Starving Entrepreneur

I feel you, Kermit. Grinding. All day, every day.

Autonomy: No One Tells You What To Do

February 26, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

“You’re not the boss of me.” – Every 4 year old ever.

This quote, this is the reason people become entrepreneurs, no? So they can be their own boss, be the captain of the ship, call all the shots, get all the monies. Live the dream…can I get an AMEN, ALLELUJAH…amirite?!

Well, yes, but there’s another side to this coin. No one is telling you what to do. You have to call all the shots, and sometimes you have no fucking clue as to what you’re doing. Like none, and you just want to turn to someone who’s the boss and ask, “Ok, now what do I do next?” or “Can you show me how?” No, there’s no one. If you wan the answers you have to find them yourself, or you have make them up as you go. There’s also no one telling you when to do things or how to do them. For me, autonomy is one of the greatest blessings and one of the greatest curses of entrepreneurship.

Let me digress deep into my history for a few minutes…

Academia vs. Entrepreneurship

Growing up my parents tried to impress this idea that if I wanted to be rich and to live the life I always wanted, all I had to do was work hard in school, and I would make the big bucks. For the most part their advice kept me enthused and excited about school. My entire academic career I was basically a 4.0 student (it might have dropped down to a 3.82… in Graduate School). Essentially I grew up thinking that if I just read and performed the way that everyone wanted me to, that equaled success. The first part that screwed me up as a working adult is that to me, unlike most normal children, school was not work or an activity I disliked, I actually loved school. I enjoyed the discipline of it and the thrill of going from ignorance to enlightenment. I started to know and understand things. Not only was learning fun and rewarding for me, it was EASY. Gasp!

A second problem with this, “work hard and get good grades, and you’ll be successful,” philosophy is that it is made to sound like graduation is the destination. As if once you’re handed a diploma, someone just starts paying you boatloads of money for having made A’s in school. Funny, right? But seriously, I had internalized this idea that being smart in school, somehow mattered in the real world. Newsflash — it actually doesn’t. Newsflash — all that studying, test taking, projects, and grades… All of that only matters if you use it to apply it to something new or to contribute to society in some way shape or form, and graduation, whether it’s elementary school, high school, college or graduate school, is literally just the beginning.

“…graduation, whether it’s elementary school, high school, college or graduate school, is literally just the beginning.” – Me realizing that I have a lifetime of real work ahead of me.

Please don’t misunderstand. I think school is very important. I think quality education is the true differentiator when it comes to being able to rise above circumstances. However, straight A’s and success don’t necessarily correlate. Chasing straight A’s did not prepare me for my life’s work and the entrepreneurial calling deep within. Doing well in school doesn’t mean you’ll do well in life. Academia is formulaic and prescriptive. Someone else is telling you what to do, when to do it, how to do it in order to succeed. However, this is diametrically opposed to the core of entrepreneurship: Autonomy.

Look how happy they are… throwing their caps in the air. Sorry, kids, this is just the beginning of all your hard work.

Autonomy = A Lot of Grinding (And not the kind like you do on the dance floor)

In entrepreneurship autonomy can be your greatest strength, or it will be your downfall. Personally, I waver. I feel like in my personal decisions, I’m quite autonomous. In a professional/career capacity, it’s a lesson I’m still learning and something I’m working on. Output and execution… These are the things that matter, and these are things directly determined by your level of autonomy. You need to be able to do what needs to get done to move the business forward. This is essential if you want to create wealth for yourself and your family and sustain the life that you want to live.

The truth is that as an entrepreneur you have to internalize that hard work is the destination, and no one is going to do it for you. To be successful entrepreneur and not a starving entrepreneur such as myself, you basically have to grind EVERY DAY of YOUR LIFE. When use mega rich and successful people as motivators and inspiration, it’s important to note they didn’t get rich out of nowhere. Although it might seem like that, they undoubtedly put in hundreds and thousands of hours of work at some point to arrive at that destination in life. People like Sir Richard Branson never stop working. Even though Bill Gates is mega rich, he worked really friggin’ hard to get there, and he still works very hard on other goals. The promising thing is that they both steer their own ships. Just remember, no one in this life or on this planet owes you anything, and your success is a direct result of how hard you are willing to work, and how much you use your autonomy to your advantage.

