Hacking Through the Jungle with a Machete

As entrepreneurs in America, we are often surrounded by comfort.  If we feel the need for coffee, our favorite coffee shop is nearby.  For breakfast, lunch and dinner, our options are many.  When we go home, we enjoy all the creature comforts available to us in America, such as cable TV, movies, or a warm shower.  We drive reasonably nice cars, and our offices are typically nice, clean and pleasant.  All these comforts lead the entrepreneur to believe that he/she is living in a safe, comfortable environment.

The reality of the life of an entrepreneur could not be further from this illusion of comfort and safety.  Our day-to-day reality is more analogous to an adventurer trekking through the Amazon with a machete, than it is to the person down the street who has a steady paycheck working for a large company, a government agency, or some other stable institution.  We often have no safety net to catch us if we fall.  It is rare, especially in the early stages, that we have a cushion of cash to support us through a slow period.  We must careful weigh decisions, build our team, and manage our cash, because every team member and every resource counts.

The popular phrase, TGIF or “Thank God It’s Friday”, doesn't seem to work for me.  My version of this phrase is more like “Oh God It’s Friday”, what did I not get done this week.  Every day I look at my to-do list and wonder if I have done enough to earn the money I need to pay the bills over the coming months.  No one is around to tell me what constitutes a good job other than my customers and my creditors.  If both are happy, then I am doing is good.  But even they can be hard to read at times.

Now, just like any adventurer, living the life of an entrepreneur can be full of extremely rewarding and fun experiences.  My point in this blog is not to say that it is all doom and gloom.  My goal is simply to help illuminate the experience for what it is: an adventure.  I believe it is hard for us to understand our experiences as trail blazers when we are surrounded by comforts.  We are risking our professional lives daily in pursuit of our adventure, but the comfort of our environment fails to let us see this reality.

It is my belief that this dichotomy has lead many entrepreneurs to experience high degrees of stress and frustration.  We expect our experiences to align with our surroundings.  We live with spouses, friends and kids that have relatively normal lives.  Our friends seem to cringe when we tell them our latest struggles with customers, bills or employees.  To them, our adventure seems way too risky.  We start to believe they are right, and we lose sight of what we need to do to survive in this environment.  We get frustrated when we compare our lives to theirs.  This leads to a misalignment between our reality and our perception of our reality.  This discrepancy has derailed many an entrepreneur.

The best cure for lowering your stomach acid as an entrepreneur is to appreciate your situation.  Make sure you are properly accounting for the challenges and risk you are taking.  Realize that most people who are doing what you are doing are going to fail.  Realize that you need to protect yourself, your friends, your family, and yourself from these failures.  Build a network of others around you who understand your experiences, and who can counsel you through challenging times.  Leverage other peoples’ money where you can, because you are going to need more than you think.  Realize that the time it takes to get to each milestone will always be longer than you predicted.  Appreciate that you are walking a less traveled path.  Finally, remember that most, if not all, the other people at Starbucks will have absolutely no understanding of your day-to-day reality as an entrepreneur.