I’ve played both the visionary and the foot soldier in the business journey that has been my life. Two of the four firms I’ve founded stand out not only for their ambition, but also for the breadth of the lessons they taught me. These insights were gathered from the harsh realities of the startup trenches. They came at a cost other than money; they were paid for with time, personal sacrifice, and the well-being of my family. Here’s a primary example:
Create a Business, Not a Prison!
My last venture into entrepreneurship was more about making my own golden handcuffs than it was about constructing an empire. I was so preoccupied with the day-to-day that I became my own employee rather than the creator of my business. It was a subtle trap—seeing just the finished result, the imminent fire that needed to be put out. I overlooked the significance of taking a step back, of piloting the ship from the helm rather than working the oars. It was a painful personal epiphany that taught me that my actual worth was not in the trenches, but in the war room, plotting the way to victory.
The bars of my self-made jail were formed from a never-ending stream of operational chores that required my attention and depleted my vitality. The more I worked, the more the company grew reliant on my presence for its daily existence, restricting both its and my personal progress. It was a perplexing universe in which the more I worked, the less the firm changed.
The epiphany came when I accepted the idea that great entrepreneurship is about orchestrating a symphony of talent, technology, and strategy, rather than playing every instrument oneself. It’s about creating a self-sustaining firm that can function on its own and free me up to focus on expansion, innovation, and other endeavors. This mental transformation was critical—it was the difference between being the star player and being the coach who leads the team to victory. This realization, however, would not come until many months after I had fully and dangerously burnt out and had to do everything I could to transfer my clients and personnel to something more solid. Working in a more traditional “big business” has also provided me with a different perspective on what it means to drive the firm from my vision, or to turn the wrenches.
I want to share more about my experience and go into the fundamental concepts that drive successful startups—principles that are universal yet sometimes missed or misunderstood. I’d want to investigate the delicate balance of invention and execution, the dance of vision and adaptation, and the combination of creativity and strategy.
I want to talk to and with doers of dreams, thinkers who take risks, and creators who endure. I have a collection of insights that have resulted from both harsh failure and modest success. Most of which are probably well known in some startup circles, but I didn’t know. I learned the hard way.