The 90% Nobody Sees: Why Most Entrepreneurs Quit

Everyone sees the 10%. Almost nobody sees the 90% underneath. In this episode of Success Is Not Convenient, Bernie Gallerani breaks down the iceberg effect: why successful entrepreneurs look lucky from the outside, and what actually happens under the waterline.

You see the awards, the closings, the office, the social media posts. You do not see the payroll nights, the deals that fell apart, the partners who walked away, the family dinners reheated in the microwave at 8pm. That hidden 90% is not a side effect of success. It IS the success.

In this episode:
- Why the world only celebrates what rises above the water
- The mental weight of entrepreneurship that nobody talks about
- Why comparing your struggle to someone else's highlight reel is destroying your progress
- What actually gets built during the seasons when everything goes wrong
- Why rejection is happening to you either way, so you may as well get paid for it

If you are building a business, a real estate career, or anything that matters, this is the conversation nobody had with you before you started.

The size of your future is determined by the size of the unseen foundation you are willing to build today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody, Bernie Gallerani bringing you an episode of Success is Not Convenient. And I want to share with you how I created this topic. I had a call just the other day from an agent that lives in another state, and they were talking about the level of success that they would like to have, and that someday they would like to be on a stage and be able to have people, you know, admire them or hear how they got to become successful. And the conversation I had with this particular agent, and I'll share it a little bit in this podcast today, but I use the topic of, you know, sometimes when you see people on stage or you see them having a high level of success in a certain kind of business, or you see the awards and the accolades, it's really just what you see. You don't really see what is actually underneath it all in the work and the sacrifice that people have had to come up with. And so I titled this one today, The Tip of the Iceberg. You know, the world celebrates what it can see normally, but success is built by everything that you can't see. And I think this is the hardest part for most people to understand when you see somebody that has a high level of success and you're wondering, well, I'd like to have that. But once they get into the trenches of the hard work and the things that really nobody pays attention to is where the discouragement comes in. Have you ever looked at someone who's wildly successful and thought, man, they just kind of got lucky or they've always had it easy for them. It's not been as hard for them as it is for other people. You might say, hey, I wish my life looked a little bit like their life. And really what you're seeing is the tip of the iceberg. Only about 10% of the iceberg actually sits above the water. So whenever you see an iceberg, you're just seeing the top 10%. 90% of the iceberg actually is underwater and is unseen. And the other 90% that's hidden under the water, that is exactly how entrepreneurship works. People see the beautiful office, they see the awards, they see the nice home, uh, they see the vacation homes or the vacations that they go on, they see the social media posts. You know, everything on social media is glitz and glamour, right? You know, we all know that's not true, but we sit there and we go, man, what a really great life or what a really great business that person has. They see all the closings. If you're in a real estate business as I am, they see all the success there. They see the business that's finally working for them, and they get a little jealous over that. But what they don't see is the 90%. It's the 90% that caused the 10% to be seen. The 90% is the part under the water. It's the part that's the most difficult to ever understand. It's the part that almost sank you. See, it's the 90% under the water that almost put you out of business. The hidden iceberg, the the the the majority of the iceberg, every successful entrepreneur carries an iceberg that nobody else gets to see. Like we see the accolades, we see this the social media posts, but we don't see the the tough grit and the lonely nights. See, people don't see those things. The nights you stared at the ceiling wondering how your payroll or how you would even make any money for your family, the mornings that you woke up with anxiety before your feet ever touched the floor. You know what I'm talking about for our entrepreneurs out there? The deals that fell apart that nobody gets to see because all they watch is the social media posts and they see the accolades and the awards, all the employees that you hire that quit on you, or they're they're underperformers, and you have to actually, you know, try to motivate the unmotivated. You know, I saw a great poster once and I'll I'll try to clean it up, but it says everybody wants to be a lion until they actually have to do all the lion stuff. And when you have to do all the lion stuff, the tough stuff that nobody wants to do, all of a sudden you start changing your behavior. The clients who continually blame you because you did something wrong and you had to carry all of those conversations and those burdens, the partners who you may have had who walked away, who basically left you behind and said, You go figure this thing out. I'm quitting and I'm moving on. All the people that doubted you, all the people that doubted all the other people. So you don't see all of that. The family dinners that you missed. Gosh, guys, I can tell you, and I and I'm telling you, this is so true and dear. How many dinners you miss with your family? I had all of those experiences where I would come home and have to heat meals up because I was working until seven, eight o'clock at night. Many of you guys would say, Well, gosh, you know, I don't know if I'd really want to have that. Success is not convenient. It's not sunshine and roses. It's 90% under the water. It's the things that people don't see that they actually want the accolades, but they're not willing to stay the late nights. They're not willing to heat the dinners up in the microwave. They're not willing to hire and fire people and go through trials and tribulations. The minute things get rough, they stop. They don't want to put their feet