This past week has been the most fun I’ve ever had running a business.  Part of it is seeing the positive results of what we’ve done.  We’ve accomplished everything as a team, and accomplishments are always better when you have people to share them with…especially when you all went through the ups and downs together.  Even more so though, I think it’s the infinite potential that I see now, both for DI and other upcoming projects.  It’s just so much fun waking up every day.  I find myself still working long hours, even though I could dial it down a bit.  Not sure how long it’ll last, but for now all I really feel like doing all day long is growing our company.  It doesn’t seem like work at all, which is a good feeling to have.  I think it’s common for the first few months, but to feel like this a few years into it is awesome.

I’ve already been able to add a bunch of minor features to DI (mostly on the back end), I’m starting to start doing some non-programming (i.e. marketing) projects, I’m working on redesigning and revamping my blog, and I’m starting to work on some side projects.  And I see the light at the end of the tunnel to start using our e-commerce platform on other sites, which is when it will really shine.   In particular, the poker and fitness sections of Tastefully Driven have really done well.  We have solid customer bases already in both, and we have relationships with A+ vendors, so in the next year or two we’re really going to try to establish ourselves in those industries.  The idea of building a web app in conjunction with an e-commerce store really intrigues me as a potentially great business idea  – bring users in with the web app, and have the store along side of it instead of ads or premium accounts.  Both fitness and poker have huge unmet needs when it comes to web apps.   All of these sites will tie back into one product management/inventory system, and all will show on Tastefully Driven and be sold on Amazon under the TD name (as we do with all of our products now), which is when TD could really explode.  There’s a much bigger vision here than just detailing, and the massive potential that comes with that just excites the hell out of me.

In a way I like the extra space at the gym (nothing worse than a crowded gym), but mostly this is just depressing to see with such predictability.  The inability to set goals and stay consistent with the tasks necessary to achieve them is something that seems to plague our culture.  Even though you justify giving up, deep down you feel like crap when you do, which makes you a little less happy as a person.

Conversely, if you do every single scheduled workout, you see slow-but-steady progress, which in turn gives you a rush of happiness, and in turn leads to your desire to achieve more.  Being consistent compounds upon itself and gives you the results that make you feel good about yourself.

When I was in 10th grade I was a chubby 15 year old.  That year I started playing for our high school football team, and while I wasn’t very good, I became committed to the year-round weight training program and – in conjunction with eating healthier – was able to shed about 25lbs by the time I was 18.  Since then I’ve never missed a workout unless I was sick or injured.  11 years of working out 3-4 times each week, slowly but surely increasing my strength, putting on a little more muscle, and decreasing body fat.  I’m in the best shape of my life right now, at an age where most people start to put on fat and lose muscle.  It’s been a shear by-product of hard work, and it makes me extremely happy to think about.  I’m addicted to the feeling of feeling good about myself.

So is it going too far when I say that I think consistency leads to success, and success leads to happiness?  Or maybe better – success contributes very positively to happiness?  In a post I wrote a few years back entitled Success and Happiness – Myths all Over the Place, I cited an article from Men’s Health:

“The surgeon can’t afford to feel happy during a demanding operation, or a musician while playing a challenging score,” writes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first proposed the concept of “flow.” “Only after the task is completed do we have the leisure to look back on what has happened, and then we are flooded with gratitude for the excellence of that experience — then, in retrospect, we are happy.”

The article goes on to mention that our relationships with others are also a large portion of our happiness, which I think is something everyone knows to be true.  But how come people ignore this other component?  The component that involves hard work and consistency instead of immediate gratification.  Losing weight is great, but the process of doing it makes you just as happy as the end result.

It’s the same with starting a business.  The slow and steady micro-innovating is what leads to success.  Even better, thinking back upon each one of those accomplishments and seeing the results of them is what makes me smile from ear to ear when I think about our business.  It just wouldn’t be as good if we just put up a website and were millionaires overnight.

The first is that 95pct of people are dreamers who really don’t want to do the work. They would like to think they have the “next big thing”, but don’t realize that the “next big thing” that impacts their potential success is preparation and effort.

The 2nd reinforced belief is that the American Dream is still alive and well, even in these tough economic times. There are still many, many of you that know that success can be defined in many ways, but that it’s earned through preparation, hard work, love of what you are doing and a thirst to be the absolute best at what you do. It’s not only refreshing, its exciting to learn more about some of the companies that have been presented.

Let’s tackle one at a time.

