The most important lesson I have learnt in business is one, I think I’ve only begun to fully understand and appreciate.

Starting VE, entailed a lot of personal sacrifices—too longwinded to go into detail here. I’m not saying this because I am looking for sympathy—because it’s the name of the game, it’s what you sign up for and something in one form or another most entrepreneurs experience. But yes, it certainly has been difficult.

I became so invested in VE; the best way I could describe it is as a singularity. When you are so intensely and wholeheartedly committed to something that your entire life revolves around and is experienced through a singular prism. I used to frequently even dream about working—it really does become all pervasive.

I think this level of dedication and intensity is needed because—in general from day one business is an extraordinary challenge—you climb one mountain, only to find another when you reach the peak. The quote, ‘are you willing to sprint when the distance is unknown,’ really does sum up what entrepreneurship is all about. Simply put, the path of Virtual Employee has been fraught with difficulties for a multitude of reasons.

Nevertheless, despite the challenges, by 2018-2019 we had come a very long way and many of the obstacles we faced we had either overcome or at least streamlined. Moreover, we were growing at a healthy pace and even better our rate of growth was increasing. After more than a decade of uphill battles—I was very optimistic about achieving exponential growth and getting to the next level—crossing the $100million turnover mark.

With VE stable and getting stronger with very passing year, I finally started to allow myself to enjoy life a little more too. In 2019 I moved into a new house, got married, my wife and I went on a long honeymoon, construction started on our new 2000-seater office, and I also launched an educational start-up. The past eleven or twelve years had been hard, but the future was looking positive and full of opportunity.

Your youth is very precious—so you really are taking a big risk if you prioritize being successful—as I in my late 30s now can even better appreciate; the freedom and novelty of your 20s is unique and of course only comes once. It was a relief that the personal sacrifices and hard work were at least paying off.

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020—it was like getting hit by a tsunami.

Years of hard work were undone in a matter of days and weeks. It was an extraordinarily surreal experience and one not easy to come to terms with it.

To rub salt in the wound, believe it or not, despite the many clients that backed out of taking our services in the last two weeks of March 2020, it was nevertheless still the best month we had ever had for new client acquisitions; a milestone that still stands to this day and had taken two years of concerted effort to achieve.

The irony of our best month being our worst month felt particularly cruel and unfair. The timing of the pandemic could not have been any worse—it hit just as we were about to take off. We had been prudent for so many years, and through no fault of our own our efforts were being undone.

Covid-19 changed everything overnight and meant having to go back to the drawing board. After killing myself for more than a decade and only just starting to reap the rewards, I wasn’t ready for this.

I thought working hard, making a lot of personal sacrifices, and growing a business for more a decade made me an entrepreneur. But after a lot of soul searching and learning about the journeys of various business tycoon’s I realized that it didn’t.

The truth is—it’s easy to work hard and overcome obstacles when you have a lot to be positive and optimistic about, when you can see a way forward to the problems you are facing. It’s when it looks like there is no hope—that working hard and sacrificing takes on a whole new meaning.

What happened to us with covid-19 has happened to entrepreneur’s time immemorial—often in an even bigger and harsher way. Business can be an incredibly cruel joke. Sometimes the market changes overnight—sometimes it crashes, sometimes the rules are rewritten in an instant.

Entrepreneurship is about finding a way to keep going despite doing everything right but it still not going your away. When you deserve to win, but you don’t and everyone else has given up—can you still find a way, that really is the nature of the beast—that is business. When life is unfair entrepreneurs don’t get down about it or feel sorry for themselves. They maintain a level head, they get to work, they find a solution.

Only when you are in this position where you could lose everything or have lost everything will you know how you will respond or ever really understand what perseverance means.

That’s why at the beginning I said—this is a lesson I am learning and have yet to fully appreciate, because I haven’t been in that position. I have a had a strong taste of it and as a result I now see business in a very different light; entrepreneurship is about making it despite the Universe having conspired against you. If it wasn’t this tough—then it wouldn’t be business.

And in the end if things don’t work out, still having the courage and fortitude to accept it with humility and grace. I can’t think of any other areas of life where you can be so great and put so much into something and in the end still walk away with nothing. This is what makes business the ultimate challenge. Many professionals sacrifice their 20s too—but they are guaranteed something at the end of it—accreditations, experience and a career—that’s the difference with business, you can even end up with less than nothing!

Although covid-19 was a huge setback for us—towards the end of 2020 we started to bounce back. Three years on, we are still adjusting and evolving—ironically with the A.I. technology we are developing it is possible that in the long run we could have even more opportunities now than we did before covid. Life is full of twists and turns—you just have to keep going.