Entrepreneurship through personal losses & poverty

Moving through the middle class might be harder

Here I’d like to talk about the path to becoming successful, founding a company, running a StartUp, pursuing a career of an artist or writer.

I believe that it can be harder to launch a business, launch a StartUp or do art if you’ve established yourself in the so called middle class — you rent a nice apartment in a large city, you have a car, nice job and a few smartphones.

If you’re that person and you have debt to pay, maybe because of your current possessions, if you live with your girlfriend who’s used to watching cable TV and she’s proud of your job in one of the trendy companies and you have a dozen of obligations beginning with your rent, phone bills and electronics, then it might be a lot harder for you to become an entrepreneur.

Because you have less time, you feel pressure coming from the direction of your girl — she wants you to spend the time with her and not on some business plans and meetings. If you work normal hours, then you would probably wake up at around seven, go to work and come back at six or so. Afterwards you have a few hours to yourself and you need to decide how to spend them.

If you want to go down the path of creating a business plan, launching a business and creating a prototype of whatever you have in mind and you need to spend the core of your day in an office, in the work which makes your parents so proud, then you need to prepare for:

- spending your time with your business idea and not the TV

- possible conflicts with your girlfriend

- problems in your work

- at a certain point you need to plan on quitting your job

If you require a few Months before your business launch — and most of the people do — in working solely on preparations, then you can’t possibly think of keeping your current job. That implies that you need to scale down. For a few Months you might consider moving to a cheaper apartment, maybe outside of town or if possible going back to your parents for some time if that’s still possible. If you own a car and need money to invest into your fresh business and you don’t necessarily need your car for doing business, than consider selling it to create some reserves for yourself.

The Middle Class and entrepreneurship is a chicken and egg problem.

Because you are likely not able to continue your modern busy city lifestyle while launching a business you need to give up on some things for some time, just to reestablish yourself into a new role. It’s like a metamorphosis that a butterfly has went through. You cannot buy time through pursuing a new position in any company and believe that you will effectively use that money to put it into your StartUp, because with a new position you will have less time. And time is of essence.

Regarding relations — Is it possible to make your girlfriend understand that you can’t spend the afternoons with her, but with business planning, meetings and research? Will she understand?

The fear of losing her and possibly fighting might make you fear and you will possibly invest less time than necessary in your new business. So you need to consider quitting your job before you launch your own company. That’s when you need to prioritise what’s more important — rent, car, smartphone. Will she understand that you’re doing all that to have time for her? Or will she just see a loss in you quitting your job and pursuing a dangerous path of an entrepreneur?

Myself, I lost her. Everyone around me hated me for pursuing my visions — everyone and everything tried to keep me established in my job.

You need to make tough decisions. And some of them might lead to you not making a lot of money for Months, but having a lot of time. And time is the ultimate currency.