Staying The Course Is The Hard Part

Jan 9, 2013

I recently discovered a podcast series by Seth Godin called Startup School. It’s a class that was taught over a few days with people just bootstrapping their products/companies. It’s only a handful of podcasts that are really just live recordings of the class, but the audio isn’t too bad. It’s worth checking out.

I’ve read books/blogs and listened to many podcasts about startups and building products. There is one thing that Seth said that I hadn’t heard before and has stuck with me ever since I heard it. I’m paraphrasing, I don’t recall his exact words. The hardest thing for an entrepreneur to do is stay the course. Ideas are easy. Starting them is easy. Planning the product is easy. But staying the course is difficult.

All too often I just stop. I don’t know, maybe I get cold feet, or maybe I talk myself into thinking that what I am building will never work. But I never stay the course to see.

Without a doubt, staying the course is the hardest part. Embarrassingly enough, I just wrote a blog post a few days ago where I jumped ship. Looks like it’s time to climb back on board.