Don’t worry, it’s normal

(This essay was originally published on my website www.terrygold.com a few years ago) Don’t Worry, It’s Normal I’ve started a list of things no one tells you when you start a business.  Topics include: Am I doing enough? That you will feel so overwhelmed that you can’t move.  That Being an entrepreneur is like being on a roller coaster 24 hours a day.  When you start a company it is consuming and on your mind most of the time.  And my favorite, Lessons will be repeated until learned.  All this and more next . . .

You will ask yourself Am I doing enough? You may find yourself wondering if taking the weekend off is going to be the difference between success and failure.  You’ll probably spend some sleepless nights reviewing the day thinking you could have made one more call or done something (anything!) to tip the odds a little more in your favor.

There will be times when you have so much to do, and everything seems critical, that you will feel so overwhelmed that you can’t move. – (da) 

Being an entrepreneur is like being on a roller coaster 24 hours a day.  Every entrepreneur I’ve talked to relates to this.  The highs and lows will come fast and furious in the beginning and no one I’ve met believes that you ever really get off the roller coaster.  The best you can do is expect the highs and lows, try to keep things in perspective, hang on and enjoy the ride.  I keep a backgammon piece in my pocket these days to remind me that life is a game that should be enjoyed and not taken too seriously.

When you start a company it is consuming and on your mind most of the time.  No one told me that being an entrepreneur would take over most of my waking moments.  For a long time I would wake up in the morning and realize that I’d been thinking about my business in my sleep.  I’ve found ways to have a life outside of business but it is still on my mind most of the time.  When you wake up in the morning and realize you have been thinking about the business before you even woke up – my friend Tim Miller calls this "Sleepworking."

Sometimes you just can’t go any faster.   I believe it takes a certain amount of time to make anything happen, and there is a limit to how fast you can go.  A sense of urgency is what sets entrepreneurs off from bureaucrats but sometimes you really can’t go any faster.

Some people can’t stay.  As a company grows, it changes. If a company doesn’t change it won’t grow.  Since a company is basically a group of people it means that the people have to change as the company grows but our human nature is to resist change, particularly change that is forced on us and different from the changes we would like to see.  A small growing company starts out (hopefully!) with the founders all agreeing on the direction of the company and most of the change is created by the founders.  It feels good because change means progress early on.  As the company grows and more people are involved it is unlikely and even undesirable for everyone to agree completely.  Eventually though every company is faced with the prospect of losing someone because they just don’t agree anymore with where the company is going.

It must be tough for an employee who feels like they helped get the company this far but must leave because they don’t like the changes they see happening.  I know it is tough for the entrepreneur because when someone is willing to leave their job because they no longer believe in the direction the company is going it is easy to take it personally or question the direction.  The thing to realize is that it is normal for people to leave for opportunities that they believe will be better for them – and many times they are right – they do find opportunities that are better for them.   It may also be better for the company though because you can’t succeed if too much of your energy is going into debating or rethinking the company direction.

You have to be up when you don’t feel like it.  Any good roller coaster is exciting because the high points and low points are combined quickly and in ways you don’t anticipate.  The entrepreneurial roller coaster can make the best wooden coaster seem like a kiddy ride.  One of the rules of the entrepreneurial roller coaster though is that you have to look like you’re having fun even when you’re about ready to lose your lunch.

For example, you start out the morning ready to go, thinking about how you’re going to close a deal in the afternoon.  Waiting for you is a voice mail from a customer.  Great, you called them yesterday to see when they expected to pay the invoice you sent them last month.  They say they never received the invoice so your hopes of having the cash in hand this week disappear.  The next voice mail is from a partner saying they want you to go with them to meet a customer who could give you a lot of work.  You go from annoyed or even a little afraid to hopeful within thirty seconds.  Your day continues to go up and down right up until the big customer meeting.  Just before walking in to try to close the deal, you check voicemail and find out that something terrible has happened back at the office – a key person has quit, an expensive piece of hardware needs to be replaced or some other important customer is now thinking about canceling the work they gave you last month.  Whatever the problem is, you have to shake it off and go into the business at hand with a great attitude.  If you don’t, you run the risk of not getting the deal and making your problems even worse.

You have to be able to compartmentalize your problems.  Even the great things that happen to you need to be compartmentalized to some extent so that you don’t slack off and neglect other things that need your attention.  It is difficult but possible to manage emotions so that you are able to flip a switch in your brain that says "I can’t think about this problem right now or let it get me down because I have an opportunity that demands that I be enthusiastic and optimistic."

Some of your decisions will be critical to the life of the company, but you won’t know which ones are critical until after you make them.

Communicate!

Everyone can’t be happy all of the time.  Even single person companies don’t have 100% employee satisfaction all of the time.  It is normal for some people to be unhappy and the best managed company will always have some dissatisfaction.  Don’t let it get you down and especially don’t let it cause you to try to manage to 100% satisfaction.  You can’t win that game.  It helps to remember that progress is usually caused by dissatisfaction with the current situation.  The challenge is to know when you have a real problem with the morale and attitude within the company.  (Editor’s note:  Insert answer to the question "So how do I know if I have a real problem?" here when discovered.)

