If you’ve listened to The Sweaty Startup for a while, you’ll know Nick’s standing on entrepreneurship. It has to be unselfish, unemotional, smart, and sweaty. You have to put in the work.
Too many people start businesses because they are selfish. They start a business that they want to start or that fits their passions. They want to replace their current income and want to be their own boss, but these people fail.
The market doesn’t care what you want or what you’re passionate about. The market cares about getting what it wants. Capitalism only cares about the consumer’s problem. The people that go at entrepreneurship with a selfish attitude aren’t framing it properly, you can’t pursue entrepreneurship for selfish reasons.
If you start a business because of what you want, you’re more likely to make emotional decisions that aren’t supported by fact. You’re more likely to ignore the signs that you need to stop, move on, and do something else.
Those that succeed are really good at doing the things that they don’t want to do. Once the fun wears off, once the boring or stressful or uncomfortable tasks come in, people quit. Nick graduated college and was doing things he didn’t necessarily love, but it brought in money and had the prospect of growth. Now he can enjoy hobbies he loves to do without the stress of trying to make money doing it. He did hard work and uninteresting work so that he could have freedom later down the road.