Think back to 2014. Does it feel like a long time ago? Sure… it does and it doesn’t.

Today marks the 4-year anniversary of running my own business. 48 months later and I swear some members of my circle still think I’m just playin’.

Na-ah!

Things get real after 4 years in business.

The other day, I had a flashback and wanted to poke pencils in my eyes. I remembered the first website I put out there to launch my business.

A lot has changed.

What surprised me is just how much you can grow. Every. Single. Year.

Not just learning how to be a better copywriter, or whatever it is you do. But how to run a more profitable business. Launch products and services. Hire a support team. And generally figure out how to adult your way through work, family, and all the stuff in between.

It got me thinking about what you truly learn in 4 years of being a business owner. Here are a few things I came up with:

• When I was 22 I could waste a whole hour just picking my teeth. Now, I can use that time to complete an array of tasks that would make my 22-year-old self spontaneously combust. It’s *jaw-dropping* what you can fit into 60 minutes when your ambition eclipses the space on a 24-hour clock.
• Maybe it’s my age, but I started to blend together the stray pieces of my past. It turns out they all have a home in my business today. Even the days when I shovelled elephant poo. Because taking time out to travel and care for animals was a choice. Studying photography after that was a choice. And all of my choices, good or bad, led me right here.
• Distraction and resistance suffocate self-employment. When you work for yourself, there are times when you’re fearful. Not of what’s to come. But of what you’re capable of. So you delay and you dawdle. Convinced there’s a good reason not to take a brave new step. For those times, I read this:

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: it’s not the writing part that’s hard.

What’s hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.

Like a magnified needle floating on the surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true north — meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.

We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it glide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

Rule of thumb: the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel towards pursuing it.” ~ The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

It seems grit is pretty much at the core of everything I’ve learnt in 4 years. Grit. Grit. And more grit. To push through the resistance and the fear and the distraction.

I understand now that my dogged determination has always been there. It’s the reason why I started at all. So maybe I’ll spend the next 4 years trusting my gut and protecting my spirit.