Bottom of pit of Failure — At the bottom of the pit laying in failure.

Failure: If You’re Not Failing, You Aren’t Trying

February 5, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

I Was Terrified of Failure

For most of my life I’ve been terrified of failure. I admit to a certain extent I still am. If you read this post on Autonomy, it might make more sense, as it started in school. I didn’t want to let people down or disappoint them, and if I didn’t make good grades in school, I wasn’t going to get a good job, which would mean I would be undesirable to potential mates… Which would mean I’d never have a house and kids and do cool things like go on vacations. I don’t know why my juvenile mind correlated things the way it did, and writing it sounds like I was a pretty fatalistic adolescent. So what did I do? I made good grades, and I was going to be “successful” — both personally and professionally. I was going to create an empire for myself flipping homes, I was going to buy an old home on a nice piece of property and rehab it, and I was going to have a handsome, loving husband with 4 kids (3 boys and a girl), and a dog or two… all by the age of 27. Ambitious, right?!

As I write this the funny thing is, that’s still partly my dream (less kids, more dogs maybe). I would love to rehab homes. I like to work with my hands, and at this point in my life I have an advanced degree in Marketing, a decent job (mostly doing what I love), but no husband, and at 31 I neither own my own home, and there is no empire to speak of. Oddly enough, this dream sounds eerily familiar to one of my best friend’s life, and she did do it. Bravo to her. Anyway, the truth of the matter is that in some ways I feel like a failure.

And I Still Failed

Part of the problem as to why that is has to do with 1) not knowing who I was, wanted I truly wanted to do and be, the things that I liked, the things I didn’t, the things I was good at, 2) I moved the goal posts around. As I got older my priorities and attitudes shifted. I wanted things that I hadn’t realized I’d wanted when I was younger, and 3) I still compared myself to others, rather than focusing on myself and what I needed and wanted.

So essentially I’ve spent a decade failing miserably at this thing called life. Every time I hit the ground personally and professionally I have to figure out a way to put the pieces back together. A lot of the time has been spent trying different things, learning myself, learning my limits, figuring out what will make me happy and where I want and need to focus my energy and attention, and it’s not the places I have been. I also had a lot of growing up to do, and a lot of partying to get out of my system. Some people need a few years… I needed 15ish give or take a few. But the crux of the situation is that deep down inside, I always knew what I wanted to do — write, along with owning some kind of business of my own (marketing consulting now). I was just scared to do it because I was scared to fail. So this Jim Carey quote really hits home.

My Real Life Entrepreneurial Failure

Technically, I wasn’t even a real entrepreneur. I was an entrepreneur by proxy. I was working with a startup, and at the beginning it had the air of entrepreneurship. A small motivated team who wanted to build software products in an industry that was in digital publishing. In my mind, I could be close to my love of writing without the real risks involved. It felt like a win-win situation. I would get all the glory and all the success for this amazing online publishing startup and I would be able to write in my spare time. I would make tons of money, and I would be at the top of my game, and all of my dreams would come true. I’d finally have the husband and the house and the kids and all of the great stuff.

The problem with entrepreneur by proxy is that you’re not actually the boss. Even though they tell you they want you to make decisions, they come back and cut your legs from under you on certain things. Your hands become tied and then you just shut down. Instead of branching out and doing my own thing, I stayed and let my creative and entrepreneurial light wither. I stayed 5 years in a job where my growth was stunted by false pretense and a hypocritical core value system of beliefs. Sure, I learned a lot, and what I learned got me to where I am today in my corporate job and my semi-break from entrepreneurship, but there’s no other way of putting it other than I failed hard.

What I originally set out to do was crumbled by a complicated platform that wasn’t easily understood by users, an unsupportive managerial team, unclear vision and goals, lack of funding, and a growing lack of interest. I was pulled in several different directions, and then I just started to just shut down. After 5 years the platform wasn’t getting the attention and love it needed—not my decisions. I was burnt out, and I wasn’t clicking with my team members any longer. There was a mutual decision that it was time to go. And there was no back up plan.

