and inefficient. They were struggling with the enormous pressure and burden of being an entrepreneur. I knew it all too well: they were experiencing the four dangerous P’s of pressure, passion, pleasure, and pain. Smart, talented, inspired individuals were drowning in quicksand, and after my own baptism by fire, it became very difficult to watch others going down in flames. I wanted to make it easier for the next generation of entrepreneurs; if it could help even one entrepreneur, it would be worth it. The Lonely Entrepreneur, steeped in my entrepreneurial adventure of IncentOne, was born.

The Lonely Entrepreneur helps entrepreneurs recognize damaging perspectives, and learn how to identify and change perspective from those that stifle progress to those that empower them to thrive and achieve success. The book also chronicles our decade plus fight to turn a radically new idea into a business, despite an industry hostile to change and a once-in-a lifetime financial crisis.

The difference between entrepreneurial success and failure is your perspective. There are endless business tools and tips for your specific market, whether it’s an online or brick-and-mortar store, a tech start-up, or a sharing economy venture, but these strategies are meaningless without the right perspective. Perspective is the most powerful tool entrepreneurs have for success, and once we put it into practice, the real progress begins.