Entrepreneurship Wants to Make You Better. Let It.
Entrepreneurship Wants to Make You Better. Let It.
A lot of people think that entrepreneurship is simply the courage to have an idea and then pushing it out into the world without ever adjusting it. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Entrepreneurship is about having an idea, and iterating it again and again until it is the best possible idea it can be. That might mean it helps the most people possible, or that it is the gold-standard of a kind of product. Rarely will you get your idea right on the first try. You will fail, and you will almost certainly fail repeatedly. You should be excited about failure, because it is an opportunity for you to become better, both as a business owner, and as a person overall.
The Fallacy of Building an App
I get asked all the time how much it costs to start an app. The people who ask always phrase it the same way: “How much money do I need to start an app?” And every time, I tell them this is the wrong question.
Starting the app is actually not the most expensive part of bringing an app to life. In fact, you might be surprised to learn how low the number is. But you do need developers and other people who are committed to working on the app for at least the next year to ensure that the app doesn’t die. To that end, the bigger expense is actually from launch date to one year after you launch, as opposed to the two months prior to launch in which you make a simple version of the app and get it out there. Those two months might only cost you $10,000 or $15,000, but it will cost you at least $100,000 to maintain the app, and to transform it into a product that works.
Most people think you make an app, put it out there, and it's done. They believe it will succeed or won't after that point. They tend to believe the same of many products, and of most creative endeavors. Whether you’re a photographer, a writer, or something else, a lot of people think you put the work out there in the world, and you are either an overnight success or not. But every person who is good at what they do puts in practice to hone themselves and become better. Entrepreneurs need to think in the same terms.
I know this because I can’t think of a single product of any kind that hit the market, and it just worked. Even the most successful companies had immense periods of doubt. Many of these companies pivoted their goals. I am willing to bet that all of the founders of your favorite companies experienced moments of uncertainty, plateaus, and failures. What separates them from the companies that crashed is that they sought failure as an opportunity to get better.
The Power of Perceived Progress
Hardening yourself and developing your skills isn’t always about suddenly being the best, or at the top of your field. Sometimes it’s about pushing yourself forward from where you were yesterday, or a year ago.
The more you can shift your mindset to seek out perceived progress, the more successful you will feel. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't really matter where you start — perceived progress is about feeling like you're getting better along a continuum. You could be a minimum-wage server, and make employee of the month, or a multi-billionaire and come up with a new idea that allows you to stay ahead of your competitors. But no matter who you are or what you have, nothing will make you happy if you stay in the same place.
According to Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, there are certain things that are basic necessities for almost everyone, such as shelter and food. We could all subsist with the bare minimum, which is fine, but if you want to be happy in this life, you need to take on a challenge and make yourself better. Picking your sacrifice and honing it again and again is what gives you a perceived experience of progress, fulfillment, and purpose. If something comes easily to you, or you fall into success, that success won’t make you happy. It’s the toiling that makes you happy, not only once you achieve success, but along the way as well.
Approach Each Challenge as an Opportunity
I am constantly seeking to better myself for a simple reason: I want more and I deserve more than where I am at right now.
This seems negative, but I don’t believe that negativity is always a bad thing. Failure, uncomfortability, pain, desire, and the absence of what we want are indicators that you are on the right path to honing your skill and hardening yourself. I would encourage people to psychologically or entrepreneurially think about suffering and being challenged as portals of potential. It is in those moments of uncomfortability that you're forging yourself to become better.
A big hack for me in my quest for becoming better is to check each initial reaction of feeling uncomfortable or like I failed, and make sure it never verges into feeling sorry for myself. Instead, I rewire it into a reminder that the work I am putting in is making me better. Because I’ve done this so often, now whenever something bad happens, I’m able to more quickly recognize the opportunity and think to myself, “Cool, okay, I'm going to beat this. Here's how.”
Any problem is fixable, and good entrepreneurship is about not letting yourself become emotionally overtaken by the daunting task ahead of you. If you thoughtfully walk through your options and choose the best one, you can unwrangle yourself at any knot. That in itself is very intoxicating. Suddenly, you’ll want the challenges to hit you with their best shot because you haven't been beaten yet. Your company won't fail until you give up and you’re not going to give up.
Strive to Get Better for Yourself, Not Anyone Else
Pushing yourself to become better does not begin or end with your day job, in many ways because entrepreneurship is a metaphor for life. People try to get better in the wrong ways, which is using external validation as their driving force. Whatever you’re chasing will certainly get you something — whether your goal is a promotion, or wealth, fame, or what other people think of you — but it's usually not where you could have or should have ended up had you listened to what you wanted. The more you focus on external validators that make other people happy, the more you are damaging and ultimately killing your internal self the whole while.
Entrepreneurs that fail are the ones that follow these external validations, no matter how deeply they believe in their product or company. If you're just chasing what venture capitalists say or what your friends think, then you're building the company for someone else. When you let your insecurity win and you're so desperate for the TechCrunch article, or you raise $6 million, you will almost certainly lose. Even if you hit those benchmarks, they won’t satisfy you, and their joy will be fleeting. And somewhere along the way, your passion will flame out and you'll burn out and the company will die.
Instead of constantly seeking the moment that allows you to come up for air after being underwater for what feels like forever, you have to hold your breath and stay down. You have to believe in yourself, and follow the internal markers of what you feel defines success. Seek out change and growth, but do so on your own metrics. You might not always win in the traditional sense, either in business or in life, but you will have a much higher chance of bettering yourself — which I believe is a win all its own.