Entrepreneurship Takes Passion and Ability: Like Growing a Tree, It Needs Time and Persistence

Entrepreneurship combines passion and ability. Of founders who began at the same starting line, those who focused on doing one thing well for fifteen to twenty years may already have taken their companies public. Others fell behind because they lacked focus. --- Choose something worth committing your time, energy, relationships, and resources to if you want compounding growth. Chasing a different trend every few years ultimately prevents you from building anything substantial. --- Over a longer horizon, founder and business are closely connected: what you are is what your business becomes. In your heart, you know whether this is your undertaking and whether you are the person who can lead it and stay with it for twenty years out of love. --- Robin: ‘Entrepreneurship is like growing a great tree. A small seedling will not become a towering tree in three or five years. A great tree takes time, patient waiting, and the persistence to remain rooted in one place. If you are going to stay with something for twenty years, it must be something you enjoy and love. Deep down, you know best whether you are the right person. Do not fool yourself.’