I am speakercoach and mentor to entrepreneurs, executives and companies. Every month, I curate highly individualized Inspiration Tours in the Silicon Valley. I am living a life around people who see things, others don’t, who have achieved things, most of the rest have not, and learning from them every day, creates some interesting momentum: you get so close to success and an understanding of what leads there, that it makes you feel like you are one of them.
There are so many sermons on the beauty of being an entrepreneur that make a lot of sense to me, now we are even allowed to add the vulnerability momentum to the narrative. it’s highly motivating, actually. the final commitment — to embrace failure — makes the entrepreneurial endeavor actually sound like a fun board game, available at the next toys’r’us, around the corner.
Honestly, give me one good reason for not becoming an entrepreneur, these days: it has never been easier, faster and even cheaper to start a new business. Venture capitalists are hungry to be invested startups that might turn into the next unicorns and x-ify their investment over night. if you are not behaving like a douchebag, you will even be able to recruit volunteer teams to help you getting from zero to one.
I perceive myself as a serial entrepreneur, which sounds super fancy but actually in my case means nothing more than a series of entrepreneurial attempts of running business that did not take off or more or less failed. It’s actually a frickin scary career path: none (!) of the companies, I have ever worked in are still in business, today. One out of three companies, that I have incorporated, ran out of business, as well. In some culture you might not call me a serial entrepreneur but a serial failure. or, in other words: time to get a day job.
Thats a cool thing, a day job. actually. You are kind-of told what to do, you can take responsibility, but only partly. Which is cool, because it will give you a lot of sleep at night. The best thing overall: at the end of the month, you get a paycheck. Like: every month (!). That’s what I call very supportive when it gets to budget planning.
I have a very loyal thread in my entrepreneurial career, I call it my “doubtful question to the oracle”: I have no idea how much I will make, this month. Maybe nothing. I have a family to feed. Maybe I should get a day job.
I wonder, how often entrepreneurs are caught by this thought, “maybe I should get a day job”?
I am trying to imagine how this would look like. Me in a day job. How would that be? My heart starts racing as I write this. Inner panic is coming up. What? Really? Phew? How? Hahaha? Seriously? No!
It seems, the day job thing will not work out for me. Been there. Good experience. No doubt. But. No.
So I am not going into the next ten rules or being an entrepreneur.
a) because I have shared my personal 10 of the entrepreneurial life, already. You can watch them here. b) because I trust, you have read enough of these, already. So maybe one or the other makes sense for you, as well, and you have sewed them into the fabric of your entrepreneurial life, already.
The thing with vulnerability, like with anxiety is that we don’t want to have it. We don’t want to be afraid, things won’t work out for us. We are not good in embracing weakness.
And when we allow ourselves these emotions, we don’t want to read about pragmatic reasons or a rational roadmap. And when I am writing “we”, I actually mean “I”.
But maybe this sounds familiar to you, as well.
So if there is only one thing, I can share with you today, it would be the following:
Don’t get a day job. It’s all good. You are not alone. And now: on with the show!