on the floor. They're like, hey, I quit. All the birthdays that you were mentally absent for because your business consumed your thoughts. I'm going to say this again. All the parties and the birthdays and the celebrations that you actually were there, but maybe you really weren't there mentally because your mind was consumed with your thoughts and your business. If this is scaring you a little bit, well, welcome to entrepreneurship, right? Think about all the tears that and frustrations that people have had in their life because they're running a business and they don't know how to get out of it. This is all the 90% under the water, the loneliness, the fear that maybe, just absolutely maybe, this isn't going to work. The doubt that enters into our brain constantly. And I can tell you, after running the companies that we run, those things are real. And those moments don't make Instagram posts. They're not on social media. You don't see the fear, you see the fun. People don't post the fear, the struggles. They don't want you to know what they're going through. But it's interesting, every entrepreneur goes through them, but you always see the accolades. And those moments don't win awards. Those struggles are not the ones that you get accolades for. It's the small wins, the success that's hard to get, right? The inconvenient activities that people have to do in order to stand up on those stages or get those awards or get those accolades. But it's all this difficult time that actually builds the champions that they become, the ones that you admire, the ones that you see that you go, hey, I'd like to have that kind of business. It's all of these lonely nights and lonely mornings and late frustrations and business partners and all the things that are struggles that you don't really pay attention to. Success isn't built on the spotlight. See, people assume success is built during the celebrations. It's not built during celebrations. It's not at all. It's built during the struggle. I'm going to say this to you because I want you to hear this, because when the struggle happens, people quit. I don't understand it. Like your life has to become so important to you that you got to be willing to go through the struggle. Instead, we're so focused at times where we just don't really like the life we have, but we don't really want to change it because it's difficult and it has struggles. The business isn't built when everything is going right for you. It's built when everything is going wrong. Let's say this again: when things aren't going right, this is where the success is built. I have people all the time say, Bernie, you know, I just don't like rejection. You get rejected every day, whether you like it or not. You just don't realize it, but you are being rejected. So why not be rejected and make money? Be rejected and live your dreams. Be rejected and help other people and just refuse to quit. See, everyone can stay motivated when business is booming. That's the easy part. Everyone can smile after a closing a million-dollar deal because that sounds really good. The real entrepreneur is revealed after losing the deal. Do it again. The entrepreneur, the real one, is revealed after losing the deal because they don't quit. They just keep moving and keep moving and keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. See, we think that because we work hard, we expect to have things happen for us, and that's not how it works. You got to work ten times harder for a little bit of success. You got to work hard and get rejected and get rejected and get rejected, hearing no after no after no after watching months of work disappear just overnight. Think about all the work that you do that that just never ends up becoming a deal and you get frustrated. See, this is where the iceberg grows. This is the part that nobody sees. This is the foundation. The iceberg has 90% of it sitting so the 10% can sit up. It's 90% underwater. You're not seeing it. You're not. And every painful experience adds another layer underneath the water. See, and if you don't have any painful experiences in business and you don't have any frustrations and late nights, you have tears falling from your face, frustration when you put your feet on the floor, you're not building strength under the water. No one applauds that. If you had to know what most of these entrepreneurs go through, you'd say, man, this is really difficult. I don't, I would never want to do that. Good. We have less competition. We're okay with that. Entrepreneurs don't care. Less people, that's the better. It's okay. But gosh, I don't think that's who I'm talking to. I don't think that's the people that are actually watching this today. So no one really applauds it, but it's becoming your foundation. It's where the strength comes from. You know, when I said to this young lady who I spoke with the other day about all of this, and she was talking about wanting to um get to a certain milestone and get some accolades in those particular areas. And I said, you know, it's really fun watching people from a distance and the celebration of their life and their business and how they've done. But what you just don't know is all of the lonely days that nobody pays attention. See, it's the mental weight that nobody talks about. It's the mental weight of it all. Entrepreneurship isn't just financially difficult, it's mentally exhausting. And you carry everyone else's problems. You worry about employees, you worry about customers constantly, you worry about cash flow. It's always an issue. Learn about cash flow, make sure you're paying everybody. You worry about making the right decisions. Some of you guys are just sitting there going, Well, gosh, I just I just need to make money, Bernie. And that's fair. That's kind of how we all start. But what about when you start paying for other people and have employees and you're paying for their families and their kids, and everybody depends on you? Can you imagine the amount of weight that that must carry on these entrepreneurs who have hundreds and hundreds of employees and they're responsible, making sure that everybody gets the gets fed so their family can have a decent life? And what we do all the time as entrepreneurs is we question ourselves constantly. You compare yourself to people who appear to have everything figured out. Nobody's got anything figured out. They've just fought it. 90% of it's underwater. 