The Industry Pays—Just Not You

“Don’t wish it was easier. Wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges; wish for more wisdom.”— Jim Rohn

I once heard that entrepreneurship might be the best practice for true personal development out there. It is also some of the hardest shit to do. You have to develop skills you probably don’t have. You have to engage in processes with no certainty of results. You have to deal with outside pressure from family and friends, all while positioning yourself in a highly competitive market.

It can be brutal. It can be exhausting. But it can also be exhilarating and life-changing. That being said, entrepreneurship is not for the weak-minded. And if you are an Inside Hustler, you have to be doubly tough.

It can be easy on your business journey to start blaming the economy, the market, tariffs, politics—blah blah blah—for your difficulty in making a profit. We already discussed that any business without sales is either a hobby or a hard time. But the reality, when you’re struggling, is often much more basic than we care to admit. The good thing is that once you accept things as they are, moving forward becomes a lot simpler.

Let’s say you decide to create a product or service, and after researching it, you discover that the industry generates $50B annually. That means there’s a shit ton of money circulating around what you want to do. You’ve done your part and identified a way to serve an underserved segment of that market, which makes you competitive. You develop your product, launch your website, and announce your launch date online and to all your friends.

Launch day comes, and you anxiously wait for the customers to come in.

Don’t shit happen.

Day two is the same. So is the next.

First, you think to yourself, Man, I must suck. Then it’s the government screwing up the economy, so people aren’t spending money. Then it’s the industry—it’s racist, the system is flawed, sexist, elitist, and a million other “-ists” you can think of. All the shit people warned you about—how foolish you were for starting a business—starts stabbing you in the back of your mind. You get angry, and you quit.

Meanwhile, the industry keeps moving forward, and billions of dollars are still being made.

The reality is this: the industry pays—it just isn’t paying you.

The good news is there’s money waiting for you to grab it, but you’ve probably lacked the will or the skill to go hunt it down. As crazy as it sounds, this is good news. Skills can be learned. Will can be developed. But you have to do the uncomfortable things, which I’m willing to bet is why the industry has paid you zero so far.

One of my heroes, Alex Hormozi, once said it’s arrogance to believe you can devote 50% of your energy to your business when the people succeeding have devoted 120% to theirs—and they are your competition.

There’s a good chance that if you look at the top three people in your industry and study the processes they work consistently, you’ll identify at least three things you’re not doing. How much time do you spend on TikTok or Instagram? How much time watching TV? Playing games instead of playing the game? How much time do you actually spend talking to people about your business? How much of that time is spent talking to people offline?

Most people spend more time on TikTok watching others succeed than putting in the work themselves to get those same results. The problem isn’t the industry—it’s the mindset we bring into our business.

Most of us have fooled ourselves into believing this “if we build it, they will come” bullshit. Newsflash: that only happens in the movies. In real life, you have to grind. You have to work. You have to be intentional and strategic in how you move. And once your systems are set, the money becomes inevitable—but only if you work the process.

Keep hustling,

Kham