The one thing that fake entrepreneurs will never understand

There’s only one secret that separates real, serially-successful entrepreneurs from the fakers who’ll never amount to anything.

It’s a secret you have to learn to deeply understand right down in your bones.

You can read it about.

And you can hear people talk about it.

But it won’t click until you do it.

The secret is simple.

Execution is everything.

Patient, relentless execution is everything when it comes to creating lasting, concrete business success.

It’s all that matters.

Things that don’t matter:

Shortcuts. Clever hacks that exploit the latest tech. Making yourself look like a rockstar on social media.

People think these things matter because the feel so good…

Shortcuts feel exciting to learn because of our brain’s bias toward “Uninformed Optimism” where the less you know about a biz tactic, the more optimistic you are about how well it’ll work for you.

And pretending to be a successful entrepreneur on social media is a shortcut to activating your brain’s reward center. It’s basically a drug.

None of this actually helps you win.

Even your business idea itself… doesn’t really matter.

At least not without execution. Because execution is everything.

If you don’t figure out how to execute, you’ve got nothing.

What you do — with your ideas and with the strategies you’ve studied — is the only thing that actually moves the needle.

If you keep searching for the best advice, the best tactics or the best blueprints… you’re not executing, so you won’t win. Learning about business is not the same as doing business, and the learnings you get from “doing” cannot be learned any other way.

A sure sign of “Fake Entrepreneur Thinking” is an obsession with prescriptive how-to-build-a-business courses and books.

These aren’t insightful, well-researched mind blowing books (like this one) that sharpen your mental model of the world and supercharge your creativity.

I’m talking about guru-based, “do as I did” self-help. The stuff that’s designed to up-sell you more of the author’s products or services.

Here’s the thing:

If you follow someone else’s map, you’ll only ever arrive at places they’ve already been.

And you’ll only do that if you execute a ton also.

The dirty little secret is that it’s only the execution that matters. And in that case, you might as well execute on your own ideas instead of someone else’s. You might just figure out how to build a better business than that guru you’re following!

(And their business probably isn’t as great as they say it is, which is why they’re selling you products on how to do what they did… instead of just doing it.)

Fake, lost and clueless entrepreneurs are that way because they’re trapped in the belief that something external is missing.

They can’t shake the idea that they themselves lack what is needed in some way.

(Part of the reason for this is that this belief is marketed to them by gurus who can only sell by fostering and exploiting this very insecurity.)

Fake entrepreneurs fail to recognize that the only necessary ingredient for success is already within them. That all it takes is a willingness to execute and a hunger to learn from it.

So, instead of getting to work and taking action… they go looking for external answers.

They seek out gurus, courses and roadmaps to follow. They go to business school. They pay out extraordinary sums of money. They spend tremendous amounts of even more valuable time.

Most who go down this path will drop out. They’ll quit the game of business and give up on their dreams.

The few who persevere will eventually run out of external answers to seek. Their self deception — that there’s still some secret they don’t know that someone else does — won’t be convincing forever.

When they run out of excuses, they have to start doing. There’s nothing else left.

As soon as an aspiring entrepreneur begins executing, a new type of wisdom will hit them like a ton of bricks. Or more like a river of bricks. Lesson after lesson relentlessly flowing and churning into you the more you execute and move forward.

It’s a painful process, but it’s also a powerful epiphany:

The entrepreneur will realize there is no substitute for the real-world experience you get by executing.

They’ll realized that all the promises from the gurus and education institutions were lies. That these places they looked for answers were just kindergartens — places to suck your thumb before entering the real school of business.

That school… is execution.

When an entrepreneur realizes that execution is everything, they’re flooded with a new kind of wisdom:

They see simultaneously the real grueling challenge of business success, as well as the terrific opportunity it presents. They realize that if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. They also realize that because it’s hard, most people are afraid and don’t even try.

They realize that fortune favors the bold. That the field of entrepreneurship is an opportunity specifically because it’s not crowded, because everyone else is afraid. And because no one else is willing to do the work.

When an aspiring entrepreneur realizes that execution is everything, they see clearly for the first time in their lives.

They realize there is no chasm to leap to success. It’s a bridge that’s patiently built. And while only you can do it, you don’t have to do it alone. Objective support and accountability exists, and it really works.

Go go go!