3 Things About Becoming An Entrepreneur You Won’t Believe Are True
By Kenneth Lou
I used to think that the world couldn’t have enough Entrepreneurs. And then after going through my startup Novelsys for the past year, I realize it is not a lifestyle many people can stomach.
1. A day in a life
Worry, fear and uncertainty is the lifeblood of any entrepreneur, from the get go in the morning and it will follow you through decisions, finances, challenges both internally and externally of the organization. The pressure to deliver to stakeholders, employees and partners is the next big load on the shoulders of any founder, and the responsibility is the key reason behind all these. Again, it is to ensure that you keep your company, for one more day and another day. And the best part about this, when you go to sleep at night, that is the only ‘quiet’ part of the day that you actually get to think about what can be done better for the company, creative thoughts flow when nobody else is talking to you. That’s where you can’t sleep as you scramble for a pen to write down these thoughts. Its not healthy and you look older day by day as the body clock is reversed, but I guess this is what they coin ‘passion’. The next big thing is that you go through this everyday with no end in sight. No exam or tests to clear at any date like in School or in Work, you just have to keep moving.
2. Social life
The above will transit into one heck of a social life. You will start to have two types of friends. The first type thinks that you are creating the next Facebook and start to think you are some superstar entrepreneur who is “lucky.” The other group is the negative one who always believe you are bound to fail as the success rate of startups currently stand at 99% failure. You start to distance yourself from your friends, as you want to move away from negative people or you start to think these people don’t understand what you are going through. With a poor work-life balance, you can’t sleep well and do not have much time to spend on thinking about anything else. Your girlfriend starts to get disgruntled at you every time you share about a new idea or new challenge at work.
3. The saving grace
Logically speaking, as a normal human being, it is human nature to move away from fear, uncertainty and sadness. That is exactly what you go through each day.
That, in fact is the best part.
An entrepreneur to me, is a state of mind – a zone that is not troubled by stepping on acid and eating glass. That, I believe is the hallmark of any amazing entrepreneur, if you really reverse engineer the top founders, Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, etc. That is one thing common across all of them. You know you are in the top 20% contributing to the world’s solutions and creating opportunities for billions of people when you can withstand that mental state of mind. To the supreme highs, and the horrific lows – the life and times of an entrepreneur.
And that is also why I am striving towards work-life balance with Novelsys and looking to grow a sustainable and scalable startup with my partners, launching our first product Novelsys ampere: The world’s first wireless charging sleeve on Kickstarter in Jan 2015. Yin Yang in our balanced living, one step at a time, a marathon not a sprint.