???? Entrepreneurship isn't a job, it's a crucible.

Please indulge me as I share a few things I've discovered about entrepreneurship. If you're thinking of launching your own thing, this might save you a bit of gray hair. If you're experienced in launching your own thing, maybe I'm doing it wrong and you can save me a bit of gray hair. Here we go:

Entrepreneurship isn’t a job, it’s a crucible.

Everything that does not serve a core purpose in your life gets squeezed out from your life. Activities, interests, hobbies, people—when you’re moving at warp speed, if it doesn’t fit a little, it doesn’t fit at all.

Moving between abject terror and sheer elation goes from sliding along a continuum to flipping a switch.

Normal people live on a continuum, sliding back and forth along a spectrum that extends from “abject terror” on one end to “sheer elation” on the other, rarely getting anywhere near those extremes. Normal people spend most of their time in the middle, enjoying such waypoints as “surprised but not surprised,” “aggravated I guess,” “meh,” or “mildly entertained.” They live comfortably in a range that could be considered the emotional equivalent of a yacht rock playlist. For entrepreneurs, all that gushy middle has been squeezed out, leaving just a switch that flips back and forth between “abject terror” and “sheer elation"—that's the ride.

"BS Quotient Zero"

As a matter of efficiency, the old saw action speaks louder than words gets an upgrade for the entrepreneur. It has to, they have no time for BS. (They operate at what I like to call BS Quotient Zero, or BSQZ.) For instance, instead of saying “I’m going to give you a second chance,” or “I don't trust you,” the entrepreneur simply takes the corresponding action and gets on with his or her life. Verbal communications, meanwhile, are direct, focused, and on the level. And if yours aren't? Then we're done here.

Entrepreneurs operate at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, not the top.

If your desire to start a business is to get out from under someone else's boot and find out who you really are, I've got bad news: self-actualization, if an entrepreneur experiences it at all, comes in a flash at the start of their journey before disappearing until—maybe—after they've retired. In the meantime, starting about 7 seconds after the decision to launch their own thing, the entrepreneur's sole focus becomes protecting their company's existence: making enough money to have food and shelter, funding growth, staving off existential threats; that sort of thing. In other words, all the stuff at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.

Your real job is to hold the stress.

People think entrepreneurs get paid for the work they do. They don't. They get paid for the existential dread they carry so their teams don't have to face it. BSQZ is critical, but since it's not inherently safe, you're often in a gap where you see a risk for what it is, but you need time to communicate it to your team, so you're left holding the stress by yourself for a period. Remember, you're the entrepreneur, so your team's emotional reality isn't a switch, it's a continuum. You need to communicate hard news at the level of "geez, that could be really bad, huh?" and slide into deeper awareness as necessary—anything more shocking could risk having them go fetal in the corner (by which I mean, performance would erode, potentially making the risk a self-fulfilling prophecy). To be clear, I'm not suggesting that entrepreneurs should lie to their teams about the risks they face, I'm simply acknowledging that truth without empathy is abuse, and there is an tragic irony that while no one is making things safe for the entrepreneur—you're operate at BSQZ, with an emotional switch flipping from one extreme to another—you've got to provide safety to the people who's best work you're trying to elicit. And to provide safety, you've got to hold your own stress as well as their stress, too.

Do well by doing good.

Serve others. On my LinkedIn Live yesterday with Sean Sheppard talking about innovation, he said that when taking an innovation to market, the most important things you can get from early customers are their time and their truth. Think about that for a moment; it's so much more intense than if he'd said you want "their advocacy and their feedback." When you talk at the level of time and truth you're at BSQZ, and at that level, you're not "making sales to buyers," you're partnering with people and using their feedback to up your game until you've figured out how to serve them (and people like them) better than anyone else. That's on a different level. It's not normal. Sean is an entrepreneur.

Zero to one is different.

This is on my mind because of what I'm doing with Comfort Communications Company . I have never been so committed to something. It's amazing to see incredible people rally to the cause ( Meg Bear Dinah Alobeid Katy Manley Allen Morgenstern Debra Horowitz David Horowitz , Ben Prawer, SHRM-CP , I'm looking at you!—switch) There are terrifying parts, too, starting with how few hours we actually have in the day to get things done, but who has time for that? I know what I need to do, I know what's on the line, I've not space for anything but making it work.

And then there's Dallas.

Also: I'm moving to Dallas right in the middle of all this! #truth Chicago has been home base for me my entire life. 60035, 60614, 60134—they've all left a positive mark on me and, I hope, I've been able to do the same in return. Now, come August, a new adventure begins. My wife, Lisa Arroyo Seiden (Cervenka) , has a career opportunity she's super excited about, which is ostensibly why we're moving, and I couldn't be happier about supporting her in that! But also true is that I'm genuinely looking forward to what this change means for me, too—with all I've been through over the last few years, the idea of clearing the slate (at least as much as possible in today's hyper-connected world) so I can build something new, both personally and professionally, has me feeling lighter.

Let's go, y'all!

#MoreJoy #TheBrillianceWithin #ItsStillProfersonal