So you want to be an entrepreneur. But are you willing to sacrifice? Early mornings, late nights. What are you willing to give up?

Few people are truly financially secure, as employees can lose their jobs at any time. Still, when you set out to build and run your own company, you have far less financially security than you would if you were working a 9-to-5 and collecting a salary.

When you have a job, you typically know how much money you’re going to make every month. You don’t need to worry about not making anything during a down week for your company. You could have benefits, such as health and dental insurance. When you start a company, you don’t have any guarantees. You could make millions or you could make nothing, and you’ll be paying your own insurance costs.

If you research some of the most successful business owners in the world, one thing that they all have in common is that they spend a ton of time on their work. They are able to do so because of their passion for that work. This doesn’t mean that they spend every waking moment working and never have any fun, but they certainly work more than the average person.

You can’t create a successful company if you’re not willing to put in the work. There will be times when you need to get up at the crack of dawn or stay up past midnight to get things down on time and keep moving forward.

This can be one of the most difficult sacrifices to make, but it’s essential if you want to succeed in life. There’s a popular saying that you’re the average of the five people who you spend the most time with. If you’re spending your time with intelligent, ambitious people, then you’ll also build those traits in yourself. Their drive will be infectious, and you can all help each other succeed.

On the other hand, if you spend your time around lazy or directionless people who are content to go through life doing the bare minimum, their attitude will rub off on you. These are the type of people who will sidetrack you from your goals and try to get you to hang out even after you’ve told them you have an important project due.

You don’t necessarily need to cut people out of your life completely, but if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need the right people around you. That means you must start spending more time with the right people and keep the time you spend with bad influences to a minimum.

How you feel about these sacrifices tells you quite a bit about whether entrepreneurship is right for you. The reality is that someone who has the right traits to be an entrepreneur will have no problem sacrificing any of these things – in fact, they’ll want to sacrifice them for a better chance at success.

It’s all about what your dream is worth to you. There’s no shame in whatever path you choose, but if you’re going to pursue a life of entrepreneurship, you need to do it wholeheartedly.

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