Living the Startup Life

Truly an inspiring video…

Failure is a part of life.  It is said that 9 out of 10 businesses fail… well then, that just means I need to build 10 businesses.

Chubs the cat is the cat that my family and I adopted.

Chubs was a street cat.  She would prowl our neighborhood streets, going from door to door and house to house just to scrape up any food that she could find.  One day, she winds up on our driveway with a sweet little “meow.”  My brother and I find her very cute that we go inside and get her some milk.  Our dad has always raised us to dislike cats, so we kept our distance and bid farewell to our visitor.

For the next few weeks, she kept coming to our driveway at 6pm at night for some milk.  She got bolder and bolder as the weeks went by and she would try to jump through our front door to get into our house.  Every time she managed to get in, we would grab her and literally chuck her back outside (Flinstone’s styles).  Don’t worry, she is a cat after all and she always landed on her feet.

I go out to my backyard a couple weeks later, and who do you think I see?  There is Chubs sitting there on top of our porch, sitting like a queen.  She sees me and makes a break for the door again.  Of course, I had to chase her inside and throw her back outside.  It made me wonder, this cat keeps coming over and over everyday and we throw her out every time.  Does she really think that she can make it inside our house?

A couple weeks later, I’m cleaning out some things in my garage and I hear a “meow.”  There is Chubs the cat sleeping on top of a cushion in the garage.  So this is where she has been sleeping!  In a matter of a month, she went from the driveway, to the backyard, to the garage.  You can’t help but be completely endeared at this point.  So I pick her up, and give her a tour of the house.

We went from cat haters to adopting a cat.  Since then, we have bought her a collar, feed her everyday, she’s slept on my chest, we give her massages, chase away dogs that are chasing her, and even go out to walks with her around the neighborhood.  Yes that’s right, Chubs the cat walks with us around the neighborhood.

So what can we learn from Chubs the cat?  Persistence pays off!  And not just any type of persistence.  It takes a sincere and good hearted persistence to get and accomplish the impossible.

So what does this have to do with entrepreneurship?  EVERYTHING!!! You and your ideas will be knocked down left and write, you will fail constantly and constantly, and people around you will disappoint you; however, amidst all of the struggles, you need to persevere and be persistent.  And don’t continue if you’re going to do it with a bad attitude.  Don’t tell everyone about how annoying it is to fail.  Chubs the cat never once bit us, never once clawed at us when we were throwing her out, and she never once missed her 6pm milk.  She came back with a good heart.  That’s what you need to do.  Stay persistent with your entrepreneurial path and always keep a positive attitude.  If you stay persistent with a positive attitude, then you will one day have your own seat in a house of you own: