Okay, but how do I skip over all of that?

“Value gets created over compounding execution for years and years and years. And it never gets easier, but this is what you're signing up for as a founder.” - Sam Altman

“Okay, but how do I skip over all of that?”

This is what an aspiring entrepreneur asked me after I walked her through our nearly 10-year journey of building That Clean Life.

To be honest, my first instinct was to scream “Uhhhh, YOU CAN’T!”. But after taking a beat, I completely understood where she was coming from. Isn’t the whole point to learn from others’ journeys so you can get to the destination faster?

I believe you can learn from the successful entrepreneurs you admire to an extent. But there is a lot you have to simply just go through yourself to come out on the other side.

You can’t skip over all those years of trying to figure out what works.

You can’t skip all those days (er, years) of banging your head against the wall, hoping this idea takes off.

You can’t skip the iterations, the pivots and the “okay, so, change of plans”.

You can’t skip those painful learning opportunities and setbacks that make you cringe in hindsight (I’ll save those stories for another day) and magically arrive at a place where your business is humming along like a well-oiled machine.

The truth is that these things are a necessary part of the process.

The majority of your entrepreneurial journey will be consumed by executing, and this is the hard part. Having a great idea is not enough.

As a founder, you can’t avoid this hard part of constant execution.

You can’t hire anyone to do it for you.

You have to keep your feet on the ground and you have to go through those painful parts.

“People say that most of what being a founder is about is not being in love with creating a product but being in love with creating a company, and I think there's a lot of truth in that.” -Sam Altman

So, to my fellow entrepreneurs in the thick of it with me, this is your reminder that:

There are no shortcuts to the top.

You can’t skip over “all of that”.

“All of that” is a necessary part of the process.

So let’s keep our feet on the ground.

Now, back to executing.