Born Entrepreneur - Stories, Thoughts & Analysis

For the past week or so I have been on my own.  What a great feeling to structure your own day, to abide to your own schedule, and to answer to know one but yourself.  Granted it takes an extremely disciplined and driven nature to maintain life as a full-time entrepreneur….it’s certainly not for everyone.  So here were my factors in finally quitting.  I had been saving a lot over the past 6 months.  I’ve worked the job for about 1 yr, but it was in the last 6 months that I started to get smart financially.  I amassed about $5,000 in savings and realized with monthly expenses a little bit over $1000 I could live with no income for several months before I burned through my savings.

I spent the last week organizing my home office, going through old journal entries where I have accumulated business ideas for the past few years, focused my energy, and just generally gotten into the right frame of mind for my life’s next transition.  Just last night, with the help of my girlfriend, I shaved my head as a symbolic gesture for my re-birth into the business world.  Seems kinda crazy, but now every time I look in the mirror I’m reminded that I am no longer the same person I was before when I worked for salary.  You may think it’s a bit dramatic, but I don’t.  I really felt like a little part of me died every single day I went in to my old job.  It was not the fault of the company or my co-workers.  It was just a factor of who I am as a person and I was forcing myself into a situation that was not natural for me.

So, that part of me is gone.  And now I’m more alive than ever.

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Something happened to me today that made me happy that I’m not a 100% full time entrepreneur quite yet. I was asked to attend a meeting to represent our company in a presentation by a potential partner. The services offered by the company turned out to be a bust, and something that doesn’t really help our company that much. So from a company-side it was a waste of time. From a personal growth side, however, it was worth every minute. See, the presenter turned out to be the CEO of $40million company. It was me, him, and 2 others. Good experience for sure. If I was not affiliated with the company I’m working for, I never would have had the opportunity to expose myself to the dynamic of this meeting. I try to pick out things from encounters like this that will help me so that as I grow my own company I’m better prepared to handle myself. FYI: This was a very posh office, in downtown—fancy to the nth degree.

What I learned from the encounter:

1. When the secretary asks you for coffee at the beginning of the meeting, take her up on it, even if you’re not feeling it at the time. Because you never know when a seemingly brief meeting is going to last 2.5 hours and your inadvertent afternoon yawns start kicking in.
2. The dynamics of power are heavily influenced by the seating orientation of the room. Before you’re quick to sit in the first chair you come across, think twice, and make a smart planned decision. This may seem silly, but in the case of this meeting, I’m convinced that one person in the meeting attracted a stronger bond with the CEO simply because of the close proximity she was to his desk. (We were all seated at a table perpendicular to his desk)
3. Branded materials are important. They’re not just fodder. When he handed me a printed copy of his presentation enclosed in a snazzy folder with his logo professionally embossed across the front, it felt classy. $40million classy. Image is everything. (Or close to it)
4. Turn off the cell phone. I know you’ve heard it before, but seriously come on now. The woman next to me had her cell phone go off not once, but twice. It was a distraction to the meeting. I had turned mine to vibrate.
5. Before the CEO started the presentation he spent the first 20mins of the meeting getting to know us. “Tell me about yourself,” he said. I thought it was kind of silly in the beginning, but found that it made for a more impactful, meaningful meeting overall. It also helps to build a level of warm comfortability in the setting—which is a great ice breaker.

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As an entrepreneur yourself, I’m sure you can relate to having so many thoughts going through your mind all at once, non-stop, all the time. Sometimes the best ideas don’t even hit you until your head hits the pillow. Right? It’s constant information—all the time. But sometimes you reach the point I’m at right now. Overload.

