The next 10 weeks of your life will be the most miserable stage of your sad and sorry existence. That, in substance, is what an instructor told 32 Marines, among the best snipers selected from the American elite, according to former Marine Jake W, now president and founder of Team Rubicon.
Those two and a half months are probably the toughest and most demanding training any soldier can go through. Many work and study for years for the chance to attend these trials, knowing in advance that they will be prepared for a kind of pain in which, even though they are 32 decorated Marines, statistics show that more than half fail to graduate.
Even so, that failure rate is much lower than the one shown by the statistics on failure when starting your own business.
On the first day, the instructor gives you a “motivational” explanation, which went roughly like this:
We are going to take you to your absolute limit. We are going to test your physical endurance in ways you can’t even imagine. We are going to deprive you of food, of sleep and probably of your sanity. We will teach you to read the wind and to shoot under pressure, and we will distract you and harass you to try to make you fail. Everything you go through will be a test, and the moment you fail, you’re out. If you have the honour of graduating from this school, you will be ready to defend your country and your comrades on any battlefield.
Jake W says the instructor was not lying. The final test at that sniper school was the hardest experience of his whole life, but he says that afterwards he felt physically, mentally and emotionally prepared for what he would later live through in Afghanistan. During the 7 months he spent at war, he says he faced countless seemingly insurmountable challenges, such as water shortages, frequent fierce firefights without warning, critically important decisions and all kinds of problems. Fortunately, his tough training gave him enough emotional, mental and physical preparation to succeed in his missions.
What do a sniper’s training and combat situation have in common with the challenge of entrepreneurship?
To begin with, success in either of these disciplines requires careful preparation across 3 dimensions: physical, mental and emotional. “…we are going to prepare you for pain by taking you to your absolute limit…”
The failure of most new business owners comes above all from a lack of preparation and from underestimating the problems that can arise. In a business, before you know it, expenses are higher than you calculated and profits are lower than you imagined. You will constantly be pushing yourself to your limit, because sometimes, especially at the start, you work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In business, many people are more than ready to sprint, but business is precisely not a sprint: it is a long, exhausting endurance race. Much worse than a marathon.
You will test your physical endurance by going without sleep, but your body will only withstand that if your mind is as hard as rock. Mental preparation for entrepreneurship is essential, because if the early problems manage to wear you out, you’re finished, in business as on the battlefield.
You don’t need to go to university to start your own business, but you will have to learn about business, read the advice of other great entrepreneurs and know the minimum there is to know about companies.
Jake W says his group of snipers were not good by chance. While other snipers focused only on shooting, they devoured books about earlier conflicts in Afghanistan. They studied the country’s history and culture. They wanted to know exactly what methods the people they were going to face used to attack.
In business, as in the elite sniper group, it is not only your ability to fight that counts: success also depended on knowing how your opponent fought on their own ground.
The emotional burden can be debilitating. Being always on the verge of failure at the beginning, navigating nothing but difficulties, not knowing whether you’ll be able to pay the payroll next month, and so on, is not easy at all.
A sniper and a business owner must not lose sight of the target
A sniper is trained to aim at the target and not lose concentration, even in a war zone, with crossfire and noise that makes you feel your eardrums are about to burst; the target stays in the crosshairs, waiting for the order.
A business owner must act the same way: set a goal and not get distracted.
In short: preparation is the key to long-term success in any area of life. Being physically, mentally and emotionally prepared makes you stronger, more resilient and more likely to come out on top, whether in armed conflict or in entrepreneurship.
Further reading
Featured image: Lance Cpl. Danielle Rodrigues, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
