Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2022; the description of “Jake W” as the current president and founder of Team Rubicon reflects the 2013 source rather than 2022, as the article is an older post that was re-dated.
These days we’re constantly fed glamorised messages about starting a business: it means achieving freedom (although in the early days of a venture, freedom will be a pipe dream); it means firing your boss (now every customer will be your boss); and it means financial independence (although your bank account will be hanging by a thread for the next few months). Make no mistake. Starting a business is hard, and success is not guaranteed.
“The next 10 weeks of your life will be the most miserable stage of your sad and pitiful existence.”
Those were the words an instructor addressed to 32 Marines, among the best snipers selected from the US 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 that, even among 32 decorated Marines, statistics show more than half fail to get through and graduate.
Even so, that failure rate is much lower than the one shown by the statistics on failure when starting your own business. Remember that more than 80% of new businesses fail within three years of being set up.
On the first day, the instructor gives you a “motivating” explanation:
“We’re going to take you to your absolute limit. We’re going to test your physical endurance in ways you can’t even imagine. We’re going to deprive you of food, sleep and probably your sanity. We’ll teach you to read the wind and to shoot under pressure, and we’ll 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’ll be ready to defend your country and your comrades on any battlefield.”
Jake W. says the instructor wasn’t 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 face in Afghanistan.
During the seven 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, that tough training gave him enough emotional, mental and physical preparation to succeed in his missions.
How are entrepreneurs like Marines?
What do a sniper’s training and combat situation have in common with the challenge of starting a business?
To begin with, success in either of these disciplines requires careful preparation in three areas: physical, mental and emotional.
“We’re going to prepare you for pain by taking you to your absolute limit.”
Most new entrepreneurs fail mainly because they aren’t prepared and underestimate the problems that can arise. In business, before you know it, your expenses are higher than you calculated and your profits lower than you imagined. You’ll be constantly pushing yourself to your limit, because at times, especially at the beginning, you’ll be working 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
In business, plenty of people are more than ready to sprint, but business is precisely not a sprint. It’s a long, gruelling endurance race. Much worse than a marathon.
You’ll test your physical endurance by going without sleep, but your body will only withstand it if your mind is as hard as rock. Mental preparation for starting a business is essential, because if the early problems manage to wear you down, you’re lost, in business just as on the battlefield.
See also: Separating the wheat from the chaff
You don’t need to go to university to start your own business, but you will have to learn about business: study everything related to your industry, new marketing techniques and new strategies for selling in an online world, read advice from other great entrepreneurs and learn the minimum you need to know about companies.
Jake W. says his sniper team wasn’t good by chance. While other snipers focused only on shooting, they devoured books about previous conflicts in Afghanistan. They studied the country’s history and culture. They wanted to know exactly what methods of attack the people they were going to face would use.
In business, as in the elite sniper team, your ability to fight isn’t the only thing that counts: success also depended on knowing how your opponent fought on their own ground.
The emotional burden can be debilitating. Being constantly on the verge of failure at the beginning, steering from one difficulty to the next, not knowing whether you’ll be able to pay the wages next month and so on is not easy at all.
See also: 55 inspiring business quotes for entrepreneurs
A sniper and an entrepreneur must never lose sight of the target
A sniper is trained to aim at the target and not lose concentration, despite being in a war zone, with crossfire and noise that feels as if it will burst your eardrums. But the target stays in the sights, waiting for the order.
An entrepreneur must act the same way: set a target 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, in a war just as in business.
But the most important thing is purpose. When a US Marine is utterly exhausted and practically dehydrated, he has to remember why he’s out there in 50 °C heat in the middle of the crossfire. In his case, it’s the mission, for and on behalf of his country and the comrades fighting alongside him.
When we carry this over to the business world, for your own sake, let’s just hope that when the difficulties, stress and exhaustion arrive, you have a purpose beyond simply making money.
See also: How to get rich: honest advice from Felix Dennis, one of the world’s great entrepreneurs