I’ve learned through past experiences that in order to combat this overload it’s best for me to just relax and take it easy, letting things clear up on their own. Seems simple and obvious, yes?  But, alas, this is extremely frustrating. Why? Because as a part-time entrepreneur you don’t have the freedom to do just that. Wait. Hold up. Not fair.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects for me about working a full-time job is that I don’t feel like I own my schedule. When I feel overloaded I can’t just read a book for a couple hours during the day (or heck, even for 30mins). I can’t just go for a long walk outside. I can’t just simply close my eyes and go to sleep. The highly structured setup of corporate America steals your ability to repair itself in times like this. Which just makes for less productive workdays until you slowly and eventually grow out of your funk. It’s really very silly actually. A simple and relatively short hiatus from mind clutter could save hours upon hours of wasted time. Seems quite obvious to me. But others just don’t get it I guess. They just want you sitting at your desk doing something. “Butts in chairs,” he says.

Just another reason to keep on trucking…

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When I firt started working my 9-6 I was working wayyy too hard.  In fact I had effectively worn myself out and also convinced myself it was impossible to have a full time job and run a business on the side.  I was working all day in the office and then switching gears at 7pm and working until 2am.  Every night.  Sometimes I would just stay in the office after everyone left until the late evening.  Indeed, I was getting a LOT of work done.  But it was only a matter of time before it took a toll on my body—and my 2yr relationship with my girlfriend.  Finally I made a switch.

Now I’m a lot better at balancing the three.

See, I’ve learned that it is easier if I work on BOTH my job and my business within the 9-6 time.  Stop looking at it as your “business on the side.”

But don’t let anyone in your office know…

Sure this does create a lot of looking over my shoulder and listening for approaching footsteps, but it’s not that bad.  It took a while before I could find the tough balance, but it came eventually.  In the beginning, I found myself noticeably falling behind in my job work, but I gradually got the ability to workmore efficiently.  I still work 2-3 hours after I get off @ 6, but now it’s on both jobs.  This 2-3 hrs is spent still on both jobs as I must make up for my inability to get everything done that I couldn’t get done in the day.

Minimizing windows and alt-tabbing will eventually get on my nerves, but if anything, that just makes me grateful that I am still doing what I need to do to get ahead in life.  I’m not pushing it to the ends of my day anymore.  And thankfully, I get more sleep.

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As a part-time entrepreneur, you’re just waiting for the time when you can transition into a full-time entrepreneur and leave your current job. However, when you’re an employee of a small company it makes it extra hard to leave even when you have reached the point when you’re ready to make a move. It’s interesting actually. Although I am not ready to leave, when I am, I will have to fight with the dynamics of abandoning a close-knit team of friends, where people depend on you for certain things. When you leave you are certainly putting a strain on your co-workers at least until a suitable replacement is found. It’s human nature to not want to cause this strain. That makes leaving an extra hard decision. It’s a double-edged sword. The “mother hen” of the company recently left to take another job. She had been with the company nearly 3 yrs, signficiantly longer than most others. She knew everything and was the backbone of the operations side of things. She was telling me her biggest problem was that she felt like she was betraying us and leaving us in a tough spot. We will be in a tough spot for a while actually, but I told her how happy I was for her that she was pursuing this other opportunity.

In life, sometimes you must be selfish. After all, it is your life.  If you are not living it for yourself, who are you living it for?

It takes a lot of courage to do, but then again everything in life that is worth something makes you vulnerable and takes all courage you can muster.

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“I’m the most optimistic person you will ever meet in your entire life,” I’ve told countless people in the past.

Cocky, perhaps. Misleading, no.

So what did it take to make the self-proclaimed King of Positivity begin to teeter on the edge of self-despair and negativity? Ironically, it was my first full-time job after graduating college.

A seemingly great opportunity that has forced me to relook at my life and is testing my self-discipline and strength every single day. The posts that follow will explain how an unbelievable offer with a quickly-growing startup company in a booming industry took a young go-getter like myself to the edge.

This is the story of me, a young, a born-entrepreneur, who instead of following a self-made path of adventure out of college, succumbed to a salaried position that promised me stability. I can’t stand it anymore and am on a rampage to break free.

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