Why Matt Haycox Says It’s Not for Everyone – Daily Business

Entrepreneurship has never looked more glamorous.

Scroll through social media and you’ll see founders in supercars, on yachts, talking about freedom, money and building empires on their own terms. Success is packaged as aspiration — polished, frictionless, inevitable.

But according to Dubai-based British entrepreneur and podcaster Matt Haycox, that version of entrepreneurship is deeply misleading.

“We only ever see the people at the very top of their game,” he says. “And then everyone frames the whole thing through that lens. It’s the same with footballers, actors, entrepreneurs — we look at the elite and forget the reality underneath.”

Haycox knows that reality well. Over more than two decades, he has built and scaled companies across finance, hospitality and media, raised hundreds of millions in funding for businesses, gone through bankruptcy twice in public view, and rebuilt again. He’s experienced both the upside people envy — and the pressure they rarely see.

What concerns him now is how romanticised entrepreneurship has become.

“In a culture where money and possessions are constantly glamorised online, people see the lifestyle before they see the cost,” he says. “They see escapism. What they don’t see is the stress, the uncertainty, the responsibility and the very real chance of failure.”

Why most people aren’t suited to it

Ask most people if they want to earn a million pounds, Haycox says, and almost everyone will say yes. But change the question — remove the certainty — and the numbers collapse.

“If you tell people they might have to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, with no guarantee they’ll even make two grand a month, suddenly entrepreneurship doesn’t sound so attractive,” he says.

That’s why, in his view, true entrepreneurship isn’t for most people.

“Could everyone work for themselves in theory? Yes, if they’ve got a skill they can monetise. But real entrepreneurship — solving problems at scale, taking financial risk, being responsible for staff, outcomes and consequences — that’s not for 99% of people.”

Most people, he says, want stability. They want predictability. They want to know there’s a pay cheque coming in at the end of the month. There’s nothing wrong with that — but it’s very different from the reality of building something from nothing.

“The failure rate is enormous,” Haycox says. “Most entrepreneurs don’t succeed. Most of them fail. But people only notice the winners.”

He compares it to acting. “People think of Leonardo DiCaprio. They forget that 99% of actors are out of work, waiting tables. Entrepreneurship is the same. We glamorise the outliers and ignore the rest.”

When quitting is the right decision

Online business culture often pushes a single message: never give up.

Haycox thinks that advice is dangerously simplistic.

“There are times when you absolutely should keep going,” he says. “If the fundamentals that made you believe in something haven’t changed, then you should probably crack on.”

But equally, he believes there are moments when walking away is the most rational decision a founder can make.

“If the variables have shifted, if your original assumptions are no longer true, or if the numbers simply don’t work anymore, then continuing isn’t resilience — it’s denial.”

There’s also a personal line that matters just as much.

“From an emotional point of view, if it’s making you miserable, if it’s making you stressed, if it’s draining the life out of you, you have to ask yourself: at what cost?”

He’s wary of internet narratives that frame quitting as weakness. “Success doesn’t mean anything if you’re unhappy. And nobody else gets to decide where that line is for you.”

What being ‘cut out for it’ really means

For Haycox, being suited to entrepreneurship has nothing to do with confidence or bravado. It comes down to tolerance.

“You have to be comfortable with risk. Comfortable with discomfort. Comfortable with losing things.”

That’s not theoretical for him. Over the past few years, he’s lost significant amounts of money and rebuilt yet again — experiences that would devastate many founders.

“Most people would be suicidal at the thought,” he says. “But I’m almost invigorated by it.”

That response, he says, is the real dividing line.

“Have I got less money today than I did five years ago? Yes. Two or three years ago? Absolutely. But it doesn’t matter.”

What matters is perspective.

“I’ve learned more over that period than at any other point in my life. And that’s what excites me about what comes next.”

That mindset — shaped by repeated highs and lows — is why people gravitate towards Haycox’s podcast and content. Across hundreds of long-form conversations, the pattern he sees is consistent: the people who last aren’t those who avoid problems, but those who don’t break when they arrive.

“If you can’t sit where I am today, smiling and excited about the future despite what’s happened, then you’re probably not cut out for it,” he says.

The same consistency and lived experience underpinning those conversations has helped shape his broader personal brand, built around authenticity rather than aspiration.

Demystifying the job, not glorifying the pain

Haycox is careful not to frame struggle as something to be chased or celebrated.

“The point isn’t to glorify pain,” he says. “It’s to be honest about the trade-offs.”

Entrepreneurship isn’t a shortcut to freedom. It’s a different kind of pressure — one that rewards people who can think clearly under stress, make decisions without certainty, and keep going when there’s no applause.

“For the right person, that’s energising,” he says. “For most people, it’s exhausting.”

And that’s the truth he thinks more people need to hear — especially those being sold the dream without the disclaimer.

“Entrepreneurship isn’t meant to be easy,” Haycox says. “It’s meant to test you. The question isn’t whether it looks good online. It’s whether you’re built for the reality when nobody’s watching.”

That unfiltered view of entrepreneurship runs through Haycox’s wider work, where he consistently challenges polished success narratives and focuses on the realities founders face.