NOTE: This is an article I wrote for an online publication a couple of years ago. I thought I would republish it here for you to read as it is an important thing to consider when starting a business.
You slave away for The Man for long hours with little pay. People tell you all the time that you have good ideas, but you never pursued them.
Every day that you sit at your bland-yet-dependable job, you can’t help but wonder what more you could do with your life. If only you just had the means to pursue your dreams.
Maybe it’s safer to stay at the job you hate. You may hate it, but it keeps the lights on (just barely). Besides, not having a steady income means sleeping in the back seat of your car for months, and that doesn’t sound all that great.
One day something happens, and you have that one inspirational thought or life-changing event that changes your life forever. You decide to run with it. You are going to take your destiny into your own hands, and it is going to be AWESOME!
You bootstrap your entire business from the ground up. You use an outdated laptop to make a business WordPress site. You borrow equipment. You stay up for 20+ hours every day to work your regular job during normal hours and on your business throughout the night.
It takes close to three years, but one day you start to see some real promise in your company. It doesn’t make sense (or it’s too scary) to quit your day job yet, so you hold on a little longer and make things work.
The universe decides to kick you in the ass to get you moving. Just when you feel the tiniest bit of confidence that this business may work one day, you are let go from your job. Maybe it was a layoff. Maybe your boss senses that you won’t take his bullshit anymore and finds a reason to trade you out for someone who will.
Regardless, here you are – financially dependent on your idea that you worked on for so long. You are completely out of runway. You are flying under your own power now.
I know this story because it is my story. This is exactly how my business started almost 11 years ago. I started a company in the junk room of my cheap apartment while working at a call center. Nearly three years later, while making almost as much on my business as I was answering angry phone calls, my motivation to finally leave was the birth of my twin daughters.
I had to make them proud. Hell… I had to make me proud.
I have made well over seven figures in my 12+ years in business. Owning a business is a dream come true, and I have reaped all the many rewards that being a business owner can provide.
And believe me… there are many rewards!
The life of an entrepreneur, however, is one that few people can handle. In fact, only a small percentage of people can actually see any tiny thing resembling success, much less thrive running their own company.
Here are five reasons why a career in creating and living off of your own business won’t work for you.
1. It Will Affect Your Mental Health
As I’ve written about on my blog on other posts, I network often with other business owners. There’s not a single one of us who doesn’t suffer some sort of chronic anxiety, depression, or any cocktail of mental health effects that will make your personal life a pain in the butt.
In my 12 years, I have gone from a happy-go-lucky, stress-free guy-next-door type to one who has to deal with plenty of anxiety, high blood pressure (managed with medicine), and a menagerie of effects attributed to anxiety and depression. I have gone from someone able to hyperfocus on anything to someone who sometimes takes an hour to write a single email. I hate my phone and wish I could disconnect and live in a cave in the woods.
When you own a business, you never really get a day off. It begins to wear on you.
It’s not just us small-business owners who suffer. The news regularly reports on major corporate CEOs and mega-business owners suffering some kind of mental break, sending out Tweet storms, or getting arrested for truly outlandish conduct.
In fact, research from the University of California San Francisco shows that:
49% of entrepreneurs surveyed were dealing with at least one mental illness (such as ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, addiction, depression, or anxiety) and about one-third of entrepreneurs struggle with 2 or more mental illnesses.
This is much higher than control group studies of similar demographic studies.
2. There’s No Quitting
What makes the mental health issue so devastating is that there’s no stopping. Once your business has grown to a point to start making real money, there will be many gears turning to make your company live. Employees, contractors, financial obligations, and other responsibilities will ensure that you can’t just throw in the towel any time you wish.
There will be many people whose livelihoods directly depend on you not wavering. Your position as the head of your company is the biggest role in not only your life, but those who depend on you.
As a leader, you are the master of the environment you have created. No matter how many checks you write or obligations you tick off, it is your responsibility to ensure that your employees and business partners are doing okay. The more employees you have, the heavier the weight that responsibility feels.
