Entrepreneur Myths (8 page)

Sure, you can have a balanced life and start your venture — if you’ve already made your money and someone else is running the company. I call an entrepreneur who funds their idea, hires someone to manage it and takes the chairman position, a “chairpreneur.” They have a balanced life. If you work for them as the CEO, you don’t.

When starting a business you have to put in the hours, whether you like it or not. If you don’t have the passion for it, you shouldn’t do it. The idea or venture you developed is going to occupy your mind even after you leave the office, unless you’re making love to your spouse or whoever. Your obsession for your venture will most likely drive your family and friends crazy. Maybe you can cut some corners and get some life? Hmm, let’s see. Actually, it will depend on how well-funded you are, the stage of your venture, and the number of partners and employees working with you.

Let’s look at the math. You’ve got 24 hours in the day, every day. Assuming you sleep 6 hours (I don’t think you can function for a long period of time without sleeping at least 6 hours a night, no matter what you think) you have 18 hours left.

18
hours and the clock is ticking

You spend one hour showering, getting ready for work, brushing your teeth, and eating breakfast.

17 hours and the clock is ticking

You spend 15 to 30 minutes getting to work. Hopefully you are smart enough to find an office close to your home. If you’re in the seed stage, hopefully you’re smart enough to work out of your home, so your commute time is 30 seconds. But for the sake of this argument, let’s assume you have an office because you have 8 to 10 employees. Driving back and forth is going to take you about 1 hour.

16 hours and the clock is ticking

You’re in the office, and now you have to start up your Microsoft Windows because you’re a dumbass and you didn’t buy the Mac.  Thanks to Bill Gates, loading up a PC wastes at least 2 to 3 minutes of your life — every day (By the way, the author is currently using a PC). Then you say hello to everyone in the office, act nice and shit and try to be uplifting to the troops. This takes 30 to 60 minutes of your time, unless there is drama or you are sidetracked by one of your ass-kissing employees.

15 hours and clock is still ticking

You eat at lunch at your desk to save time unless you have to impress some investor bastard like me over lunch and explain how great your venture is and what a big fucking play it is and how you’re going to rule the world, blah, blah, blah. Now, that lunch could take about 2 hours.

As a side note: Buy lunch for your employees at least once a week and bring it into the office so they can work during the lunch hour and meet their deadlines, which at the end of the day are your deadlines too.

13 hours and the clock is ticking

You decide to reduce stress. Luckily a health club is right around the corner so you take a run instead of drinking at a bar. You’re serious about your health, so you run for 30 minutes. And by the time you shower and get back to the office, you’ve lost another 30 minutes.

12
hours and the clock is ticking

Depending on the stage of your company, you get busy with marketing, sales, finance, operations, manufacturing, customer support, public relations, investor relations, etc. for the next 9 hours. Hopefully you have a good management team to handle some of the functions because your ass is going to get fried if you have to do it all yourself.

The phone rings. Suddenly you have an unexpected personal crisis. It’s your spouse calling to tell you that you work too much and they’ll divorce your ass unless you have a romantic dinner out — tonight. Reservations have been made. Damn, you estimate it will take two hours trying to explain to your spouse how much you love them, blah, blah, blah.

3 hours and the clock keeps on ticking

Finally, after a full day at the office, you take your neglected spouse to dinner. You try not to look at your email on your iPhone. You squeeze in your email sniff when the spouse happens to go to the restroom.

You notice an urgent email from your business partner but don’t get a chance to read it because you see your spouse returning from the restroom. After dinner, which only lasts about an hour, and more drinks, you decide to spend additional time with your spouse because you forgot what they look like. You realize your spouse is really fucking hot and you remember why you got married.  One thing leads to another, and another hour is gone (so you hope).

1 hour and the clock is ticking

Your business partner is blowing up your phone and email box while you’re having fun with your spouse (unless you’re a spousepreneur). On the ninth call you answer. Your partner is screaming, and having an anxiety attack because your competition already launched their new product while you’re still fine-tuning your prototype.

You were relaxed after sex with your spouse, but now anxiety kicks in. The shit gets deeper when the phone rings again. It’s your major investor, “Surprise, I’m stuck at the airport. Come see me.” Luckily, you’re only 30 minutes from the airport, so you drive there to say hello and tell them what a wonderful fucker they were for taking the investment risk.

Unfortunately, the investor’s flight was canceled and they’re ready to party with you tonight. Most importantly, they want a down-low on the entire business.

0
hours and the clock stopped fucking ticking

You call your spouse to tell them the change of plans — you’re not coming back to bed for extra dessert. Of course, your spouse hangs up on you. You leave from the airport with your investor, distracted by the hang-up.

