Living the Startup Life

I was interviewed earlier this week by Adam McFarland where I was quoted saying:

“As a young entrepreneur, you will have NO work/life balance. I am very serious about this. If you want to succeed, you need to be working 24/7 every day of the week.”

I have received a lot of comments about how this is not the way life should be lived and that a person who does not set time to relax or party is not living a healthy life.  They call me a fool because I jeopardize my friendships and relationship because I work 24/7.  They say that I might be able to keep this up when I’m young, but when I’m 50, I won’t be able to keep up the same life style.

Well, I don’t plan on working 24/7 everyday for the rest of my life.  The goal is to build an empire before I have a house and family of my own.  But the theory behind not having a work/life balance has a deeper source.  It’s not that when I plan to have a work/life balance once I hit 30; it’s that I see work being a part of my life.

Seeing my product launch is much more fun and rewarding to me than going out to Hollywood and partying all night.  Working with my team till 3am in the morning is more fun and rewarding to me than going to the movies and watching some flick about some else’s life.  Reading a book or article online is much more fun and rewarding to me than watching Family Guy on TV.  Meeting new people through Twitter or blogging is much more fun and rewarding to me than going out with the same people every weekend.  I think you catch my drift here.

I think the point of all this is that I don’t differentiate between my work and my life.  That’s the underlying concept.  People have such a negative connotation with the word “work.”  We hear it all the time: “I hate my job”; “I’m so glad it’s Friday”; “Gah! I hate Mondays”; “I can’t wait till the weekend.”  People in our society seem to think that work sucks.  My team and I are of the mentality that work is fun!  So when I say that I’m working 24/7, it doesn’t mean that I’m losing my mind, stressing out the entire time.  It means that I’m having fun 24/7.

When I do an interview, go to a mixer, meet a person online, or blog and tweet, I am working.  This is a part of my job as the Chief Marketing Officer of Future Delivery.  I consider everything that progresses my career or that develops me personally as “work.”  This is where we may argue with semantics, but work to me doesn’t have to be something that makes me money.  It can be something that expands my network, social status, or influence in the Gen-Y community.

I have a great relationship with my girlfriend.  She understands that I have a startup company and that my company is my number 1 priority.  We’re able to keep a healthy relationship because I do set time during the week to take her out on a date.  When she’s watching TV, I’m sitting next to her with my laptop doing work.  It’s actually the best relationship I have ever been in.

I’m not a fool, nor am I crazy.  This is just the life that I choose to live.  You may say, “Jun, stop working so hard all the time.  Take a break and have some fun!.”  I’ll tell you, “I AM having fun”

Yes, it is true… we just launched and we’re having a party

Our site will learn how to run before it can crawl 

Whoa whoa… wait a mintue here!  Sex is overrated?  What?… have you lost your balls or something?  What’s wrong with you?…

Fun filled nights full of debauchery and girls came easy.  My third year at UCLA was one big blur where I would wake up half naked every other night not knowing where I had left my jeans, shoes, or dick.  I would laugh at people who stayed up studying all night and who got straight A’s saying, “Why don’t you have some fun for once in your life?” I liked the excitement of meeting a new girl, enjoyed the chase, but most of all, I loved making her fall for me.  I was trapped in a game and let my animal instincts take control of me.

In that period of my life, I did not care about anything but instant gratification.  I was lost, and I would ignore thoughts about the future by turning to my favorite pass time - girls.  For you, it could be video games, TV shows, or alcohol.

Productivity. What does it mean to be truly productive with your life?  Hanging out with friends and drinking alcohol all night is fun for the moment, but I always wake up in the morning vowing to never drink again.  Same with video games.  You spend all of your time leveling-up your character and getting new features, only to have your hard work made completely insignificant once the new version of the game comes out.

There is nothing wrong with me.  I love sex.  My girlfriend is amazing.  But I now understand that short-term moments of happiness are minuscule in the grand scheme of life.

How do you want to live your life?  Are you content with living a comfortable life working your 9-5?  If you look inside of you, I believe you will find that you want to reach self-actualization.  You want to reach a point in your life where you are making a positive contribution to the world.  You want to be able to say that the world was a better place because you existed.

