Over the years I have met and interviewed many self-proclaimed ‘entrepreneurial’ people. These people often talk about starting a company and doing it on their own, then settle down snugly to their predictable job running TPS reports at a regional outpost for a global conglomerate. Yes, truly ‘entrepreneurial’.
Lots of folks often talk about 'going to a start-up' or building the next great business. I generally chuckle and then try to give them a glimpse into what working at a start-up is really like. A start-up with lean resources, with high expectations and a need to prove its business model.
I’m not professing that I am a pure entrepreneur, but here are my credentials: I’ve started two companies, consulted as my only source of income three times, and worked in several start-ups. So if anything, it gives me some credibility to say I have entrepreneurial 'traits'. So as a pseudo expert, here are 4 reasons why start-up may not be your thing, and one piece of advice.
1. Your Ego
After all these years of working in a pyramid structure with several direct reports, big budgets and expense reports - are you really willing to have to do the actual work again? I don’t mean sitting down and writing a deck, I mean are you actually willing to administrative work, pack boxes, sell your product, build budget models, empty a garbage? Start ups aren’t all foosball tables and catered salmon rolls - there is actual work required to build a company and often limited resources to do so. So just ask yourself if you are all set to crawl under a desk to fix the router settings or fill your car with chairs to move offices (both of these things I've done).
2. You Are Too Slow
In the immortal words of Darth Vader “Your powers are weak, old man.”. The sweet corporate life has tainted you for good. You’ve lost your ability to make a decision and make it happen in a day. Every decision you make now has to go to a steering committee, go through three levels of approvals and takes six months.
In a start-up you need to be nimble and have the ability to make decisions based on some facts, but often your gut. And these decisions have real impact. Corporate decisions often have little consequence. Sure, you may have had to fire people and that's never pleasant, but when the decisions you’re making can impact the life and careers of everyone your are working with, they feel a tad more real. And if the decision you make isn't panning out, you need to shift again to make things right. Fast.
3. You’ve Lost Touch
You are really disconnected to how things work. Your life in the ivory tower has numbed you to how people actually live their lives and consume products. You live in an echo chamber of silly decisions. You haven’t actually practiced anything in years, rendering you quite useless and outdated to do whatever it was that you were good at once upon a time.
4. You’re Not Creative
This is not in the ‘I painted a picture’ type of creative, I mean people who can think laterally and problem solve. Zag instead of zig, pivoting, solving problems with the resources at hand, MacGyvering and what have you. You may think you’re very creative on a daily basis, but are you really reinventing anything? Are you doing things differently and stretching budgets as far as they will go? Creative problem solving is a skill that is required everyday in a start-up. It is an exhausting exercise and it one of the easiest skills to loose. Creativity is what drives successful start-ups. Thinking about new product approaches, ways to grow customers, ways to engage customers - all with an eye on how to do it on a dime.
But all is not lost.
I'm sure you can get in the right headspace if you really try. Get back in touch with the way the world works. Go ride a bus. Hang out in a food court. Then go and run a program at your current job - don’t just direct people to do it but actually run it on your own - roll up your sleeves. Write an ad, do your expense report, book some media, analyze some data. Start-ups need people who do things. People who set an example. People who lead, not point.
So the one piece of advice if you want to start a business: Have self-discipline.
Avoid going into rabbit holes that don’t require that much headspace. Don’t focus on the thing you want to do, focus on what you need to do. Move away from tasks that you feel are important and move on to the ones that you know are important.