founder life is lonely

My head hurts. Not emotionally - like, it literally hurts.

I have a mild cold, you see. Therefore all that is good in the world is not, and all I have achieved has been rendered useless. Woe is me.

(please tell me you know I’m joking)

Well, kind of. Because my mood does significantly drop when I am ill. The thing is - no one likes a complainer, because really - no one wants to hear about you being ill.

But I am. The dulling of my senses coincides with the dulling of my mood. For 2 days and 12 hours I have temporarily lost the zesty highs and the grumbly low of life. It’s quite refreshing.

So I just came back from a walk. It’s pretty crisp out. Nice stars. And the fresh air jumpstarted a slow moving thought about the the downs I’ve experienced by solo owning a business. Because we’ve all been there, haven’t we? The period of uncertainty. God, the valley of DESPAIR. It’s a lonely life, and I’ve only been doing it for 9 months. You people who have been doing it for years, well.. I tip my hat.

And so..

..this is going to be a stream of ramblings about my bad experiences, and what I do to quell them. But first..

The good! :)

• Ownership

  • Sense of pride

  • Freedom

  • Momentum

• Accountability (good version)

  • No reliance on others, just me - thrive

  • Fruits of labour are more apparent

• Choice

  • Who I work with

  • What my offers are

  • Where I go next

The bad :(

#1: Loneliness.

It’s currently pouring with rain outside as I type these words on my laptop, soft glow on my creased white t shirt. The hum of my ventilator whirring over and over. I’m inside a death star.

I’ve been doing this for 9 months now. It can get lonely.

I don’t miss the office or 9-5 routine, but the enforced socialising does fill a need, whether by accident or design. So when I started my own business remotely, by chance I worked with clients almost exclusively from everywhere except where I live.

No in person meets. This naturally means my manageable social void has expanded into a chasm.

It can get dark. Especially in the winter. Real dark.

Starting out is the worst. Coming from the crushing mechanical gears of corporate world, at first I felt relieved. But as I went from expansive visionary to weed puller, I got stuck in the thistles of my mind.

If you aren’t ‘online’ aka in the Twittersphere, or have a group of friends that are already well into their own thing - you feel like you’re standing beneath a massive pile of rocks with a spoon in your hand.

‘I need a shovel!!!’

#2: Forced accountability (bad version)

Pressure. It’s on YOU. You, or nothing (or a 9-5 job).

lol, no.

And overpromising on the TL, with good intentions. I do this. It’s not that I intentionally do it to look publicly busy, but I don’t write enough stuff down to realise ‘hey, maybe I can just keep this goal to myself?’

#3: A few bad buses, at once

Sales calls that don’t materialise.

Mental business block.

= rut.

We’ve all been there. 1 month without sales. A project gone awry. Calls that do not materialise into anything more than ‘we’ll get back to you’. The slow-motion breaking of a promise sent to prison to die.

It can be demoralising. And the thing about human psyche, is when you experience one negative event - and then another, and another - your mind begins to frame everything as negative. A puppy could run up to me and I’d scrunch my face up. THIS ISN’T INCREASING MY MRR!!! GET AWAY!!

What the fuck has happened Jordan?

..

Fear not, it’s not all gloom. 🙂 

Some tips that have worked for me

• Loneliness

  • Join a community. I recently joined the Morning Maker Show community and it helped.

  • Make the effort to reach out to mutuals. Every day, try to message 1-2 people you follow / interact with. No sell - genuinely get to know them. I made my first ‘online’ friend (Elias Stravik) just by talking. And it’s been a god send.

• Accountability / Self-Pressure

  • You really want to post something. An MRR goal. A deadline. New client acquisition goal. Just take a second, breathe and..

  • Wait a day to post it.

  • If you really want to be publicly accountable, half the revenue goal, or double the imaginary deadline you give yourself. You’ll thank me.

• 3 really bad buses, at once

  • Walk. Seriously.

  • Think about your efforts - are they sporadic, or consistent? Can you trust the process? Does the process even exist in the first place?

  • How can you map out a consistent stream of effort to achieve your goals, that doesn’t burn you out? (i.e. 1 week of intensity, dead for the next)

  • I do this:

    • 3-4x deep posts per week, publicly analysing products on Twitter with the intention of offering free, valuable advice en masse

    • 1x post per day (I am going to increase this)

    • 1x newsletter every 2 weeks (same as above)

    • 2x new connections each week. It doesn’t have to be a call - it can be helping someone out with a reply, boosting their stuff, or DM’ing someone who expresses a problem you can help with

The beauty of this online thing is you can connect to anyone, anywhere.

You may never actually meet these people IRL - but my god do you need them.

Over & out.