Back in high school, I always thought of success.

“I’m 14 now, in just 2 years I’ll get my scooter certificate and in 4 I’ll have a car, live on my own… How am I gonna do all that?”

People seem to consider success a privilege and something that comes easy while in fact: it’s not… It’s f*cking hard.
Working from home with Sharon, we get challenged every single day. We run one overseeing the company, under which we’ve divided our projects and products amongst each other to manage, and we have work stacked up to the ceiling.

I wake up at 7 AM (Sharon 7:30 AM… It’s not fair 🙁 ) and go to bed around 2/3 in the morning, only to wake up at 7 again to start the hustle again. It’s a never-ending story, and I can safely say: that never-ending story is our success.

But are we privileged to have success? Are we entitled to succeeding? No.

We came from nothing. Our parents have or have had normal day jobs, don’t come from wealth (they are entrepreneurs though) and we didn’t have any investors in our company: we built it ourselves. From scratch.

And yes, it’s hard. It’s tiring. It sucks when I work on a project, and can’t get that one pixel to move over just how I’d like it to, or when an audience doesn’t perceive the result as I would have wanted to… That’s what keeps me going. If it’s not perfect, or not working properly: I make it perfect. That’s my motivation!

But what is success? Is success being “rich”, living the “dream lifestyle on the beaches of the world”? Being able to stop at a certain age because you’ve made it?

For me, success is the fact that I can do whatever we want, whenever I want to do it. I’m not limited by a day job, I’m not limited by paychecks and I’m not limited by the constraints of everyday life. That is success to me.

The money is cool and everything, and it opens a lot of doors… But it’s not a success. It’s leverage.

Fact is: you only realize this over time. If you have an entrepreneurial drop of blood in you, the first thing that should come to mind is: how can I help solve a problem, and how can I then monetize that solution? Now how fast I can get 1000 customers. If your product is good enough to withstand the test of time, those 1000 customers will come on its own.

Do you need 1000? Nope. You only need 100 people at $1000 to earn a six-figure income. But what do you have to give them, which will solve a problem they have which they are willing to pay for!?

Not a product you can sell 1000 copies of “How to get rich in 30 days”, scamming people out of their money only for them to realize that it takes time, hard work, and effort to succeed.

You need something that brings value and helps you customer succeed in whatever your product promises to do.

In general, I think that’s what success is: creating something that people want. Once you have that, get have the right people around you, hustle your ass off pitching your product to 1000 people in a row and STILL tell your story with the same enthusiasm, making sure that your “thing” is of top quality so people will spread the word FOR YOU but most importantly: something that your consumer has an emotional connection with.

Success is hard to define, even for me in this very post. I’m writing at 7:15 AM, and I can’t wait for Sharon to wake up in 15 minutes so we can discuss our upcoming day… And to start THE HUSTLE.

How do you define success!?