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For the past several years, I have had the privilege of working with FURTHER, managing their digital marketing and supporting many of the entrepreneurs within their cohort. I have watched founders grow from uncertainty to clarity, from early ideas to grounded impact. Alongside them, I have also continued growing my own business. Mashup Marketing (a digital marketing company, specialising in social media management) turns ten this year, and this milestone has made me reflect deeply on what a decade of entrepreneurship has really taught me.
Ten years feels both long and incredibly short. When I started Mashup Marketing, I was a 26-year-old with more determination than certainty. I had been working as a digital marketing manager at a tech company for seven years, learning, experimenting, and figuring out who I wanted to be in the world of work. One Thursday evening, it hit me that the life I wanted was not inside the four walls of a corporate office. It was bigger, more fluid, more creative. By Friday morning, I had resigned. There was no business plan and definitely no roadmap, but I trusted myself. At that moment, I did not feel impulsive. I felt brave.
That bravery carried me into the early years of Mashup Marketing. It was chaotic and thrilling and exhausting in ways I could not yet articulate. I worked late into the night, often said yes to everything, and learned the hard way how to run a business while building it at the same time. Those early lessons shaped me, and even now, ten years later, I can still feel the echoes of that first version of myself.
Over this decade, the reason I do what I do has changed. In the beginning, like many entrepreneurs, it was about chasing the dream. More clients, more income, more security, more growth, but somewhere between the start-up hustle and the years that followed, something shifted. You realise it was never just about business growth, it was about personal growth. It was about the freedom to choose your clients, the calmness of designing a day around your own energy, and the ability to work in alignment with your values.
I have seen this happen with many of the entrepreneurs at FURTHER too. They arrive focused on the business model or the revenue plan, but as they grow, they discover that entrepreneurship is really an invitation to evolve. It asks you to confront who you are, what you fear, and what you truly want to create.
The truth is, entrepreneurship will stretch you. It will meet you with late nights, difficult decisions, and moments where the weight on your shoulders feels too heavy to name. It will introduce you to imposter syndrome in a way no job ever could. I have been in marketing for seventeen years, and still, there are days when I question everything I know. There are moments when a new, younger strategist appears online and suddenly I am comparing myself in ways that feel irrational but deeply human.
But I have also realised that entrepreneurship will indeed soften you. It will pull you into self-reflection, push you toward boundaries you should have set years ago, and teach you what enough truly means. It will reshape your identity in ways you could never predict. When I started this business, I was newly married and child-free. Today I am a mother of two, a woman who has healed parts of herself she did not know needed healing, and someone who can take a lunch break in the sunshine without guilt because I finally understand that nothing is that urgent. I am not saving lives. I am building one.
One of the biggest lessons this decade has offered me is that entrepreneurship is not about perfection. It is about resilience and self-trust. It is about resting when you need to, asking for help more often, and realising that your nervous system is one of your most valuable business assets. I tell the entrepreneurs I work with at FURTHER that sustainable businesses are built by regulated humans. You cannot pour meaningfully into your work and create content to market your business if you are constantly empty.
Entrepreneurship also teaches you about people. I have worked with global brands and small local businesses, and the clients who leave the deepest impact are the ones whose values align with mine. The ones who trust my process, who allow creativity to unfold, and who see our relationship as a partnership. Those clients remind me why I love this work and why the late nights and emotional investment matter.
Ten years later, I can say honestly that entrepreneurship has been one of the greatest teachers of my life. It has shown me my capabilities, my limits, my blind spots, and my strengths. It has given me opportunities I never imagined and growth I could not have accessed any other way.
And yes, it has given me abundance. But not the kind of abundance you measure only in revenue. Abundance in confidence. Abundance in purpose. Abundance in the freedom to build a life that feels like mine.
To the entrepreneurs within the FURTHER community and beyond, here is what I know with certainty. You will question yourself many times. You will feel fear and excitement in equal measure. You will wonder if you are capable and then prove to yourself that you are. You will fall, learn, rise, repeat. But if you stay committed to your values, to your wellbeing, to your purpose, and to the version of you who first believed in this dream, you will build something meaningful.
Written by Suhaifa Naidoo - Owner and Digital Marketing Strategist, Mashup Marketing
