6
Your Ego Made You Do It
NOW, JUST LIKE MY NICKNAME-SAKE Lucy Van Pelt, I often give advice, but I am not in any way a psychiatrist, so I don’t know all of the fancy technical background information on the term ego. What I do know is that unlike its frequent connotation, ego isn’t always a bad thing. Your ego is, in part, your self-esteem, based upon your perception and reflection of yourself built through interaction with others. Sometimes your ego is trying to help protect you from getting hurt, and at other times it is meant to help you express yourself to others. While your ego is usually trying its best to help you, it is usually not good for business.
Control of Your Own Destiny or Fear of Rejection?
One way your ego interferes in a career path is by convincing you that running your own business gives you control of your own destiny. This feeling is, as with many ego-driven feelings, a bit misguided. The desire to control your destiny may actually be your ego trying to protect you from rejection. It tells you that if you aren’t working for someone else, or applying to work for someone else, they can’t fire you, and they can’t prevent you from getting hired or getting a raise. They can’t reject your work (i.e. have control over you) if you aren’t working for them in the first place.
As discussed in the last chapter, this ignores the reality that if you own your own business, you are controlled not by a few people, but rather by many; these people being customers. It is much worse to get rejected by everyone in the United States—306 million potential customers that don’t want to buy your products or services—than a few prospective employers that don’t want to hire you. The ego doesn’t understand that it is much easier to reach and sell yourself as a prospective employee to potential employers a few times in your life, than reach your target customers and keep selling your goods and services to them each and every day.
Your ego doesn’t understand this because the potential rejection with employers is direct, versus indirect rejection with customers. If you reach out to an employer to be hired or to your boss for a raise, or if you get fired, you take it personally. If you are rejected by potential customers, at least some of the time, you don’t even know that you are being rejected—you have never made a true initial connection to be able to be really offended by the indirect rejection in the first place. If you are directly rejected by a customer or potential customer, you can hide behind the corporate entity so that you don’t take it personally (or at least your ego leads you to believe you won’t).
Let’s be honest, if you can’t woo your boss into a raise, or woo a prospective employer to hire you, how can you woo your employees to perform at top levels or woo customers to patronize your business? If you don’t have those skills in one arena, you aren’t going to have them in the other. Whatever rejection you are running from will be exacerbated by a factor of at least a hundred when you are on your own and your money is on the line.
The Glamorous Life
Another thing that your ego does is guide you to try to impress other people. They call it “keeping up with the Joneses,” or more accurately these days, “outdoing the Joneses.” Your ego tells you that if you are feeling down about your career or other things, starting your own business can give you a spark or even the beginnings of an exciting life. You may think it sounds sexy and gives you stature to be a CEO, owner, and entrepreneur of “Youco.” You can tell everyone that you are the HBIC or the BMOC, and that makes you feel good and powerful.
Starting a business to give you an ego trip or to give you a fancy story to tell at cocktail parties are terrible reasons to start a business. It is that exact false sense of reality that will actually decrease your chances of being successful (and then your failure will be the topic of neighborhood party conversations).
I never understood those people who do things to impress people they can’t stand. People take expensive trips, buy cars they can’t afford, move into neighborhoods beyond their means, and sometimes, even change their career path to show off to people they really don’t like. If you live for the story, just tell the truth in a fancy and clever way. It is a lot cheaper and easier with a hell of a lot less risk. Buy a government savings bond for fifty dollars and tell your neighbors that you are an investor in the long-term government securities business. Or bring back your recyclable glass bottles to collect the five cents each and tell everyone you have a side business in recycling. Most of the people won’t know what you are talking about, and it will sound sexy without your having to take on the risk of a real business.
I’ll Show Them!
A more severe case of showing off for the Joneses is proving other people wrong. You want to seek revenge on the doubters. Sally broke up with you because she never thought you had the drive to accomplish anything. Your mom never praised you enough. The people at work never respect your ideas. Now, you’ll show them how great you are by running your own business!
I am not saying that you can’t get inspired by trying to prove someone wrong, but don’t use that as your sole inspiration to start a business. Business is much more complicated than that and needs to be inspired from an actual market need, not a personal need to prove someone wrong. Proving your worth to others is a nice stroke to the ego, but it’s not enough of a reason to launch a business.
Everyone Tells You That You Should Do It
The other way the ego gets involved is when other people start fueling it. “You are so smart,” you are told by everyone, “Why are you working for someone else?” You think you have a great idea, and everyone who hears about it tells you that you will make millions of dollars. You deserve to be a big success, and everyone else agrees.
The first question you need to ask yourself is, “Who are these ‘everyones?’” Is it Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Richard Branson giving you this advice? Or is it your sister, whose total business experience amounts to helping her kids run a lemonade stand? You need to do a reality check separate from your ego, and when you hear advice or feedback from someone, ask yourself, “Does this person know anything about business; in particular, the type of business that I am thinking of buying or starting?” If they don’t, their advice is probably worthless. It is like the students at a school for the blind complimenting your fashion sense. It seems nice on the surface, but it is actually throwaway commentary; it doesn’t hold much practical value.
Please note that I am not saying that you shouldn’t seek out moral support. Many champions of self-employment, including Pam Slim in Escape from Cubicle Nation, advocate having a group that will cheer you on when things get tough, and I believe that everyone needs that kind of support. However, there is a huge difference between receiving moral support to help you endure a difficult challenge and receiving useful feedback to help you evaluate business risk. You need to understand and respect that difference.
Even if the person hyping you up is credible, ask yourself, “What does this person know about me, and what do they have at stake?” Is he someone that will tell you that you have spinach in your teeth, or is he a “yes man” who will tell you what you want to hear because he wants to be friendly? Unless this person is really digging into your business model, your financial position, your marketing strategy, and other critical components that will make your business a success, and is so engaged with it that he is willing to put his own money at risk, then don’t rely on this fluffiness either. Without a lot of in-depth knowledge backing it up, and particularly, without any quantifiable risk behind it, his advice is worth about as much as the paper on which it is written.
Don’t let your ego force you into something in a misguided way to try to protect you or pump you up, or worse—make an impression on someone who you shouldn’t care about and who doesn’t have a stake in the future of your business. Business and ego do not mix. Keep your day job and opt for the clever storytelling instead.
EXERCISE 3
TARGET FOCUS—MOTIVATIONS:
Defining Your Baseline Motivations List (Part 2)
For this exercise, you need to take out your baseline motivations list generated in Exercise 1.
- Revise your list to include additional reasons that you have thought of regarding why you want to start a business, crossing out any that you believe are based on unrealistic and/or unachievable assumptions as addressed in chapters 4 and 5.
- Cross out any motivations that you believe are influenced by:
- fear of rejection
- seeking others’ approval
- proving a point to a third party
- feedback primarily from one or more third parties that have little experience and/or no risk in your venture
This pared-down list should start to show you your true motivations. You will use this list to help create the “rewards” side of your Entrepreneur Equation later in the book.