Mind Meets Machine is a video podcast by Avik where mental health, AI, and business collide in the most human way. Real conversations with founders, therapists, doctors, and creators. Practical tools, clear insights, and zero fluff. Learn to think clearer, work smarter, and live better in a tech-driven world.
Entrepreneurship looks like wins, freedom, and success stories from the outside. From the inside, it often feels like problem after problem, late nights, and the unsettling moment when you realise the “freedom” you expected is replaced by responsibility you can’t outsource. We slow down and talk honestly about what entrepreneurship really costs, why so many small businesses stall or fail, and what you can do to face the hard parts without pretending they don’t exist.
I’m joined by Sean B. Jones, a former corporate executive and psychotherapist with experience across federal law enforcement, bootstrapping, franchising, and building businesses that actually operate. Sean shares the seven realities most founders wish weren’t true: the workload shock, the loneliness, the role of luck and timing, and the constant pressure to make decisions when you “don’t know what you don’t know.” We dig into practical business fundamentals that protect you early, including legal structure, operating agreements for partnerships, standard operating procedures, vendor agreements, and why these basics help you sleep at night.
We also get real about small business finance, cash flow, and capitalization. Running out of money can end a promising company even when sales are growing. Then we go one step further: what happens when success hits fast, a huge order lands, or a contract demands you scale from four employees to twenty? We talk capacity, outsourcing, financing, and why building a bank relationship before you need it can save a deal.
If you’re building a company or thinking about taking the leap, listen, share this with a founder friend, and leave a review. Which reality of entrepreneurship have you faced most, and what helped you push through?
📌 Disclaimer This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. Guest views are personal and do not represent the host or Healthy Mind by Avik™. The Network does not verify or endorse guest statements. Nothing here is medical, legal, financial, or professional advice, please consult a qualified professional. Engage critically. Third-party content referenced under fair use. Guests are responsible for their own statements. Concerns? Contact us | Full disclaimer.
The wins, freedom, stories of success. What they don't see are the seven realities that no one warns you about. The ones that break people before they ever break through. And today we are talking about those realities. The ones you wish were not true. And how to face them without pretending that they don't exist. So welcome to Mind Me's Machine, I'm your host Avek, and this is where we slow down long enough to notice what's actually happening. What's actually happening
inside the work that we do and the lives we build. And today we are having a conversation about what entrepreneurship really costs and what it really takes as well. And joining me today is a very lovely guest. Please welcome Sean B. Jones. So welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00
Well, thank you. Thank you. It's a privilege to join you. Thank you for the invitation.
SPEAKER_02
Thank you. Thank you so much, Sean, for joining here. And just as like before we get into the discussion, I'll quickly love to introduce you to Sean. So uh he is a former corporate executive who ran multi-billion dollar and started as a psychotherapist. Worked in federal law enforcement and now owns a pet franchise system. Bootstrapped and sold a freeze trying company and wrote the book Entrepreneurship, doing what others only think about. So I do not want to take much of a time there listeners because there will be a lot of discussions you'll definitely learn from him. So
let's get started. So Sean, like I mean, where to start? And I mean I'll I'll definitely love to start with some misconception part. Like uh I mean, according to you, what do you think? Like the biggest misconception that people have about the entrepreneurship, like what do you think most of them get wrong before they even begin only?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think the in the one of my my second realities is that I think most people go into entrepreneurship thinking that they're gonna have a tremendous amount of freedom that they hadn't had before. So if they're working on a corporate job or a job that they may have had for a long time, they think they're gonna have a tremendous amount of freedom. And that's probably not true. In fact, if you talk to most entrepreneurs, they'll tell you, especially the first if they founded a company or even if they purchased a a company and or existing business, that the first few years you're probably gonna spend twice as uh much time on your new business as you did on your last job.
SPEAKER_02
And so like uh when when someone realizes that misconception that it it is not true, so what usually happens? Like, do they adjust or does that realize break them?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think when we look at the statistics, unfortunately, for entrepreneurs is we know that probably half of all businesses that are started will no longer be in business five years later, and over 95% of businesses that are started don't exist any longer after 10 years. So I think I think some of it contributes to the fact that the entering or becoming an entrepreneur is not what they thought it was. And it's not it's not a a a character flaw, it's not something that anyone is doing wrong. It's just a I think a reality that most people weren't prepared for in the beginning.
SPEAKER_02
I agree. So I mean it's really I'd say interesting, like how the gap between what we imagine and what we encounter becomes the first real test. And it's not, I'd say it's not the business that breaks us first. It's a story we told ourselves about what the business would be. Right.
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02
So and and you talk about these seven realities that people wish were not true. So what do you think is at the kind of root of why these realities hit so hard?