The best way to reach the point of self-actualization is to play your life as if it were an RPG (Role Playing Game):

1. Never stop learning: In a video game, you gain experience by slaying monsters and completing quests.  Therefore in real life, you gain experience by reading, keeping up with the news, and gaining internships and a high GPA.  Become a hub of information and knowledge and people around you will begin to respect you and value your opinions much more.
2. Expand your network: Meet absolutely everyone.  In a video game, the more people you talk to, the higher the chance you have of someone telling you a hint to complete a mission, giving you an item, or providing you with secret information.  So, similar to the way you would play a game, go to Digg, Stumble, and Twitter and start expanding your network on those site.  The connection you make on those sites can greatly benefit you in real life.
3. Find the perfect relationship.  A meaningful and loving relationship will make you much happier than any one-night stand.  As an entrepreneur with my personality type, it is much more productive to be in a serious relationship than to be single, and here’s why:  If I was single, I would be out there chasing girls left and right.  I would not be able to focus on my company because all I would be thinking about is who my next piece would be.

   There are many studies that have shown that great sex makes you healthier and happier.  Therefore, if I was not getting any because I didn’t meet any girls this week, then my work would be greatly affected because I would be unhealthy and sad.  If I was getting a lot of sex this week because I met a lot of girls, my work would still suffer because I would be spending all of my time and energy getting girls rather than on my startup.  Find the perfect relationship because you will be healthy, happy, and you’ll be able to spend a lot of time on your startup.

This post is not about “Sex” being overrated.  It is about getting you to strive for something more.  Entrepreneurship is how I will contribute to society and make the world a better place.  How will you do it?

Here is a question that an ambitious young undergraduate asked me:

“Dear Jun,

I am young college student and thinking about opening up my own business some time soon. I stumbled to your blog and I was reading up how you started up your company and since you started your own company I have a quick question for you . Where did you find the funding to start up your company? Or If its something that you feel like you can share, how did you go about starting up your company?”

I’m glad you reached out.

While at UCLA, I founded a business organization, founded the Undergraduate Case Competition, and founded a small business consulting firm.  I had an amazing time starting organizations and companies as an undergrad.  This is where I got a taste for entrepreneurship and got hooked.  You will love your startup like your own baby.

After I graduated, I worked at an International Consulting Firm for about 3 months when I realized that the corporate life is not for me.  I spoke with my friends who I founded the organization, competition, and company with as an undergrad and we decided to step away from our corporate careers and live the passionate life as entrepreneurs.

Step 1: Find your dream team. These are the people you are going to spend night and day working with.  You will argue, hate each other, and love each other.  If you can’t love these people, they don’t belong on your team; if they can’t bring unique value, they don’t belong on your team.

Step 2: Move back home to save on cash. I’m going to be honest, the entrepreneurial life is HARD.  It is so much harder than starting an organization on campus or starting a company as an undergrad.  You are out on your own, have to get clients on your own, and have to conserve in every possible way.  I moved back home to save money.

Step 3: Get people to work for you for free.  How can you possibly get people to work for you for free?  The answer is experience and mentorship.  Our generation cares more for guidance and experience than money.  If we don’t love the culture or work that we’re doing, we’re going to switch jobs, no matter how much we’re getting paid.  As a graduate, you can hire undergraduates for your startup and teach them everything you know about business.  Knowledge is much more valuable for undergraduates than money.

Our funding comes from our savings and from bootstrapping from friends and family.

I hope this quick post helps all of you get started as entrepreneurs.  For what to avoid as an entrepreneur, read this great post about what NOT to do.  If anyone has any other questions, please feel free to ask and I’ll respond immediately.

(or Men: A Heroine’s Grave)

My friend Yu-kai Chou and I have this theory.  The theory is that “Women are a hero’s grave.”

