En­tre­pre­neur­ship is of­ten pre­sent­ed as a race. Start the busi­ness, build the brand, at­tract cus­tomers, make mon­ey and scale, prefer­ably be­fore every­one on so­cial me­dia be­gins ask­ing why you are not yet a mil­lion­aire.

That im­age, how­ev­er, bears lit­tle re­sem­blance to how most sus­tain­able busi­ness­es are ac­tu­al­ly built.

A more use­ful way of un­der­stand­ing the en­tre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney comes from Amer­i­can writer Christo­pher Mor­ley.

In his 1917 nov­el Par­nas­sus on Wheels, Mor­ley wrote that there are three in­gre­di­ents in the good life: learn­ing, earn­ing and yearn­ing. He ex­plained that a per­son should con­tin­ue learn­ing as they go, earn enough to sup­port them­selves and oth­ers, and keep yearn­ing to un­der­stand what is not yet known.

Mor­ley was not pre­sent­ing three rigid stages of life. He was sug­gest­ing that a mean­ing­ful life re­quires all three. We should con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing our­selves, cre­ate enough val­ue to sus­tain our­selves and con­tribute to the well­be­ing of oth­ers, while nev­er los­ing the de­sire to reach be­yond what we cur­rent­ly know, pos­sess or un­der­stand. The same prin­ci­ple ap­plies re­mark­ably well to en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

Busi­ness own­ers of­ten speak about the ear­ly years as though they are sim­ply wait­ing for the earn­ing years to be­gin. They ex­pect the first year to prove the idea, the sec­ond to pro­duce growth and the third to de­liv­er fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. When the jour­ney does not un­fold that way, many be­gin to ques­tion whether they made the right de­ci­sion. But the ear­ly years of busi­ness are not on­ly about earn­ing, they are al­so the yearn­ing years.

The yearn­ing is what brought the en­tre­pre­neur in­to busi­ness in the first place. It may be a de­sire for greater in­de­pen­dence, fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty or the op­por­tu­ni­ty to build some­thing mean­ing­ful. It may come from recog­nis­ing a prob­lem that needs to be solved or be­liev­ing that a dif­fer­ent fu­ture is pos­si­ble. That yearn­ing mat­ters be­cause it pro­vides a rea­son to be­gin. More im­por­tant­ly, it pro­vides a rea­son to con­tin­ue when the re­sults are slow­er than ex­pect­ed.

How­ev­er, yearn­ing by it­self does not build a sus­tain­able busi­ness. A per­son can want suc­cess very bad­ly and still be un­pre­pared for what suc­cess re­quires. Pas­sion does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly pro­duce fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline. Tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly pre­pare some­one to man­age em­ploy­ees, ne­go­ti­ate con­tracts, sell con­fi­dent­ly or make dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions un­der pres­sure. This is where the learn­ing years be­come im­por­tant. The en­tre­pre­neur is not on­ly learn­ing about cus­tomers, pric­ing, com­pe­ti­tion, mar­ket­ing and cash flow. The en­tre­pre­neur is al­so learn­ing about them­selves.

They dis­cov­er how they re­spond when sales are slow. They learn whether they can ac­cept crit­i­cism with­out be­com­ing de­fen­sive. They find out whether they can ask for help, change di­rec­tion when nec­es­sary and make de­ci­sions that may be un­com­fort­able but es­sen­tial for the fu­ture of the busi­ness. This is the part of en­tre­pre­neur­ship that is of­ten over­looked.

Per­son­al de­vel­op­ment is not sep­a­rate from busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. It in­flu­ences it di­rect­ly. A poor­ly or­gan­ised en­tre­pre­neur will even­tu­al­ly cre­ate a poor­ly or­gan­ised busi­ness. A founder who avoids dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions will al­low small prob­lems to be­come larg­er ones. A busi­ness own­er who re­fus­es to un­der­stand fi­nance may gen­er­ate rev­enue while re­main­ing fi­nan­cial­ly un­sta­ble. The lim­i­ta­tions of the en­tre­pre­neur do not re­main per­son­al. They even­tu­al­ly ap­pear in the com­pa­ny.