The Truth About Failure

The truth about failure is that there’s such a negative stigma around it, as if it were a bad thing. It’s not. Learn this lesson: If they say experience is the best teacher, then failure is the lesson that enables you to become greater and better than before. It’s what you choose to do in the face of failure that defines your success and your path in life. And it’s only people who either a) want to keep you down, or b) are terrified of failure themselves that would ever make you feel bad about failure. Truly successful people understand that failure, as a constant adversary is the true way to success. It took me many, many years to embrace the idea that failure is not only OK, it’s necessary. Failure is the most valuable lesson, and there’s no reason to be afraid.

The truth about failure is that there’s such a negative stigma around it, as if it were a bad thing.

One beautiful thing about failure is that spectacular failure teaches you that sometimes you have nothing left to lose. This probably relates more to my personal life than my professional life because I haven’t taken many spectacular risks in my professional life yet, but when you risk greatly, you fall greatly, and you land hard. However, once you get your bearings back then you realize the only place to go is up. There’s nothing holding you back, because when you’re at the bottom more failure genuinely doesn’t matter. You can take all the risks in the world, there’s no reason you have to stay in the self-loathing or self-pity of failure. And although it’s not necessarily and easy climb out and to the top, there’s also nothing holding you back any longer.

I started my own consulting company towards the end of last year, and so far it’s been an interesting experience. Along with all of the lessons I learned at the startup, I’m still learning lessons about navigating entrepreneurship. I’m trying, and in some ways I’m failing and in others I’m winning. I’m a starving entrepreneur because deep down I want and need the things that go along with entrepreneurship; however, I can admit that I lied to myself for a long time about what’s really required to be a successful entrepreneur. Also, I couldn’t get serious because I was so scared of failing that I didn’t try my hardest.

Starving Entrepreneur in Progress

That’s what this blog is about. Deconstructing lessons I’ve learned, and examining the qualities and skills that are necessary to bring myself from starving to successful. There’s a lot of them. At least when I wrote the outline for the topics I had enough to cover about a year’s worth of lessons. So stay tuned.

I feel like I’m at a point in my life where I know what I want. The vision is clear know, and I know the steps that I have to take. It’s doubtful I would have been able to get here without 10 years of failure under my belt. There are spectacular, wonderful things in my future. Also, I’m not afraid anymore. It’s true what they say that if you’re not failing your not trying, and the more you do, the more you realize it’s not the end of the world. So now we go forth and fail.

Capabilities?! Who Knows…

January 26, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

Before I get too deep into the entrepreneurship lessons I’ve learned over the years, I need to digress (read: vent for a minute about) into corporate America, for just a minute, as I’ve been here for all of 6 weeks now? I seriously haven’t had my third paycheck yet, and I already feel like I’m probably on some kind of watchlist… aaaaannnywaaaay… After 5 years of startup/entrepreneurial life, I just want to relish in how gloriously inefficient it all is. In the best way possible, of course. I’m certainly not denigrating corporate life. There is something inherently beautiful about the strange world of not connecting the dots, glaring inefficiencies, miscommunications, and bureaucracy that gives you more perks, better benefits and a retirement plan. I don’t know how to describe it other than a beautiful mess… So now for an anecdote.

So I’m in a “capabilities” meeting this week… But first a brief history on my capabilities background. . . Prior to working in corporate America, my only definition of “capability” was “WHAT CAN YOU DO? CAN YOU DO IT? YOU’RE CAPABLE!… IT’S YOUR CAPABILITY!”

Apparently, in corporate America, capabilities assessments are some kind of business model. Who knew?! So me being a naturally curious individual, I Google capabilities and there is a Google of information at my fingertips about the business process of capabilities. Guess what. . . I don’t read it because tl;dr and I’m a pretty quick girl, and I get the scholarly gist from what I skim and what my coworkers have told me. Lemme break it down…

Capabilities Assessment = What do I need to get my job done, matched with what can we do, matched with what’s already going on, matched with where we need to be… It’s basically a matrix. Got it.

