Persistance throughout the Journey

If you’re familiar with the story of The Exodus, then you’re aware that Moses ‘parted the sea’, allowing his people to cross, and then, once his people had crossed, he let the sea come crashing down on the Pharaoh’s army. In this sense, the sea serves as a metaphor for a barrier, with something trapped away on the other side. It takes conviction to see through that barrier, which can come in a number of different forms. For Moses, conviction was represented by an act of God, to create a path. An entrepreneur today may not need to go to such extremes, but the metaphor still stands. Like a dog pacing behind a fence, an entrepreneur knows that there are two choices: to stay, or to commit. Once committed, it can be very difficult to disengage.

The water, as a type of barrier, can be representative of any number of different situations, and is almost never a fixed point. Rather, it is the ‘rock and the hard place’ metaphor, where surviving death is suddenly a superior option to whatever is the current norm. It serves as a type of gate in the sense that it must be crossed, yet it is not immediately apparent how to cross it. For most people, crossing the water is simply the knowledge that if you succeed at your entrepreneurial endeavour, then life will be better. We could get into more serial entrepreneurs as well, and the calculations factored into making this decision as a way of life, but it’s the same fundamental principle for them as well. What’s crucial to realize is that this is the first fork in the journey, and that choosing to go forward at this juncture makes it much harder to turn back. At this point, as an entrepreneur, you’re either committed to the idea that whatever’s on the other side of the gate is better than whatever you currently have, or else you shouldn’t try to cross the gate, as you may not be able to turn back.

The fundamental idea of crossing a desert is the idea of being forced to adapt. Whether this is learning something new, or simply coming into an aggressive market; the point is to recognize that you have entered into a very harsh climate, one that you may or may not be native to, and you’ll just have to deal with it. I want to point out here as well that Moses might well have known that there was a desert beyond the sea, and how hard it would actually be to survive. I bring this up because you should be aware of your own deserts, too. Unless you’re a serial entrepreneur, or else actively working in the field that you’re moving into, then chances are, you’ll not only have to part the water, but that you’ll also have to learn how to survive on the other side as well. This caveat should not be taken for granted. This can be extremely challenging, as you’ve just left behind everything you know on the promise of something better, and now you just have to figure it out, likely with less than what you started with.

To me, the most challenging part of surviving the desert is the need to consume, especially when you may not even be aware of either what to consume, nor how to consume it. I think one of the most simple traps here is that you had the idea, and you parted the waters just fine, and now that the gate lies open, it’s like it’s so open that you don’t even know what to do about it. Imagine looking back at the Pharaoh’s army, defeated, and then looking ahead at so much sand and horizon that it was nothing short of disorienting. You won, but now, what did you win? The key at this stage is simply learning to survive. I remember while I was going to school, a friend of mine asked the rhetorical question of how do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time, and that’s how you survive a desert, too. You take it one day at a time, until you learn to build. Once you start to build, you can start to store, and then you’re learning to cope.

Finally, this idea of learning to build is what brings us to the metaphor of the mountain. In The Exodus, the mountain serves as a type of structure, and it is highly symbolic, both for the latent symbolism of proclaiming something from ‘on high’, but also, because the mountain itself serves as the structural representation of the will of the people. In essence, reading the ten commandments from the top of Mount Sinai is symbolic of the idea of infinity, particularly in the sense of being able to replicate the journey which brought forth the ten commandments in the first place. The point of reading the commandments isn’t to admonish his followers, or ‘let them know who’s boss’, but simply, to disperse the information contained within. This is effectively the same as what an entrepreneur does once the business is built, and they are looking for clients. They establish their presence.

While still very challenging, I have Moses climbing the mountain as the least challenging of his three main trials, and I think that this representation would also stand in terms of business development as well. Once a business reaches the mountain stage, everything should be working, in some sense or another. If the mountain stage represents replication towards infinity, then it can be seen as a type of blueprint for success. Similarly, when a business reaches the mountain stage, it begins to proclaim itself, developing its identity and its presence through how and to whom it gets marketed, in essence.

A key takeaway of The Exodus story is in considering where the locus of control is situated with each new iteration of hardship, and then learning how this is relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish as an entrepreneur. Consider this take, for example: The first trial that Moses has to pass is crossing the waters, but in order to do so, he must suspend his own doubt at the undertaking, and learn to believe in something greater than what he would normally be capable of accomplishing. This is that flash of inspiration, when an entrepreneur first locks onto something. What’s relevant at this juncture is that the idea isn’t actually all there yet, and that faith must be placed into something that the entrepreneur cannot, on their own, control. In a sense, all they can do is prepare for the jump, and when they see the window, decide whether or not to take it.

Next up is the desert, and the part where the entrepreneur finally starts to develop agency over what they’re accomplishing. Make no mistake, God didn’t help Moses wander the desert for 40 years. It would have been both a waste of time, and counter to His point in the first place. So no, short of a little inspiration here and there, crossing that desert was all Moses; learning to survive, and learning to guide. The desert is an important motif in understanding the entrepreneur’s journey as well. Never forget: just because you had a great idea, it doesn’t mean that you’re actually any good at your idea. Those are two separate domains, and the difference between seeing a great need for change, and then understanding, perhaps, why that change hasn’t happened yet can make or break the success of the business. You will likely need to become the change you wish to see, and that’s all part of the process. The desert is the part where the locus of control shifts away from the divine, and onto the person themselves.

Finally, we come to the mountain, from which Moses proclaims his ten commandments, and where we see the locus of control shift away from both inspiration or an individual, and onto the crowd itself. It’s at this point that the entrepreneur starts easing up. The structure is now built, and it’s time to sell it. By shifting the locus away from themselves, the entrepreneur concedes that from this point onward, the business will only function through reciprocity and exchange. This is why this part is dedicated to branding, marketing, and developing a client base. It's relationships that matter the most at this important step, and the fundamental relationship being established is that the entrepreneur has something that the rest of the population would benefit greatly from.

Fundamentally, the relevance of the ten commandments is their usefulness in constructing a society. In essence, it’s the same with your business. At first, you just catch a glimpse of an idea, and you hold onto it. That idea will grow, one way or another, and as you start to learn more about your idea, through research, networking, and your own feel for the market, that idea will either become viable or not. Don’t be afraid to let it go if it isn’t viable, as you don’t want to gamble on things you don’t trust from the start. But if the idea does start to become viable, then look for an opening, and try to get yourself through the door. Once you’re through the door, you’ll likely find that the idea you had is actually much more complicated than what you initially thought. This is the act of surviving the desert, or becoming what you will become. Through repeated hardship at learning how to develop your idea, you become your own master, and that’s when you’re ready to start proclaiming, and developing a society around your idea. As this society grows and develops around you, people who know what you do will eventually require your services, and those are the people who will become your product’s consumers. It takes persistence throughout the entire journey to get your business to this state, and you should be proud of your accomplishment.