The first is something I’ve talked about a few times with Adam Gilbert.  It seems as if the culmination of the “I want it now” epidemic in our culture (you know, the same one that causes people to run up credit card debt and buy cars and houses they cannot afford) is that everyone wants to achieve great things, but very few are willing to put in the work necessary to attain that goal, whether it’s losing weight or starting a business or just about anything else.  That gives a huge advantage to people who are simply willing to work hard.  As everyone who regularly reads this blog knows, I’m a huge advocate of minimizing work and being as efficient as possible.  Don’t mistake that for a lack of work ethic though.  Challenging the status quo for more efficient solutions is part of being a (good) entrepreneur.  So is hard work.

We’re working about as long and as hard as we ever have right now.  The combination of trying to do a major re-launch of Detailed Image by Spring while still growing fast (February was one of our best months ever) isn’t easy.  But we have a plan, each one of us knows what we need to do, and we’ll do it and do it well.  No excuses.  No short cuts.   We’re putting things in place now that will help us for years to come, so it’s easy to put the hard work in perspective.  Work hard now so that it will benefit us in the future.  I’d like to think that everyone would do the same, but just surmising from the people around me (not named Mike, George or Greg), I know that this isn’t true for most.

As far as the second comment, I’m glad that Mark feels that way.  I hope that anyone considering entrepreneurship feels the same way and sees these down economic times as an opportunity.  Since it sucks to be an employee, why not at least try starting a company?  Hopefully enough people who otherwise would have been at cushy jobs will create the companies that turn our economy around.

When I wrote the post outlining this goal a few weeks back, we hadn’t yet started on developing the project.  We’d meticulously studied the best shopping experiences on the web and defined what we wanted ours to be, but we hadn’t actually begun working on it.  Mike hadn’t started the design, I hadn’t started the programming, and George and Greg hadn’t started all of the work they have to do in terms of photography and product descriptions and how-to guides/videos.

Any time I am about to start a project of this magnitude,  I start to get nervous about the mountain of work that lies ahead.  SO much has to come together for it to work.  Not only do we need to be on the same page and have the exact same goal in mind, but everyone needs to execute their tasks at a very high level for it to all work.  Distractions – whether they come from the business or our personal lives – can ruin the whole thing.  I seriously think I can feel my heart beating faster when I think about it.

I only had one task after I got back from vacation two weeks ago:  start working on the shopping cart. Getting started the first day was really hard.  I started and stopped and worried about this and that probably fifty times.  Eventually I broke through that barrier and started accomplishing one little thing here and one little thing there.  Pretty soon I had a little feature in place.  Skip ahead one week and I had a really cool demo to show my partners.  A week later we’ve integrated my programming with Mike’s first design, and tomorrow we have another cool demo to review.

And that’s exactly how you accomplish a daunting task.  One small goal at a time.  We don’t even have a launch date in mind.  It might be April or May or July or August.  We’re not even sure what features it will and won’t have.  We have an idea, but we’re waiting until the core is built and will re-evaluate at that time based on time and stability of the system.  It still makes me nervous as hell to think about how we can possibly continue to do our current jobs and bring something so large together so fast without someone burning out.  But I try not to think about.  All I think about is the next feature at hand and how that feature needs to be developed so that it is stable, secure, scalable,  etc.   Each week we’ll review what the team did, set the goals for the next week, and move on.  Real quickly this thing will start to come together and we’ll be talking about what needs to be done to wrap everything up.  Until then, it’s all about what needs to get done over the course of the next few hours and days so that I meet my goals for the week.

Really though, I didn’t have an answer for him.  But I thought about it more, and realized that one of my best strengths is getting things done.  We all have the same 24 hours to work with.  How you use those 24 hours is up to you.  You might not think you have more time available to you, but I bet you’re wrong.  There are always opportunities to find time where others cannot.

There needs to be a fundamental change in how you view productivity.  You can get a lot done in a 45 minute pocket of time each night.  A real lot done.  I first realized this in college (see my productive output post), and it changed me from being “just average” when it came to getting things done to having mastered the skill.  With that in mind here are 13 techniques that I use to find more time.  In the context of this blog, most of these techniques are assuming you’re trying to find more time to work on your business, but they really can be applied to anything – getting work done faster in college, spending more time on a new hobby, finding more time to spend with your girlfriend, etc.

Disclaimer: as always, proceed with caution.  Don’t do anything that compromises a good night’s sleep, a healthy diet, plenty of exercise, or some alone time for yourself.  Depriving yourself of those things are a recipe for disaster.

