Choose Your Own Adventure
Read Time: 3.5 minutes
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I am excited to announce that Season 3 of my Founder to Mentor podcast kicks off December 15th. My first guest is Aaron Spivak and he has a great story how he built HUSH into a household brand which lead to a $50 million dollar exit. Download it wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.
Now, let’s jump into it.
Choose Your Own Adventure
When it comes to measuring your performance as an entrepreneur, metrics matter.
A lot of what we typically measure in a business starts and ends with money. We’re keyed into taking stock of market performance, and how customers respond to new offerings over time. When people talk about success, they’re usually thinking about how much and how quickly a business sells things, how often they breeze through their next milestone, and how the company is doing compared to others in the field.
Sure, money matters, and in a lot of important ways. As an entrepreneur, your revenues matter because they allow your business to keep going. Money matters to your employees who want to keep their jobs. And your profits are definitely going to matter to your investors, whether they’re VCs or your grandparents.
Even so, there's a big difference between making money and having a great life, even when one of the key benefits of starting a business is to find a new income stream.
Here’s why we often lose sight of what really matters.
Being an entrepreneur is time-consuming. It’s physically and mentally tiring. It can take over your day-to-day existence, even on weekends and late into the night. In my own experience in starting my first business, I didn’t realize that there might be a lot of casualties along the way: relationships, family time, quality time for myself. Pushing hard to get everything going may not actually feel good.
So, even as you’re creating financial success, it’s possible to fail at having the life you actually want.
Here’s why that might be the case.
In a traditional workplace, your success depends on how you meet your bosses’ expectations. It feels like a lot of pressure, especially when companies turn up the heat when they’re launching a new idea. When you become an entrepreneur and are launching your own idea, there’s no one telling you what to do, but you’re likely putting the same pressure on yourself because you’re used to business being a culture of hustle.
But running a business, as we’ve all heard before, is a marathon, not a sprint. Sure, entrepreneurship can feel synonymous with hustle, but it doesn’t actually have to be. Sales and profits often take a long time to build to a sustainable place even when you’re doing everything right. That’s why it’s important to look at all of the metrics that matter, especially the ones that matter to you.
The real story?
You can choose the successes you want to pursue.
The most important metric in entrepreneurship is the one you set for yourself. In fact, I’m giving you permission to map out what metrics work for you, so that you can realistically make entrepreneurship a lifestyle and sustain your pace over the long term.
What hours make sense for you? For your family? How can you set time boundaries that work for you? Working long hours doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll achieve a goal faster. In fact, the opposite might be more likely to be true.
If you feel that working long hours would help your business at certain times of the year, are there ways to support your body and mind to get through short term pushes successfully? What would that look like?
Would you be a better entrepreneur, boss, and friend if you started out your day with yoga? A long walk with your dog? Reading a book? Think about what habits could ease you into your work process so that you’d have the peace of mind to be calm, kind, and focused when you make decisions.
Think about how much money you really need right now, rather than reaching for everything all at once. What amount of money can you aim for this year, and this year alone, knowing that your definition of financial success can change over time?
Want to have the flexibility to play pick-up softball or go camping with your kids on the fly? Decide who can make decisions when you’re not available, or make it clear that you’re offline for a few hours. Design your business to have that flexibility. You’re allowed.
If you’re not saying to yourself, “Hey, I love this lifestyle. I actually want to do it forever, and I’d do it even if I wasn't getting paid,” then you haven’t set yourself up for success.
If you want to actually be successful, change the rules and change the game.
Celebrate every win and every opportunity for joy in your life, not just your bank account balance.
I hope you enjoyed the read and are ready to plan your next entrepreneurial adventure.
Until next time.
Let’s Grow!
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