Knowing When to Fold ‘Em (as an entrepreneur)
founderdating.comI feel as an entrepreneur it's easy to let the weight of the world fall on your shoulders. What we do as business owners is easy to think of as an extension of ourselves.
In many ways it is an extension of ourselves. Whether a business lives or dies is based off of our ability to manipulate it. Neglect it completely and it will fail. Don't start it and it will never exist.
But if you do think this way, it's first most important to take care of yourself. Picking up smoking again reeks of stress left unchecked. No sense of satisfaction from generally satisfying activities does too.
I know nothing about the Micah's business and what got him there, but from his post it feels a lot like what I've seen and what I've been through. A lot of "personal sacrifice" for the business, a lot of feelings of pressure, a need to perform. Essentially like an addiction to realizing goals; the fitbit example for instance - compelled to meet an arbitrary metric to the point that it causes him stress.
I think the best way to do anything, running a business or otherwise, is to first be cooperative and aware of yourself. If you are judging your business as an extension of yourself, it's destructive to sacrifice yourself for the business. If it's necessary, then do it with awareness; be cognizant of your actions and evaluate them to make sure they're still necessary. Stress can be a great way to motivate yourself for short bursts, but in the end it's a negative influence, it will ruin your life and it will ruin your business.
When you live off stress, that's when you can "hit rock bottom" - that's when you realize that relying on all the stress in the world to motivate you still isn't enough. If the stress doesn't help, why bother with it? That release gives you a boost - stress impairs your ability to function as much as it compels you. But I think it's important to take a lesson away from that - mitigate stress, monitor stress, and only use it occasionally. Let stress be the thing that happens when the shit hits the fan, and forces you to knuckle down and get through it. Be careful to never let it be the baseline again.
I 100% agree with you. That experience made me really think about the "team v. product v. market" dynamic that so many startups and founders are judged by. If we are to believe that team matters above all -- then why do you put the product over ourselves? If we spent more time taking care of ourselves, perhaps the product's quality and viability. would accelerate faster?
Couldnt agree with the two of you more. At a certain point stress can be debilitating for creativity and finding new solutions. Its so easy to get rapped up in needing to make one specific thing work that we become short sided in our thinking. Its in those moments of space where perspective and growth happens.
Micah, thanks for writing such a open post. We need more of this sort of open dialog in our industry. We have to push through the 'killing it' mentality that is too common now and start to have the type of dialog that keeps our community strong and lets all of us help each other when we're struggling and let's us reach out to one another when we're stuck.
"I know we tell each other that failing is ok. I know that there are books and blogs written about the importance of failure. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t think it wasn’t because of me."
What a super difficult topic to discuss - props to @micah for his honesty.
Wow what a moving story. Describing the physical pain we'll put ourselves through for a goal where the answer is clear, but being unwilling to put our selved through emotional pain to do the right thing really resonated with me. Those clarify moments when you're able to step back and look at things for what they really are, and decide to take the hard road - thats the stuff successful entrepreneurs are made up. Really inspiring and really great to hear someone speak about those persona, intimate difficult moments. Thanks!!
Micah is an amazing presenter and someone with a hell of a story to tell. It's great to see him always being open with other founders and spreading the knowledge from his experiences.
Always wise words from Micah. Thanks for contributing!!
Micah is a wonderful human being.