I’ve talked to over 20 founders the past 4 weeks and every one of them is miserable.
They want me to be miserable too … but I’m NOT.
11 years in, I’m more excited than ever.
Here’s the top 5 reasons why I love my job and life (and how you can too):
1. I focused on profit from day 1.
Nobody does this in tech, because VC is the “shortcut”. You go faster (and almost no founder makes money).
But - 10 years later, that profit has grown to a magnitude where we have the resources to pursue any opportunity we want to.
2. I hired an incredible exec team.
The longer we exist, the bigger we get, and the more credibility we have, the better the talent is that wants to join us on our journey.
I love waking up every day to build with such smart and motivated people.
3. That exec team lets me do what I want to do (and what I’m good at).
I love the early-early, really small, really lean team stuff. I love coming up with products and seeing if people like them or think they suck.
I also love doing outrageous marketing stunts, and I have learned to love creating organic social content.
But despite being the CEO of a $29m ARR company, I:
a. I never interview, hire, or fire anyone
b. I don’t deal with any of the people opps in the larger part of our org
c. I only do internal meetings on Monday
I do content on Tuesday, have a marketing meeting on Wednesday, and by Friday most weeks my calendar is completely empty.
(You 9-9-6 grinders out there will say I’m soft … But I’m optimizing for the energy to keep at this for DECADES)
4. My work rhythm gives me energy for my family life, and vice-versa.
This is part of running my calendar how I do (which most CEOs would say is LIGHT). It creates a virtuous cycle in the two parts of my life I actually care about.
5. On January 6 I was able to create my dream life.
I love Aspen and the mountain life it provides.
On January 6, I was able to move my family a to a house a mile outside of downtown, and rent an office two blocks away from the gondola.
When I am enjoying a powder day and walk two minutes to my office, I still cannot accept that this is now my permanent reality.
My wife loves it and my kids are going to grow up rippers…
All while I keep building this growing, profitable business, with people I love and respect.
What’s the takeaway?
You probably don’t have the patience to bootstrap, but you should.
We all know bootstrapping gets you there slower.
Nobody respects you for YEARS in the beginning… that SMALL thing you’re working on…
And worst of all you don’t have TechCrunch articles about how you raised at some dumb valuation to send your friends and family so they can think you’re rich (when you’re not).
But if you can just manage to do what we did…
Get something going…
Small at first…
Then keep doing it for a decade…
You’ll end up having the one thing that you actually wanted when you started this whole thing.
FREEDOM ✌️
Adam