“Let me tell you something you already know…The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are—it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”

These immortal words from Rocky Balboa (written by Sylvester Stallone) aren’t just lines from a movie. They are truth wrapped in poetry—etched into the bones of anyone who's ever dared to dream beyond the ordinary. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not an instant brew or a viral post. It’s a slow burn, often fought and won in the shadows, with blood, sweat, and tears that never make it to the highlight reel.

Read the biography of anyone who’s achieved something extraordinary, and you’ll find what I like to call the backstory—the unglamorous, unfiltered, underdog chapter. The one where things didn’t go according to plan. The rejections, the detours, the sleepless nights, the empty bank accounts, the heartbreaks that didn’t make the press release.

Tony Robbins once washed his dishes in a bathtub. Jay Z was turned down by every major label before he created his own. Colonel Sanders, at 62, used his $105 social security check to hit the road and pitch his chicken recipe—rejected over a thousand times before someone finally said yes. And then there's J.K. Rowling. A single mother living on welfare. A heart full of stories. A stack of rejection letters. And still, she wrote. Through darkness, through doubt. Rock bottom wasn’t the end—it was the foundation. The Potterverse was born not from success, but from resilience.

Everyone loves the rise. No one sees the crawl

Lisa Nichols, one of my favorite motivational speakers, put it like this: “The people with the best stories are the ones who understand that giving birth to a dream cannot happen without taking the pregnancy full-term. They are willing to go through the morning sickness. The emotional roller coasters. The discomfort of having no idea what they’re doing—but they are doing it anyway.”

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Being an entrepreneur is a bit like being pregnant for life. Your dream grows in silence, kicks unexpectedly, and demands sacrifices most people will never see—let alone understand. You will feel alone.You will feel misunderstood. You will feel broke—financially, emotionally, spiritually. But you are not crazy.You are courageous.

Because it takes guts to leave a stable paycheck for a question mark. It takes vision to see a skyscraper where others see an empty lot. And it takes relentless belief to keep showing up when the world tells you to sit down.

Whether it’s a child, a company, or a cause—giving birth to anything meaningful is not for the faint of heart.There is no such thing as comfortable labor. But it will be worth it.

Keep building. Even when no one sees you. Keep writing. Even when no one reads it. Keep going. Even when you’re getting hit. Because that’s how winning is done.