On Entrepreneurship

After “being an entrepreneur” for a year, I think I can write about this. I’m not sure really because like clean-label and like flexitarian, the word “entrepreneur” can also be interpreted any way you want.

In any case, whether or not I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve been interacting and interviewing entrepreneurs all over the world through Better Meat Co and My Food Job Rocks.

What I’ve noticed is that entrepreneurs are all about risk, but it’s deeper than that because when an entrepreneur takes a risk, there is a thread connecting to how the failure of the risk affects them and everyone around them. The less you have to lose, the easier it is to become an entrepreneur.

Definition

What is an entrepreneur? Is it someone who has their own business? Can a dentist with his own office be considered an entrepreneur? Is it someone with a legitimate idea? Like someone who thinks of selling a plant-based burger? Or selling bags of flour? Or is it someone who can manage contractors to build what they want them to build? Is a contractor an entrepreneur? The definition depends on who you ask. From guys who just bought their first Tai Lopez course to the girls creating non-profits, these are all entrepreneur depending on who you ask.

In my definition (and to the point of this article), an entrepreneur is someone who takes a risk to produce something of value. Ideally, the risk can be either quitting your job or just taking away your free time to put into something. All entrepreneurs have to sacrifice their time and in essence, their ego, to focus on building something new.

However, the second part of this equation is providing value, as in the entrepreneur has to sacrifice enough time and effort or money to create value and the best way to represent this value is to generate money. Though there are other forms of values that are important, you need money to live.

And though this might not be true for everyone, the entrepreneur title should be earned rather than self-titled. I think it’s very lame when people title themselves as entrepreneurial even though they haven’t done anything to be an entrepreneur. From what I’ve seen. The most entrepreneurial people have a sort of aura around them. I’ve been called an entrepreneurial person a lot, but I never feel like one and I assume a lot of entrepreneurs feel that way.

Looking into Risk

Spending a lot of money to get things going makes me want to throw up.

Risk runs an interesting parabolic curve. It seems like there are two avenues where people will jump off the cliff: when they have nothing versus when they have everything.

There are many success stories about immigrants coming over and building amazing businesses.

When you hear the stories you hear about young founders making it, you might need to look into their history a bit more. Most young founders who “make it” come from decently wealthy families. Failing a venture like this, they lose nothing and they can just start another one. It’s not a big deal.

Ironically, the same can be said with the people who start with nothing or perhaps have lost everything. If they build something and it fails, they can do it again because they had nothing to start with.

Yet the refugee who had nothing versus the spoiled brat who goes to the United States for their education have about an equal shot of making a successful business. They can fail a venture, and then start another one next week.

So you have a parabolic effect when it comes to “risking it” as an entrepreneur. Someone with a well-off family knows that the downsides is not being homeless and not starving so they’ll give it a shot. Someone with nothing has nothing to lose and everything to gain. There is a huge factor when other people are affected by the decision you make, which increases if you have debt, have family, and have kids.

The issue is the middle-class person who has 5 figures of college debt and a family asking them for money? That’s a bit harder to start a business. One of the challenges is the loss of opportunity cost. If you decide to start a company at 24 and it’s 2 years of pain for nothing to show, you probably will be behind your peers. We can go deeper on the psychological aspects of having a fixed mindset because of these hurdles but that might be a different article.

The cultural upbringing of an individual is also a huge factor when it comes to risk. I’ve noticed a trend in family trees. My dad and my friend David Despain have similar stories. Both of their families were entrepreneurs and would cause a lot of unstability within their family. Once My dad and David became functioning adults, they wanted to take the path of being a functioning adult, raise a great family, and be stable.

However, the offspring (for example, me) has a chance to escape stability and be more entrepreneurial. The only reason I can do this is because my cultural upbringing has taught me that there is minimal downsides in starting something. A loss is no big deal for me and I am fortunate for this.

I am not sure who follows the same pattern and unfortunately, there are no trends in terms of entrepreneurial origins because what I’ve listed make the best stories, but the psychological concept of risk is still really hard for the middle class to grasp. The biggest is that student loans are causing a ton of people to become risk-averse. Most of my friends who have student loans are super anxious on venturing out because the risk of failure can be catastrophic in their life.

Inherently, the risk versus reward is random to a degree so the stories we hear can come from all sorts of origins but the next time you hear about a success story from a 25 year old founder, it’s all glamour and the press fizzles out. It only works if you see their authenticity bloom but it might take years or decades before what they truly make is actually legitimate. Persistence matters.

How to become Entrepreneurial

Being from a decently well-off middle-class family, my perception of money was very risk-adverse. Over time, I’ve been able to take more risks from a time perspective and a money perspective, and change my mindset in how to deal with risk. But it took me years to develop that skill set. Even before My Food Job Rocks, I’ve been finding ways to become “entrepreneurial”

Here are a few articles that might help you become entrepreneurial:

Intrapreneurship – Become an entrepreneur in your company by asking your manager (or your manager’s manager) to take on innovative projects. People generally like people who want to do more work. Play the game, make the company some money, and keep practicing.

Little Bets – Do a side hustle (like My Food Job Rocks) and build it in your spare time. First build the skillset, (I would wait until people are impressed by your skillset) then build a way to monetize.

Do Stuff in College – College is a playground where you spend a lot of money doing whatever you want with no risk. The resources in college are plentiful and if you want to get into entrepreneurship, this is a perfect way to practice.

A Note on Public Relations

I used to be envious when a hot new startup got on the list of “This new cricket pet food could be the next Beyond Meat” (not bashing the startup, but the header is ridiculous as crickets are not vegetarian!) but now that I’m in the circles, I can see right through the articles.

It’s not like I’m against startups that get instant press, I wish them the best of luck because startups are hard. The big point is to not be discouraged when you see your friend’s company gets a nice PR mention. There is a lot in the background, and they are fighting a different type of battle, and have a different type of weapon.

Some companies are very good at knowing the right people and allow them to write things about them with relative ease.

However, just like a viral meme, it takes a couple of weeks for the news article to fall flat. What really matters is to develop a small but consistent fan-base who will love you no matter what.

The more press that happens to companies that are “killing it”, the more I see them really struggling, not improving their product and think that their marketing will save them.

So if you want to become an entrepreneur, evaluate risky moves and really think of the consequences if you “lose”. If you find losing scary, do something small and build up to it but eventually, you have to make the leap and that leap is very hard to do.

Being entrepreneurial is hard (whatever your definition of that word is). It’s not for everyone and I never want to inspire anyone to become an entrepreneur. If entrepreneurship is all about persistence and failing to succeed, then be prepared to slog through years of your life before you actually get good. Be prepared to sometimes sacrifice nights out, ruin relationships, hate a different person every week, think your life is terrible and you should have stayed at your comfy job, and viscerally feel like you’re going to die every month.

But if you love every second of this rollercoaster, then I don’t have to inspire you to go for it.