A client yesterday told me she loves our calls and hates our calls. That may be the perfect summary of entrepreneurship.
There are so many people who post on LinkedIn saying, “Do it already! Be an entrepreneur! It’s so easy!”
The vast majority of those people have an agenda. Do it (and sign up for their newsletter). It’s easy (to start, at least, and then they won’t feel so foolish and lonely).
If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll feel the highest highs and the lowest lows, often in the same week and sometimes in the very same day.
Building a startup is a never-ending chain of figuring something out, enjoying the feeling of mastery for 15 minutes, then delegating that solved problem to someone else so you can jump onto the next thing you and your business suck at.
It’s like remodeling a house, one room at a time. You painted the kitchen — congrats, now your dining room looks like shit.
As a friend of mine once said, startups never get easier, they just get different hard.
It’s exhausting and elating and confusing and addictive, all at once. You’ll question why the hell you’re doing this to yourself and then put your head down and immediately forget what you were stressed about.
Don’t let anyone lie to you. The founder gig sucks quite often. It’s also headswimmingly amazing at times, but that’s not how most people describe 3am panic attacks.
What I’m saying is this: if you’re considering starting a company, get your head checked. Are you doing this because you want to *have* a startup or you want to *build* a startup? Do you want to be on the cover of Forbes as the next big thing? Or do you want to be in a basement office, stressed for 14 hours a day because your market *still* doesn’t care about what you’re building?
Start a company because you have no other choice. Because you’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life if you don’t give it a try. Because you are truly the only person on earth that can solve your market’s problem. Because you’re unhirable.
And to my founders out there who have already burned the boats and are now trapped on the island: I’m sorry. And, also, congrats! Go kick some ass.
If you have a moment, share a recent win in the comments and spend 15 seconds celebrating a success instead of just fixating on what isn’t working today.
(♻️ Please share this if you know someone who needs to feel seen today. And don’t forget to kick that ass 😈)
#startups #highsandlows