You’ll have more opportunity than you can handle.  You’ll never have more profit than you can handle, but opportunity is usually not in short supply.  It was a surprise to me that there were so many opportunities for possible business when I started my company.  There were more product ideas than we knew how to explore and there were a lot of people wanting to tell us about some new opportunity we could pursue.  It is the resources to exploit opportunity that are in short supply.  No matter how much money you start out with, if you go after every opportunity that presents itself, you’ll never get up enough momentum in any one direction to really be successful.  Check out Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends On It, by Al Ries.

Beware of carrots. You’ve heard of holding a carrot on a string in front of a donkey to get him to move?  People love to do the same thing to entrepreneurs and it works about as well for the entrepreneur as it does for the donkey.  If you hear the words "We won’t be able to pay you but it is a great opportunity that will bring you a lot of business" BEWARE!

People think differently.  Really – not everyone thinks like you do.  Get used to the idea because if you assume that everyone thinks like you do you will misread a lot of situations.  Once you realize that people think differently you have to then understand that they can think differently without being wrong.  Some people love details and if you don’t give them to them they may think you haven’t really thought through your idea.  Other people can’t stand the details and may think you are boring if you don’t stay at a high enough level.  Until you really understand that people’s brains are wired differently you are are going to be frustrated and frustrating in your communications.

You’ll question your judgment.  Every entrepreneur I know questions their judgement at times.  It’s normal, so don’t think you don’t have what it takes just because you sometimes wonder if you made the right decision.  A bad case of this will have you wondering if you are even capable of making the right decision.  It’s normal – don’t let it shake you.

Non-founders will never be founders.  It isn’t reasonable to expect an employee to act like a founder.

Don’t confuse investment with revenue.  So you’ve got a great idea and you’ve convinced someone to give you $(some meaningful amount of money) for your new venture.  That’s wonderful but you don’t have a sustainable business until you are generating revenue and profits.  Don’t let money in the bank and a brand new executive chair make you comfortable.

Working hard is the easy part. Deborah gave me this one.  Anyone can work 12 or 15 hour days but that’s really not the hard part about being an entrepreneur.  It’s making the decisions that have real effects on peoples lives, it’s believing you’ll make it in the face of evidence that maybe you won’t, it’s trying to learn everything you need to make it work.  That’s the hard part.

There are rarely any clear answers.  Until time machines are invented and you can go back and try different decisions under the same circumstances, don’t expect to have clear answers to your problems.  Deal with the fact that you have to make the best decision you can without spending too much time second guessing yourself.  It’s normal to not be 100% sure of every decision you make.  There’s no time in business to try to gather enough information to be 100% certain about every decision you make.

Sometimes the most painful problems aren’t the most important problems.  When pain was invented the idea was to use it to motivate the animal to avoid whatever was causing the pain.  If we were able to think perfectly logically though we would have no need for pain so we might have the following thought process:  Ah, my nerve endings in my scalp are detecting an abnormal increase in temperature.  I must take remedial action.  With our less than logical brains, pain is used and the thought process goes like this:  OH CRAP MY HAIR IS ON FIRE!!!!  AHHHHHH!!!!  It works.

In business most times the level of pain is not a good indicator of the seriousness of a problem and some of the worst problems are not accompanied by any pain at all.

Painful	Not Painful
email is down again	A customer  begins thinking about using your competitor
Page breaks in your business plan won’t come out where you want them	Your potential investor decides you’re not interested in their money since they haven’t heard from you in a month
An angry customer calls to tell you what you’re doing wrong	An angry customer doesn’t call to tell you what you’re doing wrong, they just silently go away
You miss dinner again trying to get a customer proposal out on time	You knock off early because customers haven’t been asking for much lately
Customers are calling so often that if you don’t hire some one to answer the phones you’re going to lose your mind	Customers don’t bother trying to call because they’re tired of being put on hold

Get used to worrying about getting new business.  No one tells you when you start a business that you probably won’t ever be able to just kick back and relax.  I’ve never met an entrepreneur who didn’t worry about getting new business in the door.  It’s part of the job.

Get people who’ve done it before and verify that they’ve really done it. Art gave me this one.  Some jobs really do require experience.  Sometimes you can’t afford on the job training.

Am I really cut out to be an entrepreneur?  Yes Scott, I think you are.  It’s normal to wonder about this.  There are great rewards but there are great pressures too.  If you never question your ability and sanity, you’re probably a no-good crazy person.  Or as G. B. Burgin said "I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and not know it than to be sane and have one’s doubts."

There are more than 136 million people in the workforce in the United States alone and most of them have not started a business, therefore, normal people don’t start businesses.

Accept that this is the way it is.  There are some things you just can’t do anything about and some things may not get any better.  Beating your head against the wall doesn’t help much.

Lessons will be repeated until learned.  I have not learned all of these lessons myself and sharing them here only means that I’m starting to recognize a pattern, not that I’m always able to take my own advice.  I still hate having to be up when I don’t feel like it, I still don’t communicate enough and I still wish for clear answers to my problems.