If you analyzed psychology of your average entrepreneur, you would discover a person in serious need of some rather comprehensive therapy.
We are overconfident, risk seeking, gamblers with half-cocked beliefs in our ability to overcome the near statistical impossibility of surviving in business.
Add to this the compulsions that drives us to work 60-100 hours a week for years at a time with very little hope of ever recovering those hours, and the delusions that push us past the constant nay-saying and “good advice” of everyone from our wives and husbands to the loan underwriters, and you have a group of people who in any rational society would be kept heavily medicated rather than being given the reigns of a nation’s economy.
Why Do It, Really?
With all of this in mind, the only question worth asking for a young entrepreneur deciding whether or not to take the dive is, “What’s the point?” Even in this economy, there are plenty of lucrative careers available for people willing to claw and scratch to get them. Why then would anyone, anywhere choose to work long hours for little pay and only the tiniest hope of ever making it big?
Because, my friends, what you must realize is that for those who choose to walk the path of the entrepreneur, the first and often biggest reward has nothing at all to do with financial returns and everything to do with getting the opportunity to do what you want to do on your own terms.
I know, I know — there are investors and team members to think about, eventually there might even be stakeholders and employees but even with all this, the fact remains that at the end of the day, the success or failure of the enterprise rests squarely on your shoulders.
The Beauty of The Journey
This is really powerful stuff. Entrepreneurship is one of the few opportunities in your life where you have a chance to take control of outcomes without being beholden to anything but your wit, pluck, intelligence, and the invisable hand of the economy looking to wring your neck.
When things go well, you and your team can pat each other on the back knowing that it was your hard work that did it. When things go poorly, you are secure in the knowledge that the only person to blame is yourself and that you are the only person who can draw your business out of it.
That’s why the best businesses I see are never the ones where the founders goes into it hoping to make a mint. Usually, those type of founders never make it past the first hard patch. They are so focused on the return that they ignore the journey, and since in the early days the journey is the return, they lose sight of the real beauty of what they are doing.
The best founders go into business because they want to do something more interesting than spending their mornings sitting in a cube adding to the balance sheet of a company that considers them an expense. They want to make something or change something or affect something bigger than themselves, and they want to do it in a way that is sustainable. Money to them is a tool, a means to an end. To them, it’s the journey that makes all the hardships worthwhile. Great founders realize that every bump in the road is just another reason to push harder because at the end of the day it’s the goal that matters, not the reward they get for reaching it.
As you can see, this further illustrates my point that entrepreneurs are — by their natures — completely insane.
I mean really, who works hard if not for giant bags of money?
More power to you. I tried the entrepreneur thing in college and it just wasn’t for me. When I started a business building custom computers, it was because I enjoyed building computers, not because I enjoyed accounting and filing taxes, sales, etc. But that’s what I spent most of my time doing, not building computers.
Right on, Steve! EVERYONE is insane. Some of us are just more willing to admit it.
Life… money… it’s all a game. It’s meant to be played and enjoyed. Learn the rules. Make your own. Pursue your passions.
As an entrepreneur, I LOVE a challenge! It’s the drive to do something cool or different just because you can. And seriously… what else are you gonna do, watch tv all day? No thanks.
This applies to anyone chasing those really big dreams with the small success percentages.
I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m an actor, striving to become a professional working actor-I’m trying to get paid to do this. But I read a couple of blogs on this stuff- like jun’s, yukai’s- and blogs on marketing, personal development, social media, etc. because as Alan Nusbaum likes to call it, we must be ‘actor-preneurs.’ Actors must market themselves, have websites, know how to network, use social media and all that. So the lifestyles sort of run parallel.
I’m lucky. I don’t even get called crazy or laughed at, I just get ignored or overlooked.
Person: “what do you do?”
Me: “I’m an aspiring professional actor!”
Person:”Oh…” or “good luck.” or “(silence and a look of shock)”
But it helps me weed out my real friends and support systems from everyone else. I used to lie, but what’s the point, I need real friends and supportive relationships with me on my journey.
This has inspired a post.
as an aspiring solopreneur, I feel my motivations have nothing to do with money. I’m not looking to “make it big” ever. Material things mean nothing to me and I more often than not embrace minimalism. What motivates me is the power to take control of my life on my terms, pretty much everything your article says 😀 Also, each little step to your goals are SO much more rewarding than working for ‘the man’. Even if they are small. I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable. And yet I feel someone w/ this path has got more of my respect than someone poor working in retail for 20+ years at a “dead end job”. Go figure.
Honestly, I feel that the most successful entrepreneurs are NOT in it for the money. Sure, lots of money is great – but most of the kids I know who have been at it for awhile are in it for the long haul, and because they can’t do anything else and be happy.
I think many entrepreneurs are simply happy to have a paycheck and to see their visions come to life.
