During my days working in private equity, I once met an entrepreneur who manufactured orthopedic implants (typically used in surgery for fracture victims).
His company was worth about Rs 100 crores, and he had built it single-handedly from scratch, over 15 odd years. I asked him, ‘You must be feeling so proud of having built this company, right?’
He said, “Only I know how many days I have waited outside the offices of orthopedic surgeons, for hours on end. I hated it but what could I do?
“If I could have gotten a job like yours, I wouldn’t have done this. But now, having built it, it does feel good.”
Almost every entrepreneur I have met had the same story of struggle.
We all hate struggle — that is human nature. Yet, without struggle, which worthwhile goal gets accomplished? And we aren’t even counting many more who struggle, yet fail.
Just know that virtually every story you hear — whether a billion-dollar IPO or a student acing an exam — is just the last page of their story.
If their life was a 300 page storybook, the last page would be about success, and the remaining 299 pages about struggle.
There are no one-page storybooks. Nor is there any success without struggle.
– Rajan