What they don't tell you about entrepreneurship | Mark Leruste | TEDxCardiff

[Applause] at tedx about to give a killer talk if only they could see me now next stop oprah hashtag livingthedream hashtag winning crushing it how could i forget [Laughter] my life is amazing i wake up at 5 00 a.m every day with a big smile on my face and that's without an alarm clock and you know why because my passion wakes me you see after an hour of power yoga i hop in a cold shower where i visualize my goals before i jump on a podcast and green and green smoothie that's before most of you have even had time to scroll to your first social media feed yes unlike you i have the freedom to decide how i spend my days i go on holiday when i want where i want and for how long i want but you already know that because you obviously following me on instagram you see success is my first last and middle name yes you've guessed it i'm an entrepreneur and i'm living the dream it's funny because it almost sounds true and it makes me wonder who is that guy well that's me at least that's what you would think if you looked at my social media feed you see we're currently writing a way where entrepreneurship is hip and like any fad when it doesn't go to plan it's really easy to put a brave face keep up appearances and pretend like you're successful even if you have no idea what you're doing but when did it become cool to become an entrepreneur in fact who here runs a business do you feel cool because i don't know about you but i do not feel cool in fact most of the time i feel lonely i worry i stress about money on a daily basis and this was so not meant to be the plan you see about a year ago almost to the day i quit a job after spending a decade working across the corporate sector the not-for-profit and the charity sector thinking that if i quit my job everything i ever dreamed for in life would come true because obviously being your own boss means that you have the flexibility freedom and success is bottomless well it wasn't the case you see maybe what it looks like on the outside through all my podcasts and youtube videos it looks like i'm having a ball at a time but i actually spend eighty percent of my time staring nothing but a screen and sometimes i don't even bother leaving the flat or wash but don't tell my girlfriend that because she thinks i do and this this got me thinking it's it's the same thing that when my friends call me up and say hey mark do you want to catch up for a beer and i say i'm sorry i've got other plans i'm busy but i'm not busy i'm just really really worried about how my business is actually doing and so i feel like i can't share that and this is something that i've seen over and over again so i'm the host of the most unpronounceable podcast ever known to mankind as dyslexic i could have picked a better name the unconventionalists and effectively what it is i get to speak to a whole bunch of really exciting people from all walks of life who've experienced different levels of success and let me tell you this it doesn't matter if you're a one-man band or if you're a business with a thousand employees if you have a hundred followers or if you have a million the resounding feeling is how tough the journey is and how lonely it can sometimes feel now if you look at the statistics it's pretty scary out of the 5.5 million businesses in the uk 76 of them were started by people who employ no one but themselves so it's a pretty lonesome journey to save the leaf for almost three quarters of us and yet we feel like we can't open up and talk about it because we've made up that tears don't sell and so we live with this dirty little secret except this secret is something that everyone who's ever started a business knows oh too well and i started thinking if you look at the statistics and you look at company house data it looks like actually in 2016 it was another record-breaking year of 75 new businesses every single hour that's insane bloomberg says that actually eight out of ten entrepreneurs failed within the first 18 months and there was a study by the professor michael freenum freeman from the university of california that basically studied the link between entrepreneurship and mental health issues and he found that one in three entrepreneurs experiences depression when the hell did entrepreneurship become trendy especially when you look 20 years ago and it was basically a bunch of geeky guys living in a box staring at a screen well you see when i quit movember i thought that everything was going to come to me i could have never imagined that after spending four years in a dream job as country manager raising 2.8 million euros for men's self hobnobbing with celebrities being interviewed on national television and being part of incredible team all that to start my own business would be so tough and lonely so when my friends and family ask me so how are things going i smile i grind my teeth and i say great when really what i want to say is this is the toughest thing i've ever done in my life i'm really struggling and if you can relate to this situation i want you to know that actually being vulnerable and telling your friends that you're hurting is the best way for them to know you need help and i know that's scary but instead i've been guilty of putting up a mask and feeding the myth that being an entrepreneur and living the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the lifestyle we should all aspire to and that got me thinking surely there must be a reason why so many people are thinking about starting their business well i think this is my opinion that because of the thanks the rise of the superstar entrepreneur including elon musk richard branson and steve jobs the rise of the superstar entrepreneur has given birth to the new aspiring celebrity of the 21st century social media and front cover magazines have labeled it that make it sound sexy and they make it sound cool and you know what it is it feeds into our need to be recognized to be famous to be rich but is the allure of being an entrepreneur for the chase of fame and fortune really all there is to it no it goes deeper than that consider the gallup study that found that 87 of workers worldwide feel emotionally disengaged from the work they do and as a self-proclaimed millennial we've got a bit of a pick-off especially when you know that millennials are the most purpose-driven generation in decades so there's no denying that we're currently facing a crisis at work when it comes down to finding purpose take a look at this mythical ad of a dream job and for those of you at the back we can't read it men wanted for hazardous journey small wages bitter cold