There is a certain amount of money necessary to exist, that’s different for everyone and it depends a lot on your situation. Once you hit that amount, the rest is just “lifestyle building” which while satisfying for a while is really not what entrepreneurs want to do.
We are more into “life building.” We want to change things, we want to make them better in some way. At the end of the day, that’s the point.
In other words, you’re right and well said. 🙂
Two thoughts:
1. The funny part about entrepreneurs is that we get genuine pleasure out of calling ourselves crazy – maybe that’s the craziest part. Then again, it makes sense. We’re renegades, modern-day cowboys even; we get a boost each time someone tells us it can’t be done or that we’re out of our minds. If everyone believed in us, we probably wouldn’t be as motivated.
2. I find myself trying to inspire people to pursue their dreams and/or start a business in every other conversation I have. Sometimes I step back and wonder if I’ve done them a disservice. But in the end I think you’re right, Steve. To me, taking that leap is like being a child all over again, only better. You get to make things up and live in fantasy land, but you don’t have to do homework, and you actually get to see your dreams come to life. It’s tough and it’s scary, but it gets me out of bed every morning.
I think surprisingly few people actually consider how important it is to have something that gets them out of bed in the morning. I think we focus so much on stability that we assume that anything that makes our lives more stable (a 9-5, for example) will make us happier. Usually people only realize that this is patently false after they’re already so deep into the muck that it’s not practical to pull themselves out again.
I am a lot like you, every time I talk to someone I try to push them to find something that makes them happy and pursue it. Even though only a tiny fraction of them actually do it (very few people share our level of insanity) I really think that those who do are made better for it.
Cheers and thanks for the comment.
I think that work is only defined by the person who defines it. For me, a 9-5 is work. But building my blogging presence for 10 hours a day is not work at all. It is fun, frustrating, thrilling, challenging and much more but not work.
In other words…yes, I am insane
David Damron
LifeExcursion
Every entrepreneur I know works far too many hours for far too little money, I think it comes with the territory.
That being said, entrepreneurs are also some of the most satisfied workers that I know for precisely the reason that you described — they don’t view what they do as work. I think someone clever said that if you’re doing something you’re passionate about, you’ll never work a day in your life. I think it is absolutely true.
Maybe I’m outside the norm, but ‘bags of money’ just don’t really appeal to me. Having worked in investment management for so long, I saw that these people with eight and nine figure accounts weren’t any happier than folks making $40,000 a year. It’s a matter of perspective.
That being said, I certainly don’t want to be poor. I want to be able to provide for my family and live comfortably. Beyond that, it’s just zero’s in a bank account.
There are a lot of studies that have proven that money does not, in fact, buy happiness however people do magnify (to an extreme degree) the effect that they believe money will have on their lives. That’s why people work really hard at things they don’t like to accumulate symbols that they imagine will make it worthwhile only to find out decades later that they could have lived without the symbols but not without the time they have lost.
I’ve never felt that money ‘bought’ happiness, if for no other reason the amount of hell most people have to go through to get it. But being comfortable is my end-goal. If I get there, I’ve succeed.
Sounds like my life’s story. I can definitely say I am over qualified for the crazy house.
I can’t lie though, I’m in it for the MONEY the journey is just the bonus. I will not fail I can guarantee that!
Good luck guys. I might write a few guest posts, seeing that personal finance is a subject I love.
Haha I definitely qualify as insane. Sure, maybe I’m not a huge crazy adventurer.
I think this quote puts it very well
“The first and often biggest reward has nothing at all to do with financial returns and everything to do with getting the opportunity to do what you want to do on your own terms.”
This describes what I want exactly. Working for myself and taking photos is what I love to do. I feel like these photos could make people happy other than myself.
Living is an art. Why let someone else paint the picture for you? Paint your own picture.
I knew I was going to agree with you when I saw your name.
Good on sir and well said.
I agree with Mike, business-building is definitely an adventure for me. At the risk of sounding completely cheesy, it’s kind of like that Miley Cyrus song about climbing (which, by the way, makes me feel really old because I’m completely out of touch with the Disney generation).
The thrill of being the ultimate decision-maker on EVERYTHING is probably one of the big reasons. There is no one you have to ask for permission. No approvals to obtain. No emails to send. No phone calls to make. You think of it–you just do it.
At the end of the day we all have a boss and its our customers but I definitely agree with you, the entire reason for doing any of this is the fact that you get to wake up in the morning with a crazy concept/theory and actually play it out without someone shooting it down or pushing it through a bureaucracy.
I dunno if I’m insane, maybe just an adventure seeker. And business is an adventure! At least for me it is. And I can agree with the risk part, it’s always why I rock climb.
Hey Steve, random question, but looking at your profile pictures on this site, your blog and twitter, I’d say you’re an outdoors man. Am I correct?
I try to get outdoors as much as I can, the gravatar was from Arizona and the twitter photo is a local trail.