Pay The Price provides practical advice and wisdom readers will need to find entrepreneurial success through any setbacks. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I thought my business was a no-brainer. I had done all the research, the training. Identified the market need. Launched it straight after business school. But after 10 years of slugging it out without a single pay check and enduring all sorts of challenges from near bankruptcy, humiliating chronic illness, 2 car crashes where the cars were so damaged they had to be written off, moral failure and losing 2 members of my close family, I was on the brink of giving up and sticking to my 9-5 job. But I didn’t, and after a decade, I signed my very first million dollar deal. It turns out that 90% of entrepreneurs face the same challenges but end up giving up too soon. And I felt an indescribable pain every time I walked past a closed small business, or read another story of a business going bankrupt, or met another failed entrepreneur. It sounds like a cliché but I felt deep down I had to do something about it, and this book is a result of that pain, that feeling, that ‘’calling”.

What is one trait that you think any successful entrepreneur must possess?

Resilience. If you believe in your honeymoon period, i.e your dream, your purpose and your passion, success does not come automatically. You need to have the grit, the diehard attitude to stick it out. As I say in the book, its crucial to stick with it if you believe in it.

What is one thing about entrepreneurship that you learned the hard way and how can others do it differently?

The one thing I learned the hard way? Pain. Its inevitable. I dedicated almost a quarter of the book talking about it – even to the extent of devising a brand new Pain Response Model. In that model, I show that there is a part of pain you can minimize or completely eradicate to make the journey a bit easier, to make the price to pay a bit cheaper – the pain of self-sabotage, what I call Red Flag Pain in the book. This is so simple, so ”common-sensicall” that it hardly needs saying. But it’s the one thing that trips up so many entrepreneurs even after they have succeeded. You need to know what yours is, be self-aware and take drastic steps to kill its growth before it kills you and your business in the end. My path to success would have been much smoother, but then I may not have had the ammunition to write this book!!

What research did you undertake to complete your book?

I researched using literally hundreds of books and academic papers, first hand interviews with entrepreneurs across the world, top rated podcasts, my own journals, social media feeds, and articles from dozens reputable websites such as the BBC.

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