Making the decision to be self-employed is a not a big decision—it’s huge. Many of the services provided for you as an employee in the past such as legal work, payroll, and other HR services will now be your responsibility to manage. Your competence and stamina to succeed will be the lifeline of your business. A lack of effort on your part will trickle down through your business, affecting your business and everyone else involved—it’s a domino effect! Be prepared for endless hours of work, sleepless nights, and going over and beyond in ways you never have before.

When trying to do your own thing and leaning on others for opinions, you may hear 20 different ways on how to accomplish a task. For every one person that loves your business concept, three others are ready to shoot it down. Taking advice is important as an entrepreneur, but what advice do you take?

When you first became an entrepreneur you knew it would be hard, but this hard? I get it: There’s no blog, book, or life experience that can really put it all into perspective. The promising thing is that we’ve all felt these blues before and can relate as ambitious entrepreneurs!

Millennials are often drawn to entrepreneurship. For many of you, you have likely worked a job or two and want something different at this point. I would never steer somebody away from giving it all up and starting their own thing, but you need to be serious. Running a business is tough; getting it off the ground is even tougher. These are a few traits that have kept me motivated and focused through the early days of running my business ventures.