90% of it you'll never see. Entrepreneurs know it. If I'm talking to another entrepreneur and they have a fabulous business, I know they have 90% that's ugly under the water. It's the weight that supports the 10%, the 10% you see and that you admire. So you just wonder if you're failing. But here's the whole truth. Most entrepreneurs aren't afraid of hard work. Are you? They're exhausted from carrying invisible weight. Every decision feels personal because your name is attached to everything. I can appreciate that. I have my name on my building outside of this big building that I'm in, 12,000 square feet. My name is in the front of that building. You it has weight, it has a level of responsibility that a lot of people will never understand. Failure doesn't feel like a business problem. It actually feels like a personal problem. And that's a heavy iceberg to carry. That's a tough one at times. Stop comparing icebergs. One of the biggest mistakes we make constantly is comparing someone else's visible success to our visible struggle. You're looking at their 10%. You're only looking at their 10%. We're living inside your 90%. Inside of our 90% is where the 10% shows up. It's it feels unfair at times. But remember this every successful entrepreneur has a scar. A lot of them. A lot of scars. You don't see them, but they're emotional and they're also within our desire to be successful. And we have a level of commitment that continues to keep building through all the struggles. The more difficult it is, the more adversity we overcome. It's like stacking a solid foundation that you don't see, and we poke it up out of the water and we see it and people admire it. But it's everything underneath that has built the 10% to show up. Every single entrepreneur has doubted themselves in this process. Every successful entrepreneur has wanted to quit. Lots of times. I can tell you, many times I didn't what I wondered if any of it was worth it. If the late nights, the lack of time with my family, the weekends that I had to work, the times I didn't see my kids, the travels that I had to go all around the country to learn how to become more successful in my business. Some just get better at hiding it than others. Other people will be open-minded. Other people want to maybe not tell you what it's all about. Well, I'm here today to tell you that the struggles are real with every single person. So do me a favor, don't compare yourself to someone else's life. Because everybody, no matter what you see, they're struggling what you're struggling with. But if you feel like quitting, they felt like quitting. If you feel frustrated, they felt frustrated at times. If you want to cry, I guarantee you there's been a lot of tears. You don't really know what's underneath their waterline. But I can tell you, you can probably, if you're an entrepreneur, you can probably figure out that if you're successful and you're talking to somebody that's had a high level of success, you probably have a similar story underneath the waterline. The iceberg is your advantage. That's the plus. Here's what I want you to understand: everything you're going through today, every single thing, every rejection, every setback, every difficult conversation that you'll have, every disappointment, every sleepless night that you go through, every lesson that you learn, every single mistake through the process, you're building your iceberg. The strength people admire five years from now is being created today. I'm gonna say this the strength that people admire five years from now from you is being created with what you're going through today. So to my friend who called me the other day, and this is what I said you have to work the lonely nights and the early mornings. You have to do things people don't want to do, and you have to do it year in and year out, and eventually your 10% will poke above the water. Being created today, but it's only being created through building the 90% under the water. Nobody's gonna see it, but you can feel it. You know what I'm talking about, and the foundation beneath your future success is getting bigger every single day. And here's the beautiful part of it all icebergs don't float because of what's above the water. They float because of what's underneath it. Your business won't survive because of your awards, it will survive because of your character and who you become. It won't survive because of your social media. Those are all fake, by the way. You haven't figured that out. That's not real. You go ahead and keep posting all your stuff. It's not real. It's what they want you to believe is real, and maybe you see what is real, but they're not telling you what's under the water line. It will survive because of your resilience. It won't survive because people believe in you. It will survive because you keep believing in yourself when no one else did. You're creating the underneath part where most people quit and they're not going to believe in you, and they're not going to think that what you're doing is the right thing because they're afraid for their own level of success and they don't want you to succeed. So the next time you look at someone successful, don't admire the tip. Respect the iceberg and respect the years of sacrifice that it went to build the 90% underneath the water. Respect the pain and respect the failure. Respect the discipline that that person had to go through. And if you're in the middle of building your own iceberg, don't quit because no one can see it yet. That's the problem. I can I can't even tell you how many people I've it's just hard. Yeah, but so is poverty. So is having unfulfilled dreams that you've always wanted that you'll never have because you didn't have the resilience to build the 90%. The world only celebrates what rises above the water, but you're just building the foundation. Everything that matters, everything that creates lasting success is happening underneath the surface. I want you guys to remember this. The size of your future is determined by the size of the unseen foundation that you're willing to build today. Keep building it. Your iceberg is growing. You may not feel it sometimes, but your iceberg is growing. Do not quit. Always stay focused. Stop admiring others from a distance and start looking at the effort that went in to build the 90%. Hope you guys find value in this today. Don't forget to hit that like button and that subscribe button. We'd love to keep give bringing all this information to you. Have a great day.