First off, for the record, I think there is a very strong misconception between self sacrifice and entrepreneurship. Too often are entrepreneurs glorified by taking exorbitant lifestyle risks while growing their businesses. Sure, this sounds cool and makes for a great movie, but the real question is: Why were these entrepreneurs in this situation?
Why would a "good" entrepreneur be in a position to be on his last dollar? What happened on the first $99,999 dollars? Was the first money wasted away until the entrepreneur became "motivated"?
Of course, I don't mean to demean any type of entrepreneurs as I do believe entrepreneurship to be heroic in both a figurative and literal sense. However, it bothers me to know that this false glorification leads to thousands of entrepreneurs taking both unnecessary and dangerous personal lifestyle risks.
Why be a "real entrepreneur" and quit your job at your first hunch when you could as easily have stayed onto your job for 2 months until you finished the prototype?
The way I look at it, when someone takes a high-risk-no-benefit action he is 5% heroic and 95% foolish, and I would NOT typically invest in him or her.
Of course, everything is within context and for every situation where it makes no sense to take a risk there is a situation where it is indeed heroic and brave to take the next step. All I am saying is that it may be at least as beneficial to use your brain as it is your heart..
But I digress... The point of this post is not to deride risk taking entrepreneurs. In fact the point of this point is to help risk taking entrepreneurs.
As I mentioned earlier, many entrepreneurs worry about the lifestyle effects that entrepreneurship has on loved ones. Of course, these are VERY legitimate concerns and ones that shouldn't be disregarded with Nike-like "Just do it" slogans..
Upon deep reflection, however, I believe more entrepreneurs would benefit from understanding the psychological development of girlfriends, wives, and kids when it comes to entrepreneurship (same with beta boyfriends, husbands, etc.).
Girlfriends / Wives: There is no sugar coated way to say this but a girlfriend's satisfaction with her relationship with you will depend 80% upon how she is Loved. What I mean by this is that a normal healthy female will be exponentially more satisfied by having good sex and being unconditionally loved by a middle class American than she will with an inferior LOVER who happens to have a billion dollars. Of course, this will probably offend a whole bunch of people but it still doesn't keep it from being TRUE.
Of course, the paradox here is that an individual who is "inside his head" and worried about financial situations will not be present enough to have sex and unconditionally love his girlfriend.. but we will leave this for another day..
Kids: What makes kids happy? What makes children develop and grow to have high self esteem and opportunity? Interestingly enough, the highest factor for a child's self esteem is a combination of having parents with high self esteem as well as feeling heard or cared for. In other words, the cocky parent who ignores his child and the low self esteem parent who gives his child a lot of affection are acting in a non-optimal way.
In the context of entrepreneurship, being a role model to your child of someone who is confident in his own skills and somebody who loves his child unconditionally will give a child 80% of the development that he/she needs to succeed (non scientific number). Everything else that you believe "is important" for a child the child can not even fathom. For example, a child who grows up in a middle class environment has no real concept of financial issues until he is roughly 7 years old.
But what about college, doesn't education matter? Of course. However, a child who has very resourceful parents with high self esteem will model this behavior and be more successful than an Ivy-league educated child who has parents that never "pursued" their passions. Along with being less successful the child has a high chance of being stifled and to become one who doesn't voice his opinion and is afraid to stand out. (Of course, the highly resourceful child will have the possibility of having high SAT scores and going on to these very same schools).
What's my point?
My point is not that money is "an illusion". Every healthy family needs a certain income to keep from poverty and basic and some non-basic needs. Whether this is $60k/year, $100k/year or etc.
Keeping this in context, I believe a highly resourceful entrepreneur can find 100 different ways to keep the income in his family while pursuing his life's passion (whatever it may be). Secondly, I believe an entrepreneur who inspires his children and helps them develop into great people will be one HELL of a parent.
Hmm.. maybe I could have voiced that more effectively ;)
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