Everyone thinks that they have the most amount of stress compared to people they know or even times past. The best example is when people talk about their child-hoods as the most stress free time. As a child I always found this amusing because to me, at that point, I had more worries than the rest of the world. I mean, with all the problems of finishing home work, figuring out my rankings, various jealousies between friends and always keeping the elders happy.
Now, we can look back and say that it was juvenile. However, wouldn't the same apply to us at each of our current points in life when we look at it thirty years later?
But I am digressing, I wanted to write about the stress of being the owner of a company versus an employee. Because of the type of work I do, excluding my college buddies, most of my friends are about 45-50 years old. Most of them own their businesses after having spent decades working in various roles culminating in the end as General Managers.
One theme to the story that keeps coming up again and again is that as GMs, they took their boss's company from $x mil to $20x mil and decided to start their firm to make all this money for themselves. But now, the stress and the issues are making them hollow.
And I understand what these people didn't- even if as a GM you are managing everything in the company, at the end of the day the money isn't yours. All you have to worry about is a reprimand if you make a huge/simple mistake. With your own company, each mistake translates directly into the house mortgage, into the kid's tuition or the nice dinner on Friday being lost.
Over and over I have heard the words that they just want to walk out the door. They want to drive away and never look back. Go live in Bahamas and not face all the expectations to succeed. But the true entrepreneurs, the ones who are strong enough to last through such phases are the ones who are finally able to reach their goal.
I know this person who moved from Brazil, where he was a GM to here and started his own firm. For the first few years, his life was so tough that his wife started working in people's houses as a maid! Today, his company is $20mil worth.
It takes a lot to be a business owner and I honestly, do not think that a lot of people can do it. Many talk about it because it sounds cool. But most can't. And I even believe that they shouldn't. Why leave a guarantees money supply as an employee and gamble that you will make ten times as much?
V and I have been pretty smart about the entire deal too- of course there have been phases when we worked from 5am till 12am- but we have ended up not only creating a great business but also becoming closer to each other. Maybe it was in our genes. Or maybe you tend to learn from what you see. Both V and my fathers are self-made men. More than any advice, it was their endurance which we saw as children that gives us our strength today.
