Nobody Cares About Your Middle

Everybody loves a good start and every single person celebrates this strong finish because when you're an entrepreneur, when you're just getting off the ground, that's when people want to support you, that's when people love what you're doing, that's when people tell you to go get it, get after it, you know, build your business, be an entrepreneur, and then when you succeed, when you sell your company, people care about that too, they celebrate that. But what about this long hard stretch in between? It's the part of building a business where the excitement fades, the crowd disappears, and then you're kind of left wondering if all this effort is worth it, and that's exactly what I want to talk about today. Because for most of you listening, your business is in the worst possible place right now, not failing enough to quit, but not succeeding enough to celebrate, you're just stuck in the middle, and that's where a lot of your life and your business is going to be. To be grinding away with modest traction, reasonable growth, and this creeping suspicion, it shouldn't be this hard, and nobody warned you about this part. They told you about the exciting early days, the launch, the first customers, the initial validation, and they told you about the destination, right, the exit, the IPO, the passive income, the freedom. Nobody tells you about the endless, thankless middle, where you spend about 95% of your entrepreneurial journey, and why am I talking about this because I saw a quote by Alex Ramose, that captured this perfectly, it was a tweet. People only root for others at two times. First, when they're at the beginning of the race, second, when they finish, neither is when you need it. So you have to master the middle, the boring, exhausting, soul-crushing middle. That's where the winning happens on your own, and this isn't just social media wisdom, it is a brutal truth about building anything meaningful. So let me show you why the middle is where most streams die, and why it's actually your greatest opportunity, and how to master it when nobody else is watching. So what actually happens in this thankless middle phase of building a business? The start line, well, that's where we all kick it off, the start line of any business of any venture, it's crowded with cheerleaders, right, because your family says they're proud of you for taking the leap, your friends double tap, and like all of your social announcements, your network sends all this encouraging signal information. The encouraging signal and messaging, the validation feels good, the dopamine hits are frequent, the external motivation is clentiful. Now, fast forward six months, the likes have dried up, the check-ins have stopped, the enthusiasm has faded, and it's not because people don't care about you, it's because humans are wired to notice change, not consistency. So your business is no longer news, it's just there, and this same cycle plays out in fitness, in relationships, in creative projects, basically any meaningful pursuit with a long timeline. The crowds attention span is shorter than your journey. Last night, experienced this while he was building Nike, and his memoir Shudog, he describes years of grinding when nobody beyond his small team cared or even noticed what they were doing. So for nearly two decades, Nike was, quote unquote, just another shoe company to most of the world. Even Knight's own family questioned why he kept pushing forward when the financial rewards were minimal and the stress was constant. The crowds attention returned only when Nike became a, you know, overnight success after 18 years of work that almost nobody witnessed or celebrated. The middle is where the crowd disappears, but it's also where the winners separate themselves from everyone else, because the middle is where your real competition quits. The crowd is gone, what happens to all the entrepreneurs who started at the same time as you, and this is what most people miss about entrepreneurship. It's not the most talented people that win. The winners are the ones who can endure the middle. If you look at the numbers, 20% of businesses fail in their first year, 50% fail within five years, 70% within 10 years. Most of these failures don't happen at the beginning, they happen in the middle. Not from catastrophic events, not from complete market rejection, but from the slow grinding attrition of motivation when progress seems incremental and recognition is non-existent. The middle creates a natural selection process that has nothing to do with your ideas, talents or market, and everything to do with your mental toughness. Sarah Blakely encountered this middle phase while building spanks for two years. She worked a full-time job selling facts machines during the day while developing her product at night and on the weekends. And once she finally launched, there was some brief excitement, then came the long middle, traveling store to store, facing rejection, working from her apartment, all while watching her savings dwindle. She's gone on record saying that nobody cared if she succeeded or failed, except her, and that most days felt like pushing a boulder uphill. Now, what separated Blakely from countless other entrepreneurs with good ideas wasn't her concept because shapewear existed already. It was her ability to keep going when nobody was watching or cheering. The middle is where your real competition quietly disappears. Your job is simply to be the last one standing. But the middle phase isn't just about outlasting others, something even more important is happening. The beginning of any journey is about excitement. The end is about achievement. But the middle is about transformation. And this is a part that a lot of people miss. The middle isn't just something to survive on the way to success. It's the process that creates the person capable of handling success. So the middle isn't delaying your results. It's creating the foundation that makes your results sustainable. So during the middle phase you're developing decision-making systems that don't rely on motivation, operational discipline that works even on your worst days, emotional resilience that can weather rejection and setbacks, and strategic thinking that isn't swayed by external validation. And these capabilities aren't built through books or courses or mentors. They're forged through the repeated stress and recovery cycle of showing up when no one is watching or cares. Rae Dalio's middle lasted over a decade. And after some early success with Bridgewater Associates, he made a series of bad bets at nearly bankrupted the company. What followed was a very long, unglamorous period of rebuilding with very little, almost no, external validation. And