Starting Something You’ll Hate
What happens if after all that hard work you realise you hate the job you made?
Whenever I speak to young entrepreneurs, I try to dig under the skin of the idea to understand what part of the project they’re looking forward to doing, or how they envision their day-to-day being.
This is important, because often people just haven’t thought about it. They might like the big idea of opening a cafe or bar, but haven’t really considered how the late nights will feel, or having to cover another shift because the chef called in sick again.
This is a simple example, but things can very quickly shift from your dream to nightmare once you’ve committed to launch and you’re on the hook.
Experiments
Do lots of small experiments before jumping into it. Think about all of the elements of running the business and delivering the service. Which parts do you really get excited about? Do you need to do all of the parts to do the bit you really want to do and - more importantly - enjoy doing it?
Role play how a typical working week might go. Draw up some ideas of schedules and rotas. Think about the duties, tasks, and chores that will be required to run the business effectively.
In the early days, it’ll mostly be you, so consider how up for that you are. It can be a lot of fun making the product, branding the product, pitching the product and promoting the product, and quite essentially at the start, but think about which parts of this you would rather get outsourced to others.
Balancing all of these things can be stressful and motivating depending on your nature. It can also be quite a good apprenticeship to understand which bits you enjoy most, and it can build empathy for when you recruit people in to carry on that work.
Spend £10m on understanding what you care about
We do an exercise in our Startup Club where we ask people what they would spend £10m on for their business to take it to the next level.
It’s a useful thought exercise linked to an upcoming post about blank pages, which helps you to frame things without the brick wall of finance blocking your path.
It’s not too different to the idea of what would you do with your time if you won the lottery and didn’t have to work.
I talk about the brick wall of finance a lot in workshops. For anyone who does not have endless resources, or deep pockets to get started, we think often about money as a brick wall that blocks process. It is a very real obstacle, but more than its physical qualities it can obscure the view of reality.
What really gets interesting is when ideas emerge that are totally doable in the short term but that as a founder you have ruled out due to this belief that you need to do all of the other stuff first.
When you give yourself permission and space to think about the idea in its entirety you can start to listen to your heart telling you which parts of it you really want to do. Find a way to look past or over the wall to what is on the other side, and work out if you like it and if there’s another way you can achieve the same thing.
All of this can help prevent you from starting something you hate. This is particularly problematic if you don’t realise you hate it until after you’ve taken investment, hired staff or made grand public statements that commit you to the idea. There’s an element of sunk cost fallacy in the mix here too.
The resented business
Getting out of a business you hate is hard, mainly because you’re committed on many fronts. Equally, as discussed in It Won’t Always Be Great you have to keep up appearances and act like everything is going well all of the time.
This is also tied to the fact you’re responsible for paying other peoples’ mortgages and feeding their kids, it isn’t easy to untangle that knot.
The pivot
It has taken me until post 35 to talk about the pivot. I really hate this idea, it’s been overused as an excuse and get-out clause when doubling-down and persisting might be a better idea, but it is useful when you do need to move on from a bad place. The sunk cost fallacy can trick us into staying committed to a bad time or financial investment.
Don’t pivot just because you’ve had a bit of bad news or bad feedback, but don’t keep pushing just because you think you have to.
Do some experiments and get some experience to decide whether or not you’re starting something you’ll end up hating.