Perseverance – Lars Bachmann's Christmas calendar

Persistence as an entrepreneur was the most important thing I brought home from a trip interviewing 32 entrepreneurs around the world. I discussed it in Lars Bachmann’s Christmas calendar in 2012 while driving home late from work. The stories differed, but again and again I heard about people who kept going when things became really hard.

Persistence as an entrepreneur: It does not sound very exciting

It was dark in the car. I switched on a little light so you could see me, then switched it off again. You did not have to sit and look at me all the time.

It was a quarter to nine in the evening. I had been at work since nine that morning. The long day actually fitted quite well with what I wanted to discuss.

Lars had asked whether I would join his Christmas calendar again. I thought it was the third time. I had agreed and been thinking about what my contribution should cover.

After three and a half years in the US, I had spent four and a half months travelling with my family on the way home. I had visited 32 entrepreneurs and interviewed them.

I thought there were six recurring things among those who succeeded. Here I chose to discuss the one I wholeheartedly believed mattered most and had encountered most often: persistence.

I knew it was not necessarily an answer people would get particularly excited about. It did not sound like a clever secret. But I felt it could determine whether you had what entrepreneurship required.

My own example that evening was Amino

Whatever project you started, I felt there would come a point when it became difficult. Money could run short. Something might simply require a sustained effort.

I had things myself that needed finishing. In 2012, I felt Google Plus and Facebook were pulling at the discussion I wanted on Amino.

So I sat late planning initiatives to help us keep the entrepreneurship discussion on Amino rather than letting it move to the others.

There were also things I ought to do for my family and in other areas. But that evening, I had chosen to work until a quarter to nine. I expected to get up early the following morning and was even considering working more when I got home.

That was the situation I was speaking from. I wanted to show that in my own business too, it was necessary to keep putting in the effort.

Kai and the hotel in Australia’s far north

One of the people I had interviewed was Kai. I described flying to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory, far to the north, where it was humid and hot.

Then you had to drive out towards the Adelaide River area, which I described as full of crocodiles. Here Kai, around 60 years old, lived on his own island and ran a small four-room hotel.

When I visited him, he had served hamburgers to 35 anglers the previous day. That gave a sense of how much there could be to do in the little business.

Bedding needed changing, the roof needed patching and fuel needed collecting for the generator so there was electricity. Food and all kinds of other supplies had to be obtained too. I described how he did almost everything himself.

I also talked about floods after which he had to rebuild. It was overwhelming to imagine the work and losses he had to handle on his own.

I asked how the hell he could keep going at around 60. His answer was about chewing through it: when it got hard, he chewed. When it got even harder, he chewed more. And when it got really, really hard, he kept chewing.

Bloody hell, that answer made an impression on me. My interpretation was simple: he went for it and did not give up.

Thomas in Hawaii found more hours

I also talked about Thomas in Hawaii. As I described it, he had fought for 35–40 years to create his design centre.

Alongside it, he had run an office furniture manufacturing business in Reno. I mentioned that he had been a neighbour of the Skagen Design founders.

I had asked him the same question: What did you do when things got really hard?

His answer was that he got up two hours earlier and went to bed two hours later. That was how he described his effort during the difficult period.

To me, it was another story about someone who had chosen to put more into the dream he was already working towards.

The couple who slept behind the ice cream shop

A young married couple in Los Angeles, California, told another version of the same story. They had ice cream shops and made organic ice cream.

When things became difficult, they had laid off their staff and given up their home to sleep behind the ice cream shop.

They got up around five or six in the morning, made ice cream and worked hard all day until around eleven at night. Then they collapsed onto air mattresses behind the counter and started again the next morning.

That was how they said they had kept going. When I spoke with them, they had three ice cream shops.

I heard stories like that again and again on the trip. People who had gone through a period demanding far more of them than you saw when looking at the result afterwards.

In my analogy, entrepreneurship was a marathon

My point was that entrepreneurship was not a 100-metre sprint. It was a marathon.

In my view, you should expect to hit the wall. The point when you thought: This cannot be done. It is too hard. Perhaps it will go wrong. Perhaps the bank will take everything.

You could start doubting your dream. That was precisely why I felt you should prepare mentally before finding yourself in that situation.

I put it very bluntly in the Christmas calendar: when that day came, you should look yourself in the mirror and say you would not give up. Give it a real go and keep going.

My stories of longer working days and less sleep were the specific, difficult experiences people had told me about and how I described my own evening. They were not a shared work schedule for every business.

What I wanted to highlight was persistence. The ability to keep working on something worth fighting for, even when the initial enthusiasm had gone and it became a slog. You can find more of my experiences of life as an entrepreneur in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

With that message, I thanked Lars for letting me join again. It had been a pleasure, and I hoped there would be room for me the following year too.