A Hero is someone who goes out into the world on an epic quest, and on this epic quest he saves people, villages, slays demons, dragons, and lives a life to accomplish great things.  His great deeds are not for himself; rather, his work saves the lives of people around him and he makes the world a better place to live in.  Because the Hero is out there slaying dragons and rescuing damsels in distress, he is creating a better world.

But what happens when the Hero falls in love?  Once the Hero falls in love, he becomes completely consumed by the woman.  He breathes, sleeps, and lives for her and her every dying wish.  The Hero will hang up his sword and shield just to spend all day with his love lying in the sun and living a care free life.

If the Hero suddenly realizes that he should go save a town by slaying a dragon, his love will just pull him back into her arms and all of the Hero’s epic desires will quickly fade away once again.   You see, the Hero is no longer living a life trying to make the world a better place to live.  He is now content with the way the world is and nothing exists outside of his love.

Running a company is like being a Hero.  You’re creating something new, going out on an adventure, and have many obstacles in your way that you must overcome.  If you succeed, you will have created a (hopefully positive) difference in this world and you will be remembered for your great accomplishments.

Like the Hero above, I have a Love.  She is very understanding of what I am doing and trying to accomplish.  She is supportive in every way, and does not let me hang up my sword and shield.  However, continuing on your quest takes much more than the support of your Love.  It takes tremendous self-discipline and unrelenting self-motivation.  There are countless times when I force myself not to go out with my girlfriend or when I force myself to get out of bed when we’re cuddling.

I feel that I have found the perfect relationship because Kim (my girlfriend) respects and understands the quest that I have chosen to take.  And at the same time, I have the discipline and self-control to keep moving forward even though the temptations are so great.

So before you go out and embark on your epic quest as an etrepreneur, really take the time to understand what you will be giving up and what kind of discipline that you will need in order to succeed.

This week we unveiled our Private Beta Launch!!!   Woohooo!!!  We have had great success in getting feedback from our close network, and now I want to branch it out a little to people outside of our direct network.

Here is YOUR invitation to our Private Beta:

http://FDcareer.com
code: junloayza

So what is FD Career?

We are the community for professional and personal development.  Our current launch has our product FD Cache, which is where you can search for company information and profiles.  All of the information in the FD Cache is conrtibuted by the members of our community who have closely worked with or interacted with the company.  This allows you to exlpore the most honest feedback possible without having to worry about the bias involved with “official or sponsored company reviews.”

What Features are coming in the near future?

Our made project with FD Career is the FD RPG.  If you are unfamiliar with RPGs, they are games where you take control of a character and take part in an epic quest.  At the beginning of the game, you have low experience, so you do not have access to many areas of the game and you have few abilities.  As you progress through the game, gain expereince and level-up, you gain abilities and access to amazing locations in the game.  We want to make your real life into a productive game.

In FD RPG, you are your online persona.  Everytime you get an internship, get good grades, or become a leader in an organization, you will gain experience points and thus level-up in the game.  As you level-up in the game and become a more powerful player, you will gain new abilities on the website and gain access to new features of the website.  You will also be recognized as a very influential and powerful person in real life.

I am working feverishly to meet with companies and create a partnership with them.  We want companies to create Quests that FD RPG users can partake in.  For example, if Bain was our sponsor, they could create a Business Case Quest.  In the Quest, you would partner with 4 other people in the community and solve a business plan that Bain has created.  If you are selected as the winner, you gain experience, level-up, gain recognition, and most importantly, Bain will take notice of you.

The features are all in the works, so the most important thing right now is for us to get YOUR feedback. Let me know about what you think about our current FD Career Private Beta.  Shoot me any questions or comments that you may have.  Thanks!

Yes, this is me sitting in my pjs, listening to music, and working my life away at 1:12 AM.  This is what an entrepreneur’s game face looks like.

So today we launched our private beta!!!  Woohoo!!!  It is actually a “Super” private beat, so you won’t get an invitation until next Monday.  Before today, I was in a real big slump.  We had no product, we just finished our website consulting client and there were no clients in site, the Machine Gun that I was working on was insanely mundane and boring, and I’ve been so far away from my team that at times I felt very alone.  When you’re in a rut, you become extremely depressing.  I swear I called Yu-kai a bunch of times just to get into random arguments.  I figured that if I could make Yu-kai miserable as well, then I would be happy.  Unfortunately, Yu-kai argues very well, so we usually end up in a stand-still.

