Things nobody tells you about starting a business

You will read a lot of the tactical stuff about money, markets, etc., but I’m going to write about what it does to you.

Starting and running your own business challenges you on every level. It challenges your intellect, your learning abilities, your stamina, your stress management, and your character at its most fundamental level. In the end, if you’re paying attention, refining, and succeeding, it can, and should, turn you into a better human.

You learn about concern for others, how to interact and communicate with other people, and how not to treat them at times. You learn that what you’re doing often becomes much bigger than you and on those moments, you feel it’s a huge honor to lead others and you don’t want to let them down.

Running your business causes you to think about the welfare of others on a much bigger scale or the dilemma one faces when you have to terminate someone for cause, probably the worst thing any good CEO wants to do in a day, but necessary for the good of all the other employees. You learn how to talk, how to act, how to persuade and how to do so many little things, I can’t possibly list them all here. It’s an education like no other and the learning never ever stops.

You learn to be a leader, a diplomat, a negotiator, and it’s very humbling at times, especially when you feel like you’re failing, which does happen. I’ve never had any company run in a straight line to success. Sometimes it won’t feel like you are moving at all, until months later when you see the progress and it all comes together.

There are days when you’re going to be excited about everything you’re doing and others when you’re going to dread going into work. Sometimes you face people who want you to do something for just their benefit and you have to develop the skills to know when that’s happening.

It’s the best adventure there is and if you’re pursuing new technologies, you get to see things in your lab that have never been done before by anyone and I can’t begin to express how thrilling that is to be a part of such events. Even the failures teach us how to do a better job on the next time around. Knowing the possibility of failure, we learn how to take risks, even when we feel like we just dove off a cliff.

As the years go by, what you remember most are those times when you felt like you were tested to be your very best. You won’t remember the mundane, the petty, or even the times when on that day you could have done better. What you will feel is pride when you know you were at 100%.

This is what nobody told me.