-2 hours. The clock’s stopped ticking

You spend time partying with the investor and explaining why your product is delayed. You drop the bad news that the competition launched their product first. You can’t lie to the motherfucker, because they will probably notice it on the front page of Tech Crunch or The Wall Street Journal. Hopefully, the investor drinks enough whiskey that they won’t remember the conversation until after you launch your product and start kicking ass.

You see, this shit happens all the time when you’re running your venture. Time is your enemy.

Note: How can you have -2 hours? I don’t fucking know and that’s my point. We are not done yet.

What about the weekend?

Your son has a soccer game and your daughter has a basketball game. They expect both of their parents to cheer for them. The problem is, you’re behind at work and planned to work most of the weekend.

Something’s gotta give. When you decide to become an entrepreneur, be prepared to work like a fucking dog. This example has some exaggeration, but there’s a lot of truth in there. Entrepreneurholics understand. One thing that amuses me, as an investor and entrepreneur, is when people say they can’t take business calls on weekends because they need family time. 

No weekend calls?

Are you fucking kidding me? I put millions of dollars on your ass, and now I can’t call you over the weekend? CEOs of my portfolio companies have called me as late as 1 a.m. (due to different time zones) for advice. I took their calls. If I fund your ass and you call me late, it better be for a good reason.

You should try to have a somewhat balanced life. Yeah, right. But at least try. Time is not on your side when you’re an entrepreneur. Still, you need to allocate time for your children, your spouse and your health, or you might be surprised with children who become druggies, an unhappy spouse and a lot of weight on your ass.

Brain Candy: questions to consider and ponder

(Q1)
Are you an entrepreneurholic?

(Q2)
Do you try to live a balanced life? Is it even possible?

(Q3)
What does your day look like? How much time do you really spend working on your venture?

(Q4)
How much time do you take visualizing the vision?

(Q5)
Do you take time to keep your significant other happy mentally and sexually? Or are you so consumed with entrepreneurship that you can’t get your head out of your ass?

Entrepreneur
Myth 12
| If you fail, you can try, try again

I’ve watched the movie
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
at least 20 times. My favorite line in the film is when Jim Carrey stretches the word “loser” to sound so loser-like he should have won an Oscar.  LA-who-ZA-HERR!

If you fail in your venture, people look at you differently. No matter what they say or don’t say, some of your friends and business associates will think you’re a fucking loser — at least until you get another venture going and become successful.

You can try, try again—but it’s not as easy as it sounds. What can you do when you fail? First, reframe your mind. How you treat your current failure affects your future success.

Failing is not the end of the world. But, it is harder to pick yourself up if you’re not psychologically ready. Don’t beat yourself over your head, because plenty of other assholes will do it for you. Don’t let your subconscious mind call you a motherfucker-loser-sucker. You must protect your mind from negativity. In one of the
Batman
movies, Jim Carrey as the Riddler kept telling himself, “I am a winner. I am a winner.” Be like the Riddler. Repeat this morning and night, I am a
fucking
winner!

Second, review the reasons for the failure. I went over all the reasons for our failure with Tesla Capital. The primary reason was basing our decisions on “committed capital” rather than “actual capital.” Also, next time I’ll change 5% to 10% of my investment methodology in applying complexity science to early-stage startups. In this book, and my upcoming book
Investor Myths
, I examine the investment decisions I made in Tesla Capital. I painfully reviewed every aspect to insure I don’t repeat these same mistakes.

Next, surround yourself with people who support you, such as your friends or family. My mother and some of my friends always supported me, whether I failed or not. Don’t listen to psychological mumbo jumbo, but when you fail, talk to someone who understands and loves you.

Failure is not the end, but the beginning of something else that could be
big
. If you stick with it after failure, you’ll pivot and find the one idea that you can turn into a successful reality. It’s simply a matter of when. Never forget that.

Despite Ace Ventura not being able to pay his rent, he didn’t think of himself as a loser. Neither should you. Famous entrepreneurs in history, like Henry Ford and Abraham Lincoln, failed several times before they succeeded. Look at the founders of Twitter or Groupon. Their original ideas were not working before they transformed into Twitter and Groupon.

I make fun of failure, and so should you. Learn from your failure, and protect your mind from subconscious negative thoughts. Spend time looking for that next big idea instead of beating yourself on the head. Now, go on. Just entrepreneur it.

One more thing about failure: never, ever give up. You hear me? Do you really hear me? You’re only a failure if you accept failure.

Brain Candy: questions to consider and ponder