The first three years should there­fore be viewed as a pe­ri­od in which the en­tre­pre­neur and the busi­ness are de­vel­op­ing to­geth­er. The founder is learn­ing what the mar­ket will ac­cept, while al­so learn­ing what lead­er­ship de­mands. They are ad­just­ing the prod­uct, the pric­ing and the cus­tomer, while al­so ad­just­ing their habits, ex­pec­ta­tions and de­ci­sion mak­ing. Some of those lessons will be un­com­fort­able. An of­fer may not sell. A cus­tomer group may re­spond dif­fer­ent­ly from what was ex­pect­ed. A part­ner­ship may fail. The orig­i­nal busi­ness mod­el may need to change.

None of this au­to­mat­i­cal­ly means the en­tre­pre­neur has failed. It may sim­ply mean that the busi­ness is pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion the founder did not pos­sess at the be­gin­ning. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the en­tre­pre­neur is to con­vert that in­for­ma­tion in­to bet­ter judge­ment. This is al­so where grace be­comes im­por­tant.

En­tre­pre­neurs must give them­selves grace dur­ing the years when much of their progress may not yet be vis­i­ble in their in­come. They may be be­com­ing bet­ter ne­go­tia­tors, more dis­ci­plined man­agers and stronger lead­ers long be­fore those im­prove­ments ap­pear in the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­sults. Grace, how­ev­er, should nev­er be­come an ex­cuse.

It does not mean ig­nor­ing the num­bers, re­peat­ing the same mis­takes or con­tin­u­ing with a busi­ness mod­el that the mar­ket has re­peat­ed­ly re­ject­ed. It means recog­nis­ing that de­vel­op­ment takes time while re­main­ing hon­est about what must change.

Busi­ness sur­vival fig­ures help place the ear­ly years in­to per­spec­tive. Da­ta from the Unit­ed States Small Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion show that on­ly about half of new em­ploy­er busi­ness­es sur­vive be­yond five years. These fig­ures should not dis­cour­age en­tre­pre­neurs. In­stead, they should en­cour­age pa­tience, prepa­ra­tion and adapt­abil­i­ty. Even­tu­al­ly, learn­ing must con­tribute to earn­ings.

A busi­ness must gen­er­ate enough in­come to cov­er its ex­pens­es, com­pen­sate its own­er, sup­port em­ploy­ees and in­vest in its con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment. Mor­ley’s ref­er­ence to earn­ing bread for one­self and oth­ers is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant here.

Earn­ing is not sim­ply about mak­ing mon­ey. It is about cre­at­ing enough val­ue to sus­tain both the busi­ness and the peo­ple who de­pend on it. But earn­ing should nev­er cause the en­tre­pre­neur to stop learn­ing or yearn­ing.

A busi­ness own­er can be­come so fo­cused on pro­tect­ing cur­rent in­come that they stop de­vel­op­ing. They re­sist new tech­nol­o­gy, ig­nore chang­ing cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions or be­come un­will­ing to ques­tion the very meth­ods that once made them suc­cess­ful. This is why learn­ing, earn­ing and yearn­ing must re­main con­nect­ed.

Yearn­ing with­out learn­ing be­comes wish­ful think­ing. Learn­ing with­out earn­ing be­comes end­less prepa­ra­tion. Earn­ing with­out yearn­ing can pro­duce a busi­ness that makes mon­ey but has lost its cu­rios­i­ty, pur­pose and am­bi­tion. A healthy en­tre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney re­quires all three.

The yearn­ing gives the en­tre­pre­neur a rea­son to be­gin. The learn­ing de­vel­ops the per­son ca­pa­ble of lead­ing the busi­ness. The earn­ing pro­vides the re­sources need­ed to sus­tain and grow it. The stages do not oc­cur once and then dis­ap­pear.

An es­tab­lished en­tre­pre­neur may yearn to en­ter a new mar­ket, learn what that mar­ket re­quires and de­vel­op a new way of earn­ing from it. Each new op­por­tu­ni­ty de­mands an­oth­er lev­el of per­son­al growth. That may be the deep­er les­son be­hind Mor­ley’s words.

The en­tre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney is not sim­ply about reach­ing the point where the mon­ey be­gins. It is about con­tin­u­ing to learn, earn­ing re­spon­si­bly and pre­serv­ing the yearn­ing that gave the jour­ney mean­ing in the first place. En­tre­pre­neurs should there­fore give them­selves grace dur­ing the years when much of the progress is tak­ing place with­in them. Those years are not sep­a­rate from the suc­cess of the busi­ness. They are de­vel­op­ing the per­son who will even­tu­al­ly be ca­pa­ble of sus­tain­ing it.