1. Check email twice per day.  You know how much I hate email, our worst distraction and productivity killer.  For almost every business I know, twice per day is plenty.  This means everyone gets a reply within 24 hours, which is more than fair.  Meanwhile you free up all of that time most people spend hitting the Send/Receive button or changing direction mid-thought because that little pop up shows up in the bottom-right of their screen.
2. Filter out unnecessary email.  I auto-filter out emails like newsletters and receipts from our e-commerce stores, and check those folders less frequently than 2x/day.  For the receipts I generally check daily, whereas newsletters I’ll read once per week.  This removes clutter from your inbox so that all you see are the important emails that require action.
3. Don’t check your email when you wake up.  We start shipping around 9 AM.  I have to check my email Monday – Friday prior to that in case any customers need their orders adjusted prior to shipping.  However, if I don’t go to the gym and I’m up at 6 AM (or it’s a weekend) I’ll do an hour’s worth of work before opening my inbox.  No distractions because the work day hasn’t started for most people.  My brain is fresh instead of moving in twenty directions like it is sometimes after checking email  Many times I get my best work done during this time.
4. Limit the media you consume.  Most of the news out there doesn’t impact you at all.  It just serves as a distraction from what you’re trying to accomplish.  I read a lot, but it’s mostly done only once per day via my Google Reader.  I spend 15-20 minutes and I’m all caught up on my business, sports, and technology news.  The beauty of RSS is that you can filter out all of the crap information and just consume what you want to.  I never watch the news. Many days I don’t even turn on the TV unless there is a compelling sports event on or one of the few shows I enjoy.
5. Uninstall AIM.  Or whatever IM program you use to keep in touch with your friends.  Tell them to email or call when they need you.  This will eliminate the pointless “hey what’s up” messages they send when they’re bored and force them to only contact you when they actually need something or want to do something.  I did this after my sophomore year in college and haven’t turned back since.  It’s just as big of a distraction as email, probably worse.  The only instant messaging I do is with my partners via Skype, and we minimize that for the most part.   Announcements are made on our internal micro blog so that they don’t result in 30 minute chat sessions.
6. Ditto for text messaging.  I have one friend who disabled it on his phone.  I find it useful for certain situations where you’re not able to talk, but I don’t send or respond to open ended “how r u?” texts.  Huge distraction, total waste of time.
7. Turn off the tube.  I get my best work done with my tv off and my music blaring.  That’s how I “get in the zone” and drown out distractions.  Let’s face it – if the TV is on it’s going to distract you.  And if you don’t want it to distract you, why would you bother having it on?
8. Compromise tube time.  This is a trick for all of you sports fans out there.  I don’t need to see every second of every game, and neither do you.  Every 30-45 minutes when you get up to take a break, check ESPN.com for the score.  If it’s close and there’s less than 5 minutes left, turn it on.  If not, skip it and catch the highlights later online or on SC.
9. Leave home.  I have been to every single Starbucks and place that offers free internet within an hour of my apartment.  A change of scenery gets me away from the distractions of home.  I tend to throw on my headphones and “get in the zone” when I’m out.  I get some of my best work done during a 2-3 hour stretch at a coffee shop (having a caffeinated drink probably doesn’t hurt my focus either).  Also, this eliminates the feeling of isolation you can have being cramped up in your house working.  The atmosphere is great – you get to see different places you’ve never been, you get some social interaction with the people who work there (coffee shop workers have to be the happiest people on earth), and you get to be around other people who are generally focused on working.   Check out wifi free spot for a list in your area.
10. Utilize uncommon pockets of time. There are certain times each week when most people don’t work or even think about work.  These are the times I prefer to work.  Friday and Saturday nights work, but Saturday and Sunday mornings are my favorite.  I love going to a coffee shop for a few hours and just ripping through work while everyone else is sleeping in.  It’s so calm and peaceful. I can devote my full attention knowing that I’m not going to interrupted with a phone call or be seated next to someone chatting away on their cell phone.  I love working on Saturday mornings from 7 AM – noon.  I get a ton of work done and have the rest of the day to relax.
11. Free up your brain.  I use a pill dispenser so I remember to take my vitamins each day.  I set up recurring tasks on my to-do lists for anything I do on a weekly or monthly basis.  Any other tasks get added to my to-do list as soon as I think of them.  My bills are all set up for auto-pay.  Why?  Each automated task is one less thing I have to think about.  One more time I avoid stopping and thinking “wait, did I pay my credit card bill this month?”
12. Give friends and family a routine.  I have dinner with my parents and sister every Wednesday night.  For the most part, I don’t talk to them the rest of the week.  We have our Wednesdays and that’s our time to catch up. I have friends my age who field five phone calls a day from their parents!  You have to ask yourself, are those really necessary?  Unless it’s an emergency, it can usually wait.
13. Batch process your errands.  I tend to save up all of my errands and do them in one two hour span once per week.  This includes grocery shopping, running to the bank, going to the mall, etc.  I did all of my mall Christmas shopping this year in two hours on a Tuesday morning in early December.  In late November I made a list of things to get.  If I didn’t know, I called the person and asked them what they wanted.  This took about an hour.  I then ordered what I could online, and did the rest that Tuesday, including cards, gift bags, and wrapping paper.  Then I didn’t revisit the stuff until 12/24, when I spent a whole one hour filling out cards and preparing the gifts.  Why stretch your shopping over the course of two months?