Anyways… this is what you will have to deal with as an entrepreneur: no money, constant debates with your teammates, constant delays, and did I mention no money?  So why am I living this life?  Why did I give up my secure cubicle job to take on what seems like more than I can handle?

I take it on for moments like today

The feeling today was just so incredible! To actually have a product that you made online makes you feel incredibly accomplished.  All the months of planning, preparation, debates, and sleepness nights have finally turned into a tangible product - not a very well polished product, but we’ll get there soon enough.  Today I actually felt the possibility of succeeding.

So to all of you would-be entrepreneurs or currently struggling entrepreneurs, “The juice is definitely worth the squeeze.”  The struggling is, hard work, and sacrifice is worth seeing a product that you have made.

Now that the beta is up and we met our crunch-time deadline, I’ll be starting to post again on a consistent basis.  Look out for some more good stuff!!!

The idea of working for oneself circles the brain for more reasons than potential earnings, supposed freedom, and pure thrill - it does so because at some point we need to have our personal touch on business direction, and feel the joy of creating businesses that make a difference. Truly, no one knows business potential like each and every one of us does.

Beyond mere potential though, are the elements that make businesses successful; two of which are marketing and product creation. Last month I wrote about the differences between product-based businesses and service-based businesses in my given industry - forestry. At the risk of creating an “easier said than done” situation, in this post we’ll explore some tips and steps for taking a service-oriented business, and marketing it as (or making it) a product.

#1: Market Your Services As A Product

My biggest fear in creating a consulting business based on carrying out a service - in my case a service to both business and ecosystems - is that it is seen as an extra or mere option. To quell such fear, offer the service as a product, meaning that it must have positive consequences both long- and short-term.

The best way to carry out this transfer is to research and outline the consequences of ignoring your service. Cite law, case studies, and true benefits of your service. Incorporate them into your mission statement, as it is very important that you believe in them yourself. Lastly, market the ways in which your services make businesses run smoother, attract investment, and foster confidence and development.

When your system has been in place long enough, you may want to approach regulation that would make your business a necessity. An example of a service built on necessity is Environmental Assessment consulting: when development requires assessment to continue, the service deliverable becomes a valuable product.

#2: Diversify Your Services

Diversify your services not just for name and fame - but do so for multiple, viable revenue streams. Importantly, spreading your butter too thin may be worse than building a crap business to start with.

Identify people and trends that relate to your idea, and build them into your business plan. Integral to this are people you can trust to build your business alongside you; those who work in a niche which you may not be very familiar with. You must be familiar enough to know how to market and identify opportunities, then trustful enough to pass the task on to your business partner.

…and #3: Better Than Trend-catching is…

In fact, MUCH better than trend catching is trend CREATION. As with my first point, if you can take a mere trend, and make it a requirement you would be golden.

It’s a tough world out there. Not only are we seeing real signs of economic stagnation, but even the top performing businesses are cutting costs everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident in Canada than in the business I have the pleasure of partaking in, the forest and timber industry. But, hidden within the fact that the industry and its funding sources are in the crapper is the fact that we are in a time open to innovation and change, a.k.a the best time to build business.

Be that change, make that innovation, and most importantly, use it to follow your dreams.

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Helpful Links: Initial Steps, Management Help (more to browse within), and Canada E-business training.

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Torbjørn Rive is the writer and owner of Variable Interest. Variable Interest is also a member of the Brazen Careerist blog network.

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Truly an inspiring video…

Failure is a part of life.  It is said that 9 out of 10 businesses fail… well then, that just means I need to build 10 businesses.

It has now been officially 8 months since I left the corporate world to pursue my dreams of being an entrepreneur and running my own successful company. My good friends from UCLA have been in their corporate job now for about 10 months, and we have kept in very close touch, describing our experiences and describing what we like and dislike about our jobs. This post is about what we have each learned about ourselves, the nature of our work, and the culture that we work in.