he says in his book Principles, I was in pain, but at the same time my character was strengthened. Now during this period Dalio developed the decision-making principles that would eventually transform Bridgewater and the world's largest hedge fund. The middle wasn't a detour for my success. It was necessary. It was the necessary forge for creating it. The person who starts the journey cannot finish it. The middle is where that transformation happens. Now this all sounds great in theory, but how do you actually survive when the middle gets tough? Understanding the importance of the middle is one thing, mastering it is another. And after studying entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated this phase, some patterns start to emerge. So the first idea is to build your own feedback loops. Since external validation disappears in the middle, you need to create your own systems for measuring progress and maintaining motivation. Jeff Bezos implemented this at Amazon with a relentless focus on customer satisfaction metrics rather than competitor comparisons or market validation. During Amazon's challenging middle years, which was around 1999-2002, when the stock crashed and critics called the company Amazon.Toast, these internal feedback loops kept the team focused and motivated. Now for your business, that means identifying two to three key metrics that genuinely reflect progress, creating weekly review systems that highlight incremental wins, and then celebrating process adherence, not just outcomes. The second idea is to find your middle masters. While the crowd disappears in the middle, you can strategically build relationships with others who understand the value of the middle phase. These aren't cheerleaders. These are these fellow travelers who just respect the grind. Howard Schultz, he formed a small kitchen cabinet of advisors during Starbucks challenging expansion years. People who understood the unglamorous work of scaling operations when the initial excitement had faded, but before the massive success had arrived. Now for your journey, this means connecting with peers at a similar stage, not just these aspirational figures or mentors, building relationships based on shared challenges, not shared outcomes, and creating accountability structures with those who value consistency. The third idea is to reframe the timeline. Most motivation systems fail in the middle because they're built around reaching the destination. When the destination keeps moving further away, the motivation collapses. So read Hastings, he navigated Netflix through a brutal middle period by reframing the timeline for his team. Rather than focusing on the destination, becoming the dominant streaming service, he created a culture focused on making consistently excellent small decisions each day. He focused on the thing that got them through the middle. So what does this mean? Breaking down your very distant goals into 90-day objectives, finding some true meaning in the process itself, not just the outcome, and measuring success by adherence to the principles rather than proximity to the finish line. And the fourth idea is to master psychological switching costs. The middle is where most people quit because these psychological costs of continuing seems higher rather than the cost of stopping. So to counteract this, successful entrepreneurs deliberately increase their psychological switching costs. I'll give you an example. Elon Musk did this during Tesla's darkest middle period, 2008-2009, by publicly committing to specific production targets and delivery dates. The personal embarrassment of missing these targets created a psychological switching cost that outweighed the pain of continuing. So for your journey, this means making public commitments that would be embarrassing to abandon, creating financial structures where quitting costs more than continuing and building identity-based habits where action is tied to who you are, not what you get. The middle is mastered not through motivation, but through systems that make continuing easier than quitting. And when you look at the middle this way, something surprising becomes very clear. There's an opportunity here hiding in plain sight. If the middle is where most people quit, then mastering the middle isn't just a survival strategy. It is your greatest competitive advantage. In today's world of low barriers to entry in most markets, widely available information and education, accessible funding and resources, rapidly advancing technology. The biggest competitive moat isn't your idea, your funding, or your skills. It's your ability to endure and excel when nobody is watching. And this is why Hermosi's insight is so powerful. The middle isn't just a phase to survive, it's the opportunity most of your competition will fail to capitalize on. And when you truly understand this, the middle transforms from a burden into an opportunity. Every single day your competition gets discouraged by the lack of recognition is a day that you gain ground. Every week they cut corners because nobody would notice is a week when you can build structural advantage. And every month they question their path because external validation has disappeared is a month that you move closer to inevitable success. The middle isn't something unfortunate that happens on the way to your destination. The middle is the journey, and it's available to anyone willing to master it. So how do you stay motivated? I talked to you about systems, I talked to you about all these ideas, but how do you stay motivated when no one's watching? Let's end this podcast with the most important truth about the middle. You are the only audience that matters. In the beginning, external validation fuels you. At the end, external recognition rewards you. But in the middle, you must become your own source of validation, recognition, and motivation. And this isn't just philosophical advice. It is practical business strategy. The companies that survive the middle are the ones who would continue to exist even if no one ever recognized them. They have an internal compass that doesn't depend on external feedback. And as Hermosi puts it, the winning happens on your own. Not because that's unfortunate, but because that's the only way it can happen. So you have to ask yourself, would you continue building what you're building if no one ever noticed? If the only reward was the work itself and the person it made you become? Your answer to that question will determine whether your current business and your current venture becomes a story of what could have been or what actually became. Because the middle is coming for you. It always does. The only question is whether you'll master it or let it master you.