It’s easy to feel crushed by the faith all these people have on you. The only option is to keep moving forward. There’s no quitting, even if you come to hate the career you have chosen.
3. You Will Never Not Work
One of the rallying cries in America over the past decade has been from workers who demand a better work-life balance. “There’s no reason we should have to work 16 hours a day,” they argue.
There’s a good reason for American workers to complain. In a recent study, the United States ranked awfully low in an index that measured work-life satisfaction, measuring factors such as average working hours, personal time and the employment rate of working mothers. Even Russia scored much higher on the index than the US.
When I first left my stable job to work for my business full-time, I was a new father of twins. For my kids’ entire lives, they have known a father who always has a phone or laptop nearby, it constantly dinging with questions, requests, reminders, and other distractions that I can rarely put away completely. While I do schedule time to focus completely on my kids, in the back of my mind I am always aware of work backing up that I eventually will have to get to.
The never-ending plague of work over every aspect of your life has mental health repercussions as well as physical. It is well established that “people who work long hours and leave little time for themselves have a 33 percent greater risk of stroke and a 13 percent greater risk of heart disease.”
If having a hard separation between your job and your personal life is a high priority for you, you will not be a successful entrepreneur. In fact, you probably wouldn’t make it past the first couple of months.
4. Your Friends and Family Will Become Calendar Entries
One of the greatest movies of all time, in my opinion, is Hook with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman.
As if you don’t remember, Hook tells the story of a grown-up Peter who gets so wrapped up in his work that he has little time for his family. In the movie, Peter’s wife Moira scolds him:
Your children love you, they want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? Soon Jack may not even want you to come to his games. We have a few special years with our children, when they’re the ones that want us around. After that you’re going to be running after them for a bit of attention. It’s so fast Peter. It’s a few years, and it’s over. And you are not being careful.
For years, I have had to tell my wife to add family events to my work calendar so I could schedule around it.
Birthday parties? It’s in the calendar. School award or music programs? Calendar. Want to spend the day at the beach? Calendar it. Date? Calendar.
Friendships are no different. When I want to spend time with friends, there are no more spontaneous outings with the boys to the bar. No phone calls to see who wants to go floating down the river later that day. If you aren’t in my calendar a few days ahead of time, it’s likely not going to happen.
Hobbies are another victim to the calendar. I used to enjoy playing music, building things, and homebrewing beer. That all takes work to organize and plan and remember to shop for. Music lessons fell by the wayside because I ran out of hours to sit and practice (and focus).
If it’s not in my calendar, it isn’t going to happen.
5. You Will Be Unhirable
This is the final kick in the proverbial nuts to a business owner.
You do everything to create a business and eventually throw in the towel. You then start applying to work for companies who are advertising for your specific skill set.
Except… nobody is calling you back. Why?
If you have been in business for a few years, your ability to be a do-only-what’s-asked-of-you employee is pretty much completely gone. Or, at least, it’s going to be hard for a manager to keep their reigns tight on you.
According to INC., an entrepreneur who re-enters the corporate world as an employee will be seen as a problem employee who can’t keep their mouth shut, who will take over on projects and duties not assigned, will not be afraid of calling out upper management for doing a piss-poor job, and will not play office politics.
A company who needs a good worker needs them to be a lower-rung person who does what they are told without questioning. Many company hierarchies are organized like the military. A Private doesn’t question the orders of a Sergeant Major, even if the Private knows the orders are idiotic.
Going from the head of a company to a mere employee is no different than getting heavy demoted in the military. Your spirit and motivation will be completely shot. Who wants to hire that?
Look, I get it. You have this insanely good idea. It very well may be a truly great idea. You may be really excited about it.
Nobody wants to have the joy of their idea stolen from them. It’s just… there’s more to business than just selling your idea. Your idea may bring a lot of joy to the world. It will, however, come at a huge personal cost.
Are you willing to pay that cost?
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