long months of complete darkness constant danger safe return doubtful honor and recognition in case of success would you apply to that ad well according to the book the hundred greatest advertisements five thousand men responded to sir ernest shackleton's ad ahead of his third expedition to the south pole endurance in the early 1900s 5 000 people and you know what else this ad could apply to you've guessed it pretty much any startup or any new business or any bold idea you come across because the way that he sorted out these 5 000 applicants was by putting them either in mad hopeless or possible and if you've ever tried anything bold in life you'll know what i mean when i say it's very difficult to know in which category you come across so the question becomes why would thousands of people want to join sir shackleton down to south pole and would this still be applied today and if you think it wouldn't think again mars one a controversial dutch company announced in 2013 that its mission was to establish a permanent human settlement on mars in 2023 two men and two women would originally sent and then four more would follow every two years the catch there is no return expected to planet earth labeled as the one-way ticket to human kite's biggest adventure more than two hundred 000 people registered their interest in 2013. that's insane so actually why would people join sir shackleton 100 years ago and the reason why hundreds of thousands of people are willing to leave everything behind to join history to the chase for mars is the same reason why so many people are attracted to the idea of becoming an entrepreneur it's a deeper yearning for a sense of purpose now professor steve taylor the senior lecturer in psychology at leeds beckett university said that not having a sense of purpose makes us more vulnerable to anxiety boredom and depression because baked in every single human brain from our ancestors fighting off saber-toothed tigers to us wrestling a really bad wi-fi connection we all have a desire for purpose it's our thirst for a mission it's a yearning for a quest and to fulfill it psychology science even went as far as saying that having a sense of purpose gives you a much better chance of having a longer life than pretty much anything else so your life depends on it it's a bit of pressure right well that kind of pressure is exactly where we go wrong about finding your purpose you see what really bugs me is that people make up that when you talk about finding your your meaning of of being or your purpose you've got to find the meaning of life you've got to find the meaning of your life and that's a really big ask the way i see it is that if it was a thorny issue for aristotle then i should probably keep it simple and if you don't know what a quest is and you don't know what purpose is look around you they're everywhere they're in the books you read in the stories you tell and the movies you watch i've been obsessed with this concept of quest and finding a quest and i've spoken to hundreds of people who started theirs and this is what i've learned they come in all shapes and sizes they're not measured by how impactful they are but rather how they make you feel when you think about them when you're actively pursuing them i want to give you an example of a really small quest what i've come to label microquest now you see a few years ago i had this really stupid idea to see if i could start a drink startup in seven days with a hundred pounds and this was while i still had a full-time job by the way so i'd wake up at 6 a.m do recipes i was traveling try and cross the border of belgium with one kilo of protein powder in your bag and the crazy thing is that i ended up working my butt off for seven days went to a festival in the woods and i sold all my plant-based protein shakes i made a whooping net profit of nine pounds it was the happiest i'd been of course i had no idea if it was going to work but actually when you look at it i was trying to answer a deeper question is it possible to start a business in a week with a hundred pounds or less now i can't tell you what your quest is but i can tell you what it feels like in case you hear it knocking on your door it's something that for whatever reason is grabbing your curiosity even when you don't want it to perhaps you're thinking about it when you're in the shower or maybe it's something to do when you're doing over the weekend but i'd like to share with you another example take laurie podga who for a year and a half decided to paint 100 individual pieces of art for 100 people in her life who meant something from her husband to a hairdresser to the mechanic her quest was to express her gratitude through her art and in the end she brought all these people together in a really emotional exhibition in a hometown of north carolina now you see this yearning we have of having a quest having a purpose is at the heart of why so many people believe that starting a business is the only way to get that sense of freedom adventure and purpose but it's not of course it can be and admittedly it has been for me yes a year ago when i quit my job to start my business it's been the hardest thing i've ever done but it's also been the most rewarding thing i've ever done and this is what i've realized is that actually you think you want to start a business but what you're actually looking for is a quest you can find purpose and meaning working with an organization and you can find it on your free time and you can find it on the weekend if you don't know where to start which tends to be the majority of everyone i speak to trust the things that you're curious about follow the things that you're interested about those are your breadcrumbs don't dismiss them they sometimes feel like there's no way i could be interested in barbecues or violin and next thing you know they lead you to your quest those are the breadcrumbs trust them and if they scare you that is so good because what scares us most is most often what we most need to do take paul graham the co-founder of white combinator the most sought after startup accelerator in the world who said it seems in order to do really big things you need to start by doing deceptively small things so whether your quest is an entrepreneurial one or not i urge you to start today don't wait because if everyone had a purpose no matter how small the world would be a better place for us all thank you [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,056,080

Rating: 4.8622208 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Business, Entrepreneurship, Motivation

Id: f6nxcfbDfZo

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2017