1. Nature of the Work

Corporate: In an entry level position (and we’re talking about big firms here), a lot of the work that you will be doing is “grunt work.” My friends that are accountants at the Big Four and consultants for litigation, IT, economic and human capital consulting firms all tell me, “after doing this for about a year, I’ve gotten used to the work.” The key words are “used to the work.” In contrast, all my friends who are investment bankers or strategy consultants absolutely love their jobs. Even though they work about twice as many hours as my other friends, they love the “high level” work that they are doing and feel that they are surrounded with extremely intelligent people that were top students as undergrads.

Many of my friends feel trapped because it is very difficult to work in another industry. If you’re an accountant, it is very difficult to become a consultant. My friends have all started studying for the GMAT and are thinking that their MBA could be their ticket to a higher paying, more rewarding job. If you’re a banker or strategy consultant, it seems that you’re taking your MBA to move on to private equity, private wealth, or venture capital.

I think that there is one universal factor here: my friends who say that they look up to the managers and directors at their firm and want to strive to be like them are ultimately much happier with the work that they are doing than my friends who don’t look up to their managers and directors. Notice I’m talking about happiness with the actual work, and not happiness with the culture or people at the office.

Entrepreneur: As an entrepreneur, expect to do EVERYTHING!!! High-level work, grunt work, business development, brand development, human resources, operations, finance… absolutely everything! The thing with being an entrepreneur is that you have no one to tell you what to do, no one to tell you what you should do next after you finish doing what you need to do, and no one to tell you the priorities of your work. There is SO MUCH uncertainty that it could drive an insecure, unmotivated person insane.

Let me give you an example: Since we don’t have a product right now, I pretty much had very little to do (on the surface level). I contacted a bunch of companies to tell them about our future product, contacted VCs to tell them about our idea, and created all the good stuff: company FB, LinkedIn, Squidoo, and blog. So with time on my hands, I decided to create the FD Campus Rep system, Develop the FD Career, FD RPG, and FD Cache sites, start SiteVitamin (which should bring in some initial revenue), and develop the FD Startup.com idea. I had to develop these things to do in order to help my company succeed and bring in some revenue.

In a large established company, you are given all of the work, given your priorities, and are in a very stable environment where you know exactly what you will be doing next. If you just sit around on your butt, the work will come to you. In a startup company, everything is up in the air and you have to develop things to do. You have to push the company or else it won’t go anywhere. If you just sit around on your butt, no work will come to you and your company will die! Sound scary, or exciting?

(Hmmm… I just realized that this post could get very long considering everything I have to say about entrepreneurship. I was going to go into the 5 other areas of companies: culture, compensation, growth, competitiveness, and overall. However, I’ll just get into what I’ve learned in these 8 months.)

What I Have Learned

Entrepreneurship IS NOT for the faint of heart. There are many times when I have gotten discouraged, felt like I was being crushed by the amount of work that I have, felt frustrated because the programmers weren’t developing fast enough, felt alone because Yu-kai flew to Colorado for a business meeting, and felt like the company was going no where. The uncertainty, lack of money, lack of support from family and friends, and absurd competition is enough to make anyone run back to the corporate world.

An entrepreneur MUST have these two characteristics:

1. The ability to see everything as a whole (the company, market, competition) and develop the overall strategy, vision, and direction of the company.
   • I have seen many of my entrepreneur friends who get stuck on the details. They focus so strongly on making their product perfect, that they forget to digest the fact that the market is trending to a different direction. An entrepreneur must always be able to adjust to the ever-changing horizon.
2. Execution
   • You will sit through meeting after meeting and idea after idea. Often times your team will develop a brilliant idea. However, if you do not have the execution ability to convert the idea into reality, you’re idea will never go anywhere. You need to be able to execute on the drop of a dime. For example, we were running short on cash so I quickly got a website development client. We needed more credibility on the team so I got the founder of google adsense to be on our board of advisors. Execution is key!

I just love doing my own thing and dislike being told what to do. Entrepreneurship comes naturally to me.