[The preceding post urged you to think more like an entrepreneur than an employee. It suggested that you consider starting a business of your own on the side. The safest time to do that is while you've got a job that pays the bills.]
Has this ever happened to you? No sooner do you tell a friend you don’t like something than you realize you’re strangely attracted to it? This has happened to me with dill pickles, rap music, the French language, red hair and freckles, and a college classmate named Becky (who had red hair and freckles).
It happened to me once again last year with entrepreneurship.
Employee Mindset vs. Entrepreneurship
I’m lucky to have made friends with a 20-something sales guy I met in at NikeTown. As we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of different models of running shoes, I realized he was several cuts above most other retail sales people I’d met.
He mentioned his own apparel business, and we went on to talk about his entrepreneurial ambitions. I was impressed. We traded e-mail addresses. We’ve have stayed in touch from time to time since then. I admire his energy, drive and enthusiasm. I think he values my experience.
He asked me once if I’d thought much about becoming an entrepreneur. I told him I had tried it once, and it ended badly. I said I haven’t seen myself as an entrepreneur since then. My first failure suggested that I didn’t have much of a knack for it, and I couldn’t afford to take another risk with a young family to feed and educate.
I gave him a litany of reasons why I wouldn’t want to have my own business now that my kids are raised. I don’t want to have employees. I don’t want to be worried about making payroll each month. I don’t have the stomach for it. I like relaxing on my evenings and weekends.
I’m not eager to risk my personal savings. I’m not financially oriented. I don’t have any entrepreneurial good ideas. I could probably earn a lot more by excelling at my full-time job than by dividing my time and energy between two.
Shaken Preconceptions
About the same time I was telling my young friend why I wouldn’t want to be an entrepreneur, another friend lost his job as vice-president of one of the largest software companies in the world. I don’t know the details, but I think he was shown the door over politics and personalities rather than performance.
His wife, who I worked with then, told me she was concerned that her husband wasn’t planning to look for another job. They have little kids and had recently bought an impressive house with a big mortgage. She wanted him to replace his income as soon as possible and was afraid he might not feel as much urgency about it as she did.
She said her husband had picked up a book called The 4-Hour Work Week and had become obsessed with trying to apply it to his life. He wanted never to have to work for someone else again. He wanted to work on his own terms. And he wanted to enjoy his life and his family while he was young enough to do so.
Shortly afterwards I spotted the title in an airport bookstore in San Francisco. I grabbed it and read it nonstop during a red-eye flight to the east coast. When our plane landed at 5:30 a.m., I was I not only wide awake but also stoked to change the direction of my life.
A New Vision Takes Shape
The gears were turning fast in my mind. I thought about ways I could make Ferris’s ideas work for myself.
The author of the book, Timothy Ferris, described a way to live and work that sounded ideal to me. Not only did Ferris paint the picture of a life I instantly knew I wanted, but he also overcame most of my objections and drew a credible map for getting there, sketchy though it was.
This hit me at exactly the right time. My job as a VP of sales was disappointing. For a number of reasons it had become clear that my substantial equity stake in the company I was working for would never provide the big payoff I’d hoped for. I was increasingly at odds with the founders of the company.
I saw that it was not going to be in my interest to continue working more than 50 hours a week to make it work. I was running out of time to make a lot more money before employers start finding me too old to hire.
Prodded by Omens
In addition, my wife had just recovered from a life-threatening illness that could return. And I had just read an unnerving book by Ben Stein about how poorly prepared we are to retire.
On one hand, my wife’s experience reminded me in a very emphatic way that none of us can count on living to old age. On the other hand, the book on retirement showed me that if we do live beyond our 70s, most of us will not have saved nearly enough to live comfortably without being an economic burden to our children or the country.
Even in March 2008 I felt the economic bubble was near the bursting point. Sensing that turbulent times lay ahead, I put all my retirement savings into cash. While I couldn’t predict what would happen, I knew that when the environment changes, adaptability is the key to survival.
If I could build a build a business that doesn’t involve a big financial risk and that offers enough flexibility for me to work as long as I can, then I could provide the income I’d need to supplement my insufficient retirement savings.
A Big Reversal, A Commitment, and Relief
I didn’t notice it at the time, but my perspective on entrepreneurship had flipped 180 degrees. My list of surprising reversals now included not only pickles, French, red hair, freckles and Becky, but also entrepreneurship.
I committed to learn what I would need to know in order to adapt. I had the germ of an idea of how I would float like a cork on the surface of a stormy sea. Entrepreneurship would be my survival mode. I was more excited than at any time I could remember.
More on this next time.
Stay fresh.
– Scott Silverback