

Knowing When to Fold ‘Em (as an entrepreneur) - mcfazeli
http://founderdating.com/when-to-fold-em/

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zeidrich
I feel as an entrepreneur it's easy to let the weight of the world fall on
your shoulders. What we do as business owners is easy to think of as an
extension of ourselves.

In many ways it is an extension of ourselves. Whether a business lives or dies
is based off of our ability to manipulate it. Neglect it completely and it
will fail. Don't start it and it will never exist.

But if you do think this way, it's first most important to take care of
yourself. Picking up smoking again reeks of stress left unchecked. No sense of
satisfaction from generally satisfying activities does too.

I know nothing about the Micah's business and what got him there, but from his
post it feels a lot like what I've seen and what I've been through. A lot of
"personal sacrifice" for the business, a lot of feelings of pressure, a need
to perform. Essentially like an addiction to realizing goals; the fitbit
example for instance - compelled to meet an arbitrary metric to the point that
it causes him stress.

I think the best way to do anything, running a business or otherwise, is to
first be cooperative and aware of yourself. If you are judging your business
as an extension of yourself, it's destructive to sacrifice yourself for the
business. If it's necessary, then do it with awareness; be cognizant of your
actions and evaluate them to make sure they're still necessary. Stress can be
a great way to motivate yourself for short bursts, but in the end it's a
negative influence, it will ruin your life and it will ruin your business.

When you live off stress, that's when you can "hit rock bottom" - that's when
you realize that relying on all the stress in the world to motivate you still
isn't enough. If the stress doesn't help, why bother with it? That release
gives you a boost - stress impairs your ability to function as much as it
compels you. But I think it's important to take a lesson away from that -
mitigate stress, monitor stress, and only use it occasionally. Let stress be
the thing that happens when the shit hits the fan, and forces you to knuckle
down and get through it. Be careful to never let it be the baseline again.

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micahb37
I 100% agree with you. That experience made me really think about the "team v.
product v. market" dynamic that so many startups and founders are judged by.
If we are to believe that team matters above all -- then why do you put the
product over ourselves? If we spent more time taking care of ourselves,
perhaps the product's quality and viability. would accelerate faster?

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zabbyz
Couldnt agree with the two of you more. At a certain point stress can be
debilitating for creativity and finding new solutions. Its so easy to get
rapped up in needing to make one specific thing work that we become short
sided in our thinking. Its in those moments of space where perspective and
growth happens.

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ddukes
Micah, thanks for writing such a open post. We need more of this sort of open
dialog in our industry. We have to push through the 'killing it' mentality
that is too common now and start to have the type of dialog that keeps our
community strong and lets all of us help each other when we're struggling and
let's us reach out to one another when we're stuck.

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jmalter
"I know we tell each other that failing is ok. I know that there are books and
blogs written about the importance of failure. But that didn’t mean that I
didn’t think it wasn’t because of me."

What a super difficult topic to discuss - props to @micah for his honesty.

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zabbyz
Wow what a moving story. Describing the physical pain we'll put ourselves
through for a goal where the answer is clear, but being unwilling to put our
selved through emotional pain to do the right thing really resonated with me.
Those clarify moments when you're able to step back and look at things for
what they really are, and decide to take the hard road - thats the stuff
successful entrepreneurs are made up. Really inspiring and really great to
hear someone speak about those persona, intimate difficult moments. Thanks!!

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timjahn
Micah is an amazing presenter and someone with a hell of a story to tell. It's
great to see him always being open with other founders and spreading the
knowledge from his experiences.

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jennyjenjen
Always wise words from Micah. Thanks for contributing!!

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triplesec
Micah is a wonderful human being.