I got a question for you. I am having a problem with this myself and do a shitty job on getting back on track. How do you prioritize your work/hobby/activities on the side when none of the tasks deal with making money?

I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and decided it warranted it’s own post.  In many cases, prioritizing the work isn’t the hardest part.  It’s figuring out how to prioritize your time in general.  

First off, I struggle with this.  Always have, probably always will.  I also know that each of my partners struggles with it to varying extents.  I’m pretty sure every business owner does too.

Most people have work or school, and their family/social life.  Two things that they have to balance.  Entrepreneurs generally start working on a business while they’re in school or work.  Suddenly you’re trying to do your job, have enough motivation to get a startup off the ground, AND trying to balance in family, friends, and hobbies.  Something has to give.

I like picking up new hobbies in addition to the ones I already have.  I enjoy going to the gym.  I like kicking back and reading a non-business book.  I like having drinks with my friends.  I want to spend time with my girlfriend and my family, and her friends and family.  And I like a whole lot of other things too.  It can be overwhelming.

The “correct” work/life balance is only something you can achieve.  It’ll take constant work.  If neglected, you’ll probably work too much.  At the end of the day, if you aren’t happy because you spend too much time working (or not enough time working), you have to be the one to make the adjustments.  Set short-term boundaries and goals that force you into action now (today, tomorrow, or this weekend at the latest).   Procrastination is my enemy, and it has to be yours too.

In my case, I *think* I’ve struck a pretty good balance, in part because of how hard I try and in part by lucky timing.   When I left my job, I worked all day everyday to get my/our sites off the ground.  I felt like I had to.  I did the bare minimum socially to still keep the relationships I had and to keep my sanity.  That meant skipping family parties unless they were the really big holidays.  It meant only meeting up with my friends once per month when they were going out every weekend.  It meant showing up for a drink and then kicking out early so I could get back to work.  The whole time I thought “this will change someday soon and I’ll be able to give them more time”.

Thankfully, it did.  This time lasted for about two years for me.  For the majority of it I lived in my parents basement and I was single.  I literally had no responsibility and could focus solely on the business.  As long as I made enough to cover my small monthly expenses (cell phone, health insurance, etc) I could keep my dream alive.  There’s no way I could have handled the apartment I live in now or the relationship I’m in back then.  Thankfully things just sort of timed themselves with our success and my subsequent down-shifting into a more balanced life.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I’m of the opinion that every business owner has to have some time period like this where you phase out the rest of your life to some extent and really focus on getting established.  Starting a company is just too hard not to have your full undivided attention.  Some people in your life will understand.  Others won’t.  You need to just block those people out – every bit of energy expended on changing their mind or trying to get them to understand could be spent building a business relationship with someone who really does care and can help your business.

For me, leaving my short-but-successful career and starting a business was the first real thing I ever did in life that “went against the grain”, and in turn I was a bit shocked at how people react when you don’t do what they think you should do.   Everyone handles this type of criticism differently.  It bothered me.  I tried to take the criticism and use it as motivation, turning the negative emotion into a positive.   On the days I couldn’t pull myself out of bed, I’d think of how crappy I’d feel if I had to go get a job and admit to my failure as an entrepreneur, and it motivated me to keep going.  I did my best to separate my feelings for what people said from my feelings from them in general.  Motivation is good – hatred isn’t.   I have a “library” in my head of comments people have made to me over the years that drive me to work harder.  It’s important to understand that this will never stop – I can think of two instances in the past week where people made condescending remarks about our business and our legitimacy.  Mark Cuban says it still happens to him, that people call him “lucky”!  It comes with the territory:

Fortunately, things turned out well for me with MicroSolutions. I sold it after 7 years and made enough money to take time off and have a whole lot of fun.  Back then I can remember vividly people telling me how lucky I was to sell my business at the right time.

