29 May 2013

“Why am I doing this to my self?” An Anonymous entrepreneur

At first, when you’re just starting out your business and everything is just awesome with all your friends and community congratulating you on your new innovative idea and the value you’re going to add to the community and how you’re going to change the world and then you go on reading lots of biographies about the most successful entrepreneurs across the globe and you watch Steve jobs Stanford Commencement speech at 2005 over and over again. You have a clear vision and very strong motives that pushed you to pursue entrepreneurship, to take the big risk and to have faith in god, in yourself and in your idea.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA]

Now, you’re full of energy and then you get down to business and you work really hard to build your prototype, make your first sale or secure the first round of investment and after that you start telling yourself that entrepreneurship is not as hard as they say and at this stage some entrepreneurs might get a bit egoistic and they stop hustling thinking that they should rest for a bit and do some casual networking every once in awhile.

The startup life goes on and then you start facing lots of challenges from shortage in cash flow or no cash flow at all! or team members getting better offers at multinational corporates leaving you all alone and maybe some technical challenges or a new competitor who has tons of money, resources and connections who’s ready to crush you like a  cockroach and a day in day out, you become really tired, your personal finances are at stake and the family and friends who were congratulating you at first turn into a huge social pressure on you.

At this stage you see what everybody was talking about, how entrepreneurship is really hard and the quotes, books and videos you used to read and watch doesn’t work any more and you keep convincing yourself that Steve jobs did what he did because he didn’t have a choice back then, he had to become an entrepreneur, however I have lots of other choices as working in a company that pays a salary each month and of course I didn’t mention that we’re in Egypt not the U.S talks and it’s certainly true, but that’s not the point in this discussion, the point is that you’ll find every possible excuse to quit entrepreneurship.

And here we come to the ultimate question I’m sure that most entrepreneurs at least here in Egypt ask themselves like everyday,

“Why am I doing this to myself?”

At this low point in your entrepreneurship career, you forget about your motives and the vision you had to change the status quo, make an impact and leave a legacy and unfortunately this is the stage in which lots of entrepreneurs quit and fail the entrepreneurship test.

We have to come up with a solution for this as we can’t afford to lose more entrepreneurs, we don’t have that much in the first place!  And how to do this? How to decrease the mortality rate of Egyptian entrepreneurs? Well, I certainly don’t have the perfect answer and no one does have it, so please share with us how you survived the killer question using #WhyamIdoingthistomyself hashtag.

I will share with you some of the answers that worked with me personally and the insights that some of the successful entrepreneurs in Egypt shared with me.

1- You’re not alone

I mean that you’re not the only one asking that question because you might meet lots of entrepreneurs and you get the feeling that everyone is doing just fine and only you have the problem, well that’s not true all startups or nearly 90% of them are suffering and founders of Startups small and big don’t get their salaries most of the time if get any at all and this is a fact and how are you going to deal with this fact is what’s important.

In my opinion the best way to deal with it by having frequent meetups between startup founders not to brag about their products and services, but to actually have serious discussions about the problems and challenges facing the startup community and coming up with practical solutions for it and then collaborating to execute those solutions.

Also, it’s useful to remind yourself of your values, motives and the vision you have for your business and know that if every entrepreneur in Egypt who asks himself the sad question of “Why am I doing this to myself?” quits! then we won’t have a startup community at all, so it’s like we make a secret, unwritten and unannounced promise to each others that we’re not going to quit!

2- Never stop hustling

If someone invented a gum in Egypt, the media will picture him as the new hero or the savior of the planet and that makes him a bit or a lot arrogant, yes admit it,  there are lots of entrepreneurs in Egypt who are arrogant and at certain stage they feel like they don’t have to hustle anymore and this is really dangerous because at any stage in your startup hard work, hustling, creativity and originality should be the pillars of your success. Also, some other entrepreneurs stop hustling as they get frustrated and they feel like hustling more wouldn’t payoff and again this is not true because this is how this life works you hustle and you work as hard as you can and it’ll eventually pay off.

3- Learn, relearn and then learn again

We need to constantly question our plans and our tactics because there’s a very big chance that the plan that worked 2 years ago, will not work now or the idea that got huge traction in the U.S doesn’t have a market here in Egypt, so what we need is to constantly test and iterate and pay more attention to the lean startup methodologies.

4- Find your hedgehog concept

In his book “Good to Great” Jim collins introduced the hedgehog concept which is, and I’m quoting from an article in success magazine, “doing one thing and doing it well. In his book Good to Great, he uses the parable of the clever, devious fox and the simple hedgehog. The fox keeps coming up with new ideas to eat the hedgehog, but the hedgehog handily defeats him by doing his one trick: rolling into a thorny ball.The concept requires the intersection of three answers: What are you passionate about? What can you be the best at? What can actually make you a living? And the answer must meet all three criteria.”

This exercise can also be used by young people trying to sort their way in life, their personal hedgehog, as much as a business trying to figure out what purpose they serve.

5- Manage your expectations

You have to know beforehand that this is going to be a tough, however highly rewarding journey in terms of experience, connections and value added even if you didn’t build the next big thing.

You also have to know that ideas are cheap and it’s execution is what matters and the first step is actually the easiest part and you have to have faith to endure what’s to come.

The Startup community in Egypt is on the learning curve, we are doing lots of mistakes and learning lots of valuable lessons and it’s time to make use of the lessons we learned and put them to good use.

Let’s continue the discussion on #WhyamIdoingthistomyself hashtag, speak it up and help each other overcome this critical stage.