Young Successful Entrepreneur

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The entrepreneurial life can seem glamorous from the outside because all of the huge success stories.  Mark Zuckerberg, Larry and Sergey, and Kevin Rose all have created huge empires and are famous in their own communities.  I think this is a fantasy that most people have: money, power, and … women?  I’m gonna go with fame instead of “women” in this example.  They have money, power, and fame.

I want it.  You want it.  But in all honesty, how practical is it to dream to be the next Google or Facebook?  Here are the 5 reasons you should think twice before becoming an entrepreneur:

1. You feel lonely and isolated

I have a good friend who is a one-man startup team.  He will use team members and throw them away as if they were condoms.  My friend is a startup machine who has sacrificed friends, girlfriends, and has even moved out of the country in order to make his company successful.  Because of this, he lives a lonely and isolated life away from family and friends.

The Future Delivery team is tight-knit.  But even though we have a great company culture, most of our contact is virtual: skype, gchat, and emails.  There are times when I’m sitting at home wishing there was someone physically working along side me because it helps with motivation and to pick up your spirits when you’re down.  When you have a bad day at the office, it’s hard to talk to someone about it through Gchat, so you really just have to suck it up alone.

The isolation isn’t just relevant to your company team.  Your friends and people working in the corporate environment cannot relate to you.  Your family will tell you to “go find a real job that makes money.”  Your former co-workers will look at you as if you’re just playing around with a toy that is for little kids.  When you conducting business development and meet with partners of large firms, they’ll ask you “so what do you do besides this as your full-time?” because they just don’t realize that a startup company is way more than a full-time job.

I would describe the lonliness like a girlfriend that people don’t approve of and don’t want you to be with.  You love her with everything you have, but there are always people saying that “she’s no good for you” or that look down upon you because they don’t like her.  Are you man enough to ignore the critics and push throgh the lonliness?

2. There is never enough money

Well, I think this is a problem for most people, but multiply that problem by 10 and you’ll realize what entrepreneurs have to go through.  Sure we can’t buy new clothes, a new laptop, a new iPhone, or go out on fancy cruises for vacation.  So what, most people have to sacrifice that through tough times right?

I think the hardest thing for me is staying healthy because I just don’t want to eat out because it costs so much money.  I currently live back home in Huntington Beach to save money on rent, but most of our business and team members are in Los Angeles,  so I go up to LA 2-3 times a week for business.  During these 2-3 days, I do my best to bring up food from home to eat, but traffic is so BAD here in LA that I end up rushing out the door without preparing any food just so I can’t get to my meeting on time.  This means that I will only eat breakfast at home at 9am, and probably not eat till 6pm for dinner - if I decide to eat dinner.  This ridiculous eating habbit that I’ve created has made me lose 10 pounds in the past month!

An unpredictable schedule and needing to save on money has caused me to sacrifice even the most fundamental things like food.  Now I’m not saying that most people are as hardcore (or as stupid) as I am, but it’s just the situation that I feel I have had to create because I have chosen to be an entrepreneur.

3. Relationships suffer

Yes, we do have flexible schedules.  We can work in the afternoon, on weekends, or late at night at 2 in the morning. Because of this, my girlfriend assumes that I should accomodate my schedule to fit her needs.  She’s a beautiful, wonderul, caring person, but she LOVES attention and is a self-proclaimed “cuddle monster.”

So what does this mean for my company? It’s not that bad to take your girlfriend out once a week right?  I mean, that’s the least I can do.  Well, in actuality, it’s not just once a week.  You have to take into account the nights I spend at her place, the nights she sleeps over at mine, the lunches that we eat together, the errands that we run together, and the morning when I don’t want to get out of bed because it’s just so comfortable to sleep in her arms.

Yu-kai and I have a theory - Having a girlfriend reduces your chances of entrepreneurial success by 15%.  Just think about it; all the fights, occassional depression, phone calls, money spending, and even happy times all take their toll on the company.

4. Mult-tasking is a must

Remember the interview question: “What are your 3 greatest strengths?”  9 times out of 10, one of your strengths was “multi-tasking.”  In the corporate world, you really don’t need to multi-task.  You get your project, work with your team on the project, deliver your results to the client, and you’re finished.

As an entrepreneur, I’m ALWAYS handling more than 5 different projects at once.  Once I finish one project, I have to move onto my endless to-do list that just keeps piling up and never shrinks down.  Not only do I have to work on Future Delivery projects, but I have to do business development for my own consulting work.

Imagine this situation: You’re working for a company that pays you nothing.  In addition to working 70+ hours in a week on FD, I have to work another 20+ hours on client projects and on conducting business development so that I can have cash flow to survive.  There’s just no end to it!  I work, work, work for the company that I love, but get paid no money so I have to go find a freakin client in this terrible economy that will pay me for my services.  And you know that when a company is in a crunch, the first thing to go is the consultant.

Can you handle all of these things at once?  Can you handle product development, branding, business development, and design ALL at once.  If you can’t, then maybe the E-life isn’t for you.

5. The ups and downs are like a roller coaster

Up: We launch FD Career

Down: We lose our CTO
Down: We lose a lead developer
Down: We lose a designer

Up: We sign Disney Interactive Media Group as an official partner of FD Career

Down: The economy is horrendous so we can’t find investor funding
Down: Our other partners, Northwestern and Cast, are slow moving and don’t give us what we need
Down: Cash flow is wearing thin

As you can see, every single up is accompanied by at least 3 times as many downs.  It’s not just something that you can leave at work.  If you’re frustrated with your corporate job, you can just leave your feelings at the job and come home and forget about everything.  As an entrepreneur, you’re already at home when everything is falling apart!  There is no separation between work and your personal life.  There is NO work/life balance as an entrepreneur.  Can you live with that?  Can you live with no work/life balance?

Are you bold, condifent, and crazy enough to become an entrepreneur?  If so, come join us at our startup lives.