SPEAKER_00
I mean, is it about the unpreparedness or is it is there something deeper going on, something what I think I think for most people they they want to be in business for themselves and they might have had a
a job or a hobby that they were very good at, uh very passionate about. And then when they start to treat that as a business, they realize you spend most of your time running a business rather than focusing on that passion. And I think the the compliment to it is most people don't even get started. And I really like working with entrepreneurs that have started something because the reality is 92% of people will tell you they have a great idea for a business. And the reality is very, very few of them will ever start a business. And of those who actually start or incorporate, it's something like 92% of them won't ever generate one penny of revenue after starting a business. So being an entrepreneur is rare, it's very rare, and it's even rarer to serve to survive longer than those five or ten years.
SPEAKER_02
I agree, I agree. So how do you tell the difference between I mean, someone struggling because they didn't expect the reality, and at the same time, someone who's struggling because the reality generally is not sustainable for them, kind of I mean, if you can change.
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think I think a lot of people that have the entrepreneur spirit get discouraged if they they don't succeed the first time. And the reality is that I think part of the reason why they don't succeed is because they didn't lay down the foundation for a business. They might have had the best business idea, the most innovative technology there is, but the reason why their business wasn't successful had more to do with operating a business. And and some and sometimes it's just luck too. And I write about that in my book as hardly do you ever hear people talk about luck and timing and events. And I think using COVID is is a perfect example, known anticipated COVID, and I think COVID really affected or you know, certainly harmed a lot of businesses. So I so I think one of the things is people might start and they might not start with the right foundation in the beginning, and then they get very discouraged and they don't ever try it again.
SPEAKER_02
And also like if you can also walk us through like what one of these realities look like in our daily life, like not the kind of dramatic versions, but uh suppose Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday afternoon version kind of like what does it feel like when
Well, I think I think one of the things when you're operating a business, and let's say that you have pat if you're passionate, and I use the example of bicycles, a lot of people go into the bicycle business because they're passionate about it and then realize, hey, I've got to deal with payroll, I have to deal with personnel, I have to deal with suppliers, and I have to make sure that there's, you know, now you're now you're taking care of a building or real estate. Those are all things I think people aren't prepared for. However, I think once you're in business for a while and you do realize you have to do those things, I think one of the important things is to go back and make sure that you focus on the right foundation. We work with a lot of entrepreneurs now that started in partnerships. And I have a saying that the first day of a partnership is the best day. And it's all downhill from there. If you don't have a legal, first of all, if you don't structure your business legally right from the beginning and spend some money on a legal organization, which would also include an operating agreement with any type of partners, even if you're a solopreneur where you're you're the only one working in your business, you should still have an operating structure written out. Because if you ever get into legal litigation and you don't have your operating or your standard operating procedures written down, you really can't prove that you were following them or that this is what you do. So I think those business found those strong business foundations where it's a legal structure, um, operating agreements with partners, non-disclosure documents and agreements with with you know different partners and vendors, those those are all the business foundation things I think that are really important right from the beginning. And frankly, when you feel like you have a solid foundation under you, whether that's you know legally or you have a good, you know, good solid agreements with your vendors, you make better decisions because you're not staying up at night worrying about what you don't know. And I think one of those things too is just being uh appropriately capitalized, too. I think what that is one of the big things, and I certainly talk a lot about that in my book, is about capitalization. And I think a lot of business gets started and they run out of money and they or they don't realize how much money that they're gonna need, or they miscalculate what their revenue is gonna be. And I've I've heard a lot of lot of stories how people end up taking second mortgages on their house or selling cars or selling other assets or taking on a side job. Um they're very passionate, their business is actually scaling and doing really well, but they have they're having difficulty with cash flow, which most businesses do, even large businesses, and they end up taking a side job to fund uh their their cash flow. And the reality is if you especially if you have a business that is doing pretty well, but you're having cut cash flow issues, and cash flow issues don't always mean there's something wrong with the business, you're not you're not gonna spend full time on your on your business, and you're not gonna make very good decisions. So there's all those things I think that I there's a lot of things I wish I knew when I was going into it, I would have done differently. And I really now having several businesses really like sharing that with other people.
SPEAKER_02
So what do you do in that moment? Like uh, how do you keep going when it's not a kind of crisis?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think I think when they're first of all, I think one of those misconceptions about business is there's there's all there's always gonna be a crisis. And if you're not the type of person that loves solving problems and going from one problem to the other,
you're probably not gonna enjoy being an entrepreneur very much. And sometimes those problems are, you know, you you have a a new opportunity to sell your product or to provide services, and you have to figure out how to finance the, you know, that was one of our big challenges. We would get these big orders, but we had there was a lot that we had to finance ahead of time just to fulfill the order. Where does that capital come from? Where, you know, maybe you get a for us, another example was we would get a contract with a big company, and then we needed specific machines in order to fulfill those orders. Well, some of those machines, there was a nine-month waiting list to get the machine. So it's a little bit of what comes first, the chicken and the egg. Do you, do you build, do you, do you pay for a machine that is going to take nine months to build and hope that you're gonna have enough customers to fill it later on? So those are all the the struggles. And I I personally as an entrepreneur love being in that situation trying to figure out how you know how to solve those problems. But those those are things that I think if you're running a a successful business that I sometimes say move moving at the speed of business, that you're you're always gonna have to solve it, solve a challenge in order to be successful.