That being said, I did some research on capabilities to get myself up to speed. It didn’t take me long before I found what seems to be the foremost capabilities thinkers in the business world. I read their papers (kinda), but I found their Twitter profiles, and anyway, now I need to tell my capabilities story…

So I’m in my weekly update meeting, and my team member has this interesting “case”… his job is to determine capabilities for the business, mind you. He brings up an instance of one group who has a specific need… after we’ve just had an entire conversation about the importance of enterprise architecture and how projects need to be more forward thinking. The interesting case he starts to talk about is for a group to create a reporting tool that pulls data from multiple different sources and creates an aggregated view in a digestible report on a regular basis. There is another project that has solved this exact problem, but for a different group…

My response, “Isn’t this exactly the same case as [we’ll call it XYZ project]?”

His answer, “no, it’s a different audience.”

Although from where I”m standing the requirements from a software perspective are exactly the same, but the inputs are different. So the end result is a report (we have multiple automated reporting tools)… and the data inputs are different (although there should probably be APIs or SDKs for what they want to accomplish)… but we have an automation team who solves these exact problems. He still deadpans in my direction and says, “but it’s a different audience.”

Well, yes, I realize it’s a different audience, and I realize the data inputs/outputs are different, but a reporting tool architecture, is a reporting tool architecture, is a reporting tool architecture… Isn’t this what capabilities is all about?! Am I wrong here?! Did I miss something?!

God bless corporate America.

I have another good story about corporate inefficiency in America…Clearly, I’m still mesmerized.

Why Can’t I Make Money?

January 24, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

Why can’t I make money?
Why do I feel like I am failing at life?
Why am I still not where I want to be?
Why do I feel like I keep spinning my tires and never going anywhere?

These were actual questions that I constantly asked myself, and I just couldn’t seem to get my shit together. Like could not get. my. shit. together. I didn’t bounce around from place to place. I wasn’t particularly unstable. I was just not reaching my full potential. And at the end of the day I have to go back to the mantra I used to repeat to myself when I would find myself pulling an all-nighter the night before a big test, or a big project was due. This is nobody’s fault but your own. Where you are now is a direct reflection of all the choices you’ve made. Live with the consequences, whatever those may be, and make better decisions next time.

“This is nobody’s fault but your own. Where you are now is a direct reflection of all the choices you’ve made. Live with the consequences, whatever those may be and make better decisions next time.”

– Me to Myself, talking myself out of self-pity and self-loathing

But really, every year for at least six years, I would have these random moments of clarity where I would look at my life, only to realize that I wasn’t where I wanted to be and I couldn’t figure it out. What needed to come first? I wasn’t particularly happy, and I wasn’t particularly unhappy, I was caught in this weird cycle of disappointment and non-achievement. I had so much potential, I know I did. I needed to take an inventory. I needed to take a deep breath, a step back, clean up, shape up, reevaluate, reassess, reprioritize.

The answer to most of these questions boils down to one key fact: Subconsciously I’m still comparing myself to others.

On the surface I like to think and say that I don’t care what other people think, but deep down that’s clearly a lie. We all care about what other people think. It’s like one of the most basic needs in being human, the need to feel accepted. Aside from freedom, thanks Westworld, it’s the need to feel belonging and acceptance. Intrinsic motivation because you’re being fulfilled somehow, and then outward measurable success that makes you feel validated in your pursuits. Comparison isn’t inherently all bad, it gives us a benchmark, but at the same time, it’s all just arbitrary.

The truth of the issue is who’s to say that I don’t have my shit together besides me? I pay my own bills, I feed myself, I feel like at this point in life I have a pretty good understanding of what I want and who I am. So what if I’m a late bloomer? I have so many ideas, so many talents, and so much time… Well, not so much time, but theres’ no law that says you can’t start when you want, and there’s no law that says you can’t take all the time you need, and there’s no law that says you have to be on anyone’s timeline but your own.

And the answer to the rest of the questions? Thinking vs. Doing.

This is the big one. I’m a thinker rather than a doer. It’s one of my greatest strengths, and it’s also one of my biggest weaknesses. I’ve written about it before. Almost a year ago, and in that time I feel like I haven’t really done anything. And technically I’ve done more than others and less than some, but again, it doesn’t really matter how it stacks up to everything else, as long as I’m happy and satisfied with the outcome. Conversely, I have done a lot, it just wasn’t enough, or more accurately it wasn’t enough for me.