Then when I took that money and started trading technology stocks that were in the areas that MIcroSolutions focused on. I remember vividly being told how lucky I was to have expertise in such a hot area, as technology stocks started to trade up.

Of course, no one wanted to comment on how lucky I was to spend time reading software manuals, or Cisco Router manuals, or sitting in my house testing and comparing new technologies, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

Bottom line:  either you have selective ignorance and use it to your advantage, or it eventually crushes you.  I don’t think there’s an in between.  This is when having partners or an entrepreneurial mentor really comes in handy.  They will always understand.

And when I finally did down-shift a little bit I had to force myself to not work all day long.  It was hard.  I started making myself have one non-business goal per day.  I created the (somewhat excessive) program I outlined in my productive output post.  It was what I needed to back off.  I knew I was “addicted” to overworking and I needed to stop.

I think the important thing to keep in mind during this entire struggle is what you ultimately want from your entrepreneurial quest.  I knew I didn’t want to work the hours I did a few years ago for much longer, and I jumped at the first opportunity to achieve more balance.  Once we get a few employees, I’ll jump again at the opportunity to travel a bit around the country and work more remotely.  Because that’s what I want to do.  As long as there’s progress towards what you want, you can justify the sacrifice.  If that’s not the case, then maybe you should consider doing something else that provides you the opportunity to pursue the lifestyle that you want.

Seriously. I see these little cards every month and think to myself  “what a steal”.

One of the best uses for your money is investing in your own personal development.  Reading offers the most bang for your buck – you can literally learn anything you want by picking up a book.  Back in January I wrote a post entitled What I Read.  The list has changed a bit since then, but the overall goal hasn’t changed – read a whole lot each and every day because I never know when I’m going to stumble upon something that will change the course of my life or our company.

Both Inc. and Fast Company are filled from cover to cover with great features.  I can’t even quantify how many useful things I’ve learned from these two magazines.  Sometimes I read about a technique a company is using that I can directly apply to our company.  Sometimes I read about a web tool that I never knew about that we can use.  Sometimes I read a totally unrelated article, but something in it sparks an idea.  Sometimes I put myself in the shoes of the business owner in a case study and try to discern how I would handle his or her situation.  Other times I just read and enjoy the article…and then a few months later it becomes relevant, at which time I head over to the website and find it again.

A great example was on my last post.  In the comments Travis asked me a question that immediately made me think of an article on Inc.  I searched around, found the article, and then linked to it.  I wouldn’t have had a good answer if I hadn’t read that article.  It happens to me all the time.  Reading about business increases my general knowledge about all things business.

So cut out a few beers or hold off on the movie this weekend and instead pick yourself up something that will improve you over and over again for the next year.

ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

In the 4-Hour Workweek, you helped people understand that because of technology, people don’t have to defer living until retirement. They can design their own lifestyle. Now imagine what would happen if the entire culture of a workplace went through the same transformation. That’s what a ROWE is. A ROWE is a work culture that gives people the power to take control of their lives. As long as they get their job done, they’re free.

One of the points I made in my last post about lifestyle was about the difficulty in transitioning from college to a “typical” corporate job:

I think it’s one of the hardest adjustments students have to make when going into the corporate world. All of a sudden you’re not able to decide what you do and when you do it. It’s like you regress back to being in high school.

The more I think about it, college is the ultimate ROWE.  I’m sure it was slightly different for everyone, but here’s how it pretty much worked for me:  you get a syllabus the first day of class that has all of your assignments, projects, and tests in it and it’s your responsibility to get all of it done.  You don’t have to go to class.  If you do, you don’t have to participate.  You don’t have to turn in homework (unless it counts towards your grade).  Your only responsibility is to meet the requirements of the syllabus, which usually entails turning in a few key papers/projects and taking a few important tests.  That’s it.  No one tells you how to do it or when to do it.  You can work an hour each morning a month in advance or do it all the night before.  Whatever works for you so long as you get it done.

Now why the hell aren’t more companies like this?  I know, I know, academia and business are two different things.  But the mentality of the results being what matters, that’s what should translate.  Clearly some companies are starting to make the push.  It just blows my mind that this isn’t more common.  It seems like such common sense.  I mean, at my job, everyone told me to come early and stay late because it “looked good”.  So I’d get all my work done in like 5 hours and then bone around on ESPN.com until 5:30 so I’d look like a hard worker.  Why on earth I couldn’t just take off at 3 was beyond me.  All of my work on all of my projects was up to date.  There’s just no motivation to work fast or efficiently.  You have to be there for 8-9 hours regardless.  It’s such garbage.