SPEAKER_02
And so you have you have written a whole book about doing what others only think about. So what are the most practical things someone can do when they realize that they are facing one of these seven realities and they don't know like how to move forward?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think you know, one of the the last reality is you don't know what you don't know. And I always say, you know, and there's and one of the realities is that luck does play a role in business. Whether it's bad luck or good luck, it still is a pr a problem that needs to be solved. And I think for a lot of businesses where you hope that there's a that you'll you'll be presented with a great opportunity. And you can say that sometimes that's because of luck, and sometimes it's because of your overall business strategy. But you better be prepared to hit it big. And I think a lot of businesses, in a way, they bite off more than they can chew because being able to scale a business is a very specific skill set. So I I always tell people, I was like, what happens if you make the biggest sale, a sale bigger than you ever anticipated? What are you planning to do? What is your plan for if that happens? Do you do you have someone you can talk about, you know, about capital? Do you maybe have a co-manufacturer or do you have someone else? Uh you know, can you use another firm to basically can you sub it out? Can you use, you know, if you're in the legal business or the accounting business and you get a contract with a large client, can you work with other accountants or other lawyers or other people that are in the service? I recently talked to someone that was in a skilled trade business and they got a contract with a government entity and they only had four employees and they they needed at least 20.
So we went, you know, we advised you should you should really let's go look, let's go to a bank and see if you can buy another company. Those are all those are none of those things are anything they had ever thought about before. But in order to service this contract, they they needed to be four times as large to be able to service the contract, and they didn't they didn't think they'd get it. And if they hadn't had a relationship with a bank, they would have lost that contract. But because they did have a relationship, they could say, look, I've got this contract, I need to buy this other company right now in order to fulfill this three-year contract. And it was pretty easy. But had they not had that relationship ready to go, they could literally walk into a bank, the bank already knew all had all their financial records and their history. They were very, you know, they were very able to look at this contract and see what exactly what the revenue was going to be. But had they not been prepared for that, it it wouldn't have happened. So I think those are things you can do to mitigate those seven realities. Again, that's about running a business. That's not about being an expert in the service that you're providing. It's you know, if you're running a bicycle shop and you're you're really good at at fixing bikes and selling bikes, and you have 10 minutes of knowledge about that industry, but you may not have the expertise in securing capital and negotiating leases and you know knowing what kind of insurance that you need and those types of things. Those are all all really important things that you can mitigate, but you won't do it if you don't know about it.
unknown
Amazing.
SPEAKER_02
Amazing. So if I ask, like if you have to give one advice to the listeners who are listening today, what that'll be.
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think the the biggest part is well, twofold. Don't give up. There's more help now for entrepreneurs than there ever has been in the history of the world. There's tons of business groups, there's there's tons of, you know, the in the United States, the SBA has a tremendous amount of knowledge. There's a tremendous amount of information online, there's courses that you can take. Those things didn't exist maybe 10 years ago. So I always say, don't give up. Realize that what you're doing is very rare. So any of the challenges that you have, please don't get discouraged because everybody has those challenges. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs tell me they feel very alone in their struggles, even if they're in a family business. So I think that's that's one of them. And then the second one is try to be
as prepared as possible and prepare for the unpredictable and prepare your business. Um, you know, a lot of people are trying to get investors or they're trying to sell their business. Those are things that take years to prepare for. So just to have some foresight. So, first of all, don't get discouraged and have foresight into where your business might, what it might grow into, or what happens if something happens in your life and you have to sell your business. Are you even ready to do that? So just having some foresight into what's in the future.
SPEAKER_02
And if they want to connect, you know, they can connect.
SPEAKER_00
Yes. So you can connect with me. I have a website, and the website is seanbjones.com, so it's s-e-a-n b-j-o-n e-s dot com. And I have a book that's coming out. It's my first book. It's coming out October 30th. And if you're interested, um, you can go to that website and click on the book launch. And if you attend the book launch, it's only 15 minutes. You'll get a free copy, free electronic copy of the book.
SPEAKER_02
Amazing. So uh yeah, listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for easy reference. And I'll just say entrepreneurship is not about kind of ignoring the hard reality, but it is all about deciding like they are worth facing anyway. Right. So Yeah. So Sean, like you're saying something.
SPEAKER_00
I was gonna say it's it's all about actually doing it and executing on it. And that's the difference between an entrepreneur and a non-entrepreneur, is entrepreneurs actually just do it. A lot of people have great ideas and want to do it, but entrepreneurs actually do it.
SPEAKER_02
Execute it, yes, exactly. So yeah, thank you so much, Sean, for sharing this because this is this is the reality, I'd say, and uh thank you for sharing that. And uh for everyone who are listening right now, maybe we'll be listening later as well. I hope that this conversation gave you permission to stop pretending and it's supposed to be easy and start building something uh real anyway, right? So that is the work and that's what my news machine is all about. So with this hope this is your host a week, and this is my news machine. I'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much.
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