Every Bit of Effort Helps

Recently, I was meeting with an entrepreneur who lamented that they weren’t making much progress in their startup. My immediate response was simple: every bit of effort helps.

The crazy thing about startups is that, in the early days, you never know when the breakthrough will come. One more meeting. One more phone call. One more feature. One more introduction. While progress often feels incremental, it really is a leap of faith that the pieces will eventually come together and things will work out.

One of my favorite phrases about entrepreneurs getting started is that you have to be blissfully ignorant of the challenges and difficulties of building a successful business. It is astronomically hard to get a novel idea off the ground. Yet it has always been that way, and it is exactly what it takes to move the world forward.

Another phrase I like is that you just have to put one foot in front of the other. The idea is simple: keep going and keep moving, even when you don’t know exactly how you are going to get there. What you do know is that progress requires effort, and every bit of effort helps.

One of the best things an entrepreneur can do is find a group of like-minded founders at a similar stage and meet with them regularly, whether weekly or monthly. There is something powerful about being in the grind with a group of peers that makes it slightly easier to push forward in the face of adversity. With a peer group comes accountability, shared experience, and camaraderie as you navigate the high highs and low lows of entrepreneurship. Many founders create their own groups of peers or join organizations like Entrepreneurs’ Organization or Young Presidents’ Organization. Either way, a peer group helps sustain the effort.

Being an entrepreneur really is one of life’s great challenges. Getting a business off the ground, signing the first customers, and building the product all require leaps of faith. But like anything important in life, every bit of effort helps.

As the founder of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, once said: “I have a strategic plan. It’s called getting things done.” Turn effort into results, and results into startup success.