And now that I am doing I have to be mindful. I have to make better decisions, and make better use of time. Plan and prioritize, become a slave to the habits that make you successful. I think this is probably one of the hardest and most valuable lessons I have learned over the past few years. I spent so much time trying to fight against routines, habits, convention, and rules and ending up living some shallow existence that’s the same kind of life as everyone else’s, that I missed the forest for the trees. When you develop good habits, and you become a slave to those habits, those habits are what will set you free, not what will be your chains.

Taking a Break from Entrepreneurship

January 3, 2017 / starving entrepreneur

Being an Entrepreneur is Not a Choice

Sure you can choose your career path and what you want to do in life, but I don’t think entrepreneurship is a choice. I think entrepreneurship is a part of an entrepreneur’s DNA. It’s a feeling deep within that requires that you listen to a voice. A voice that calls you be your own boss. A voice that constantly reminds you, you are the captain and need to be in control your own destiny. That you’ll never be successful or truly happy working in someone else’s shadow. However, sometimes the path is not clear. Sometimes the road to successful entrepreneurship is windy. Your career leads you in different directions, and it brings you down an unexpected path. Divergence in the path isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so much as it’s a different thing. Sometimes entrepreneurs just need a break in order to gain clarity and perspective— to learn more. There are a million reasons why 90% of new businesses fail as I’ve experienced many of them, and now I have the opportunity, motivation, and perspective to be able to write about my misadventures in entrepreneurship.

Going Corporate

I never thought I would go corporate. To me going corporate felt like going to the dark side, felt a lot like failing. A corporate job equated to oppression and working for the man, whoever that man may be. Additionally, many of the people I’ve come across in my professional endeavors told me that a corporate job wasn’t something I’d be suited for. Well due to serendipitous circumstances and my own stellar interviewing skills, I’ve recently landed a good corporate job that I’m genuinely excited about. I see it as one of the biggest learning opportunities of my career path. I’ve conceded to the idea that I like it. I’ve conceded to the fact that this position will be a good thing for me. I’ve conceded to the idea that if I truly want to achieve my goals I need to be able clearly define them and to see problems stopping me from all angles. Just like back in my studio classes when I was studying architecture. This is the part where you take the problem, flip it over and reverse it. Look at it from another angle. Stand on your head if you have to. That’s what I’m doing. I’m standing on my head. Doing a full 180, diving into the upside down into unfamiliar territory.

Leading up to this conversion, I found myself craving all of the things that I haven’t gotten by being in the world of entrepreneurship. A team for daily interaction and to bounce ideas off of (this concept will resurface later), management with clear ideas goals and metrics of success. The funny thing is, these are all things you need to be successful in entrepreneurship and as I write them I realize I probably should have exited my situation sooner, but I also believe everything happens for a reason, hindsight is 20/20, and mistakes are simply lessons learned to be turned into something better in the future.

Time to Refocus and Reflect

This project has been a labor of love for about eight years in my misadventures in entrepreneurship. I’ve been keeping notes, writing, digesting, learning. Full disclosure: I’m no millionaire… I called this blog “Starving Entrepreneur” for good reason. I can’t teach you to be rich, and I don’t purport to know anything more than you, in fact, the more I learn, the more I learn the less I know. All I want to do is share my experiences in the hopes that if you are building a business of your own, you can avoid the mistakes and missteps I’ve encountered, to minimize the bad habits and to maximize the success. The goal is that this blog will last for one year with new posts appearing at the beginning of each week. A lot of content is stuff that’s already been written that I now need to edit and make into cohesive, thoughtful pieces.

I’m using this time in my new position to refocus and reflect. What do I really want to get out of my life? What is the career path that I’m really supposed to be going down? How do my experience, education, and passion all fit together with my love of entrepreneurship? What about my ability to make money and support myself? Is entrepreneurship really the right thing for me? How could I possibly know if it’s the only thing I’ve ever really known?

At the very least I want to stay hungry for success, and I shouldn’t let failure of any kind get me down. Failure is essential for growth and success.