Entrepreneurshit

The OP may have exhausted his verbal capacity constructing warnings to co-workers about buying houses while depending on any start-up, without suggesting _his_ startup was in any difficulty. Then pondering this additional reminder of how many people depended on him. Maybe while deeply discouraged, still called on to project confidence, reassured only by the knowledge that deep discouragement happens in any project of real uncertainty.

Then he thought about folks like yourself dismissing the stress of working at the confluence of Transparency and Confidence. At which point he started swearing.

I don't mean to brag, because I'm sure none of you care about my "little dipshit company," but there are people out there who deserve to know that this kind of adrenaline junkie lifestyle as described in the article is not "entrepreneurship" as a whole but just one type of person's interpretation of it.

We, for example, got back a couple weeks ago from a 2-week trip to Arizona. We (biz owners (my husband + I) plus our employee) went to attend a conference in Scottsdale -- not to demand speaking slots or to impress anyone, just to learn, to experience it.

Because, hey, Arizona is gorgeous in October, we had decided to extend our trip and rent a convertible, and a 4-bedroom house in beautiful Sedona, AZ with a private pool and heated spa tub, for a week. We spent 3 days of that as a company retreat, and then the rest was just my husband & I hanging out.

During the 3 days when we were working, we all used the spa every night to stargaze. In the middle of the days, we'd take a break and go hiking. When our employee went home, we just bummed around a day, then we rented a jeep and went off-roading.

This year, my husband and I decided to draw about $160k of profit out of our biz to pay for a mortgage down payment and various fixings for our new (old) house. Then we bought a nice car, in cash. (Honestly I would have preferred to get a loan, but there was a problem with the fact that we hadn't gotten our PA driver's licenses yet. Long boring story. Patched over, as so often, with money.)

Our finances are secure. Our products may be "boring"… but they are growing very nicely and our customers are happy. Our employee can feel secure about her salary. We own 100% of our company… nobody can tell us what to do, except possibly the government, but they don't seem to care. Certainly we don't have to worry about SEC filings.

This weekend, I co-taught a bootcamp as part of my favorite product, 30x500. It's only on a weekend because that's when the majority of my students can attend. I plan to take the next couple days off, just cuz. I can do that whenever, of course… and often do, because I have a chronic illness which is exacerbated by stress. So I keep stress low and live a very chillaxed kind of life.

I expect that, as a 3- or maybe 4-person company, we'll break $1 million in gross yearly revenue in the next 24 mos… probably more like 12-18. All without begging, nagging, scrambling, fundraising, pitch-decking, obsessive emailing, jockeying, etc.

My biggest stress this year is about how to reinvest another six figures into our biz so we pay less taxes (and changing bookkeepers). I don't like paying taxes more than we have to, but honestly I'm not sure what to spend it on after we max out our 401(k)s.

I expect downvotes for this. Probably because it sounds like I'm bragging. Probably because the reason the above article is so popular is because people like it when authors "get real" about the "harsh realities" of running a business. Deep inside, they believe that if it doesn't hurt horribly, it must not be worth it. So this kind of "truth" is appealing, and what I say will be labeled as some kind of crazy outlier, I got lucky, I'm famous, etc, etc., surely nobody could really make this kind of money off time tracking so I must be embroidering the truth, etc.

But if you want to create a business -- as opposed to a drama-filled life -- there truly is a less painful way:

Create a small product for small business which creates value, then charge money for it.

It's stupid simple. It's not easy, but then again, it's not all that hard, either. And it works, over and over and over again.

Yes, our first year building the product income streams while consulting kinda sucked… but it didn't suck at THIS level described by the post author. The main suckitude came from the fact that the more we worked on our real products, the less we wanted to consult… we still never had to travel away from our families, stump, beg, wheedle, or go without money. And we don't have to convince somebody else to buy us, fund us, love us, millions of people to use what we made, to make that short & minor sacrifice pay off.

Sometimes pain is meaningful and necessary. But sometimes it's just pain.

I don't believe that's what's at work most of the time, though. It seems like there is a kind of person who wants to imbue every action, every day, with a kind of Life or Death drama. (Related drama: Everything I Do Is Hugely Important.) Getting the other people's money plays into this sense of self nicely.