Conversely, if you build a company around accomplishing meaningful things, you’ll have employees who are willing to work longer, harder, and smarter because they care.  If they know that they can take advantage of downtime to run errands, spend time with their family, or relax, they’ll be happier and more satisfied with their job.

Seems like common sense…doesn’t it?

There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle or aunt because you blew your nephews college money or the money for grandmas last vacation… I cant.

You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders. I started MicroSolutions by getting an advance from my first customer of $500. The business didn’t grow quickly in the first couple years. We didn’t grow past 4 people in the first couple years, and we all worked dirt cheap.

So what’s wrong with that? It’s OK to start slow. It’s ok to grow slow. As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t.

The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.

When I gave my talk at Skidmore a few weeks back, one of the things that seemed to really pique their interest was that we bootstrapped our company, even turning down various funding options at times in favor of doing things like not paying ourselves. All because we wanted to keep our stock and our control. Essentially, we wanted to keep our dream. To keep our company our company.

From my experiences, business schools don’t teach bootstrapping, they teach funding.  There’s nothing wrong with that per-se (knowing about all of the funding options out there is a good thing), but it paints the picture that to start a great company you need a ton of money.   That’s just not true.  Some businesses require a lot of startup capital, a ton of funding, and a ton of manpower.  But many do not.

Almost any service business can be started for $1,000 or less, whether it’s photography, web design, or something more unique like a campus food delivery service or a company that turns people’s photo albums into digital pictures.  With the web, the options have expanded infinitely.  Once the money starts to roll in and you learn how to be a profitable business, you can leverage that knowledge and experience to push the boundaries of your industry.  It’s not the only way to go about things, but it’s certainly a path that many, many successful entrepreneurs have taken.

I wish they’d teach that at business school.

—

OK, that’s enough Cuban for a while.  I’m not trying to turn this into the official Mark Cuban commentary blog…

I know the feeling.  I felt it at my job, and by all normal measures I had a very good job.  Unfortunately, my advice in situations like these isn’t always the best.  I can’t just say “do what I did – quit and start a company.”  For many obvious reasons, that’s not sound advice for most people.  Maybe they don’t want to run a business, maybe they don’t have the discipline, or maybe they aren’t at a point where they can take the financial risk.  I realize I’m in the minority – most people will never get to write a blog post the day they quit their job to go run a web company.  I’m very thankful that everything in my life aligned correctly so I could take the risks that I did.

Since that discussion though, I’ve continued to think about my friends situation.  I sort of veered off on a tangent and asked myself the question “what if their entire career continued like this?”  And then I realized that for many people, that’s exactly what happens.  They either stay in a job they despise or jump from job to job never quite feeling like what they’re doing is important or brings them any sort of satisfaction.  It’s certainly not everyone, but it’s not no one either.  It’s very sad when you think about it.

It all just makes me remember how lucky I am.  Through all of the long hours, sacrifice, and stress, at least I can lay my head to rest every night knowing I am doing something that I enjoy. Everyone’s definition of  “meaningful work” is undoubtedly different, but for myself, starting and growing a successful company with strong values is very meaningful.

We’re building something.  Every day our company grows and gets a little better.  We can see the progress not only in our bottom line, but in the feedback we get from our customers.  Not to mention that the once seemingly vast warehouse that we operate out of seems to have less and less open space every time I go in.  Sometime later this year, we’ll see it when we hire our first employee and someone is able to support themselves and their family with a job at Pure Adapt.  How cool is that?  It’s an awesome feeling to have.

And then there is the purely financial way of looking at it.  When I quit my job I got paid out for my vacation days and that was it.  I think it was something like $2,000 that I got.  If for some reason I was to leave Pure Adapt tomorrow, I’d have my 25% stock to either cash in or keep (we have a protocol for this in our by laws, but it’s not worth getting in to).  Even if things soured, I’d at least have a relatively large pay day for my hard work in growing the company.  At 26 we each already have an asset that’s bigger than a decent size starter home (according to my guess as to what our company valuation will be, which is done yearly in December).  It’s an asset that most people will never have.  Certainly not the reason I do it, but an added perk that a regular job doesn’t offer.

Entrepreneurship – it’s not for everybody, but I’m glad it’s for me.