Skip the Entrepreneurial Junk Food, Go for the Steak.
This story is adapted from Mr. Monkey and Me: A Real Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs, by Mike Smerklo.
Before you dive into my book, let me tell you what it isn’t.
The usual shit.
You know what I’m talking about — the books that line the business section of any major bookstore, the stuff that comes up when you search “entrepreneur” on Amazon, and the books other people recommend as the roadmaps to starting a business.
There’s also an endless stream of articles equivalent to entrepreneurial junk food that does little to help. I’m sure you’ve read this bullshit from time to time; short blog posts like, The Ten Things Elon Musk Does Before Breakfast Every Morning, or How to Streamline Your Wardrobe Like Mark Zuckerberg. Reading these articles is like eating an entire bag of Doritos when you’re starving. It’s good going down, but you feel pretty gross afterwards, and you haven’t consumed anything of substance.
I don’t have anything to say about the “usual shit” that hasn’t already been said. Trust me, that information is out there. I’m not interested in rehashing it or putting my personal spin on it.
I’m far more interested in what I call “the other shit.”
If you’re embarking on an entrepreneurial journey, you want to create a great company. That is table stakes. But how do you develop the mental tenacity to make your dream a reality?
Maybe you’ve hit some stumbling blocks with your business. Maybe you’re not sure how to get started. Maybe you’re wrestling with the voice of self-doubt (I’ve named my own inner voice of self-doubt Mr. Monkey, and he’s really the star of my book).
When I started out, I read all the usual shit. It got me 80 percent of the way there, but it couldn’t answer the deeper questions I had about what makes a great entrepreneur, not just a great business.
What was the mental game, and how could I win it? What was between the ears of the great entrepreneurs I most admired, and how could I learn from what they’d learned? How could I practice and build the level of mental toughness I knew I was going to need if I was going to swim, not sink?
When I went looking for that kind of guidance, I couldn’t find much of it. The truth is, the “other shit” doesn’t get taught in business schools, and it rarely gets written about. It’s the kind of knowledge that only comes from building a business with sweat, tears, and the hardest work of your life. Don’t get me wrong; strategy, industry, competition, timing, resources, and all the rest are incredibly important. But all those factors being equal, the difference between success and failure in business is mindset.
That’s why I wrote my book. I wrote it for all the entrepreneurs out there starting out, or wondering why they’re struggling — all of you looking for the other shit. Now more than ever, the world needs entrepreneurship. The world needs you.
The World Needs Entrepreneurs — Like You
If you’ve picked up my book, my guess is that you have ideas, passion, and a desire to pave your own way as an entrepreneur. You want to build something. The world needs entrepreneurs like you, and I am glad you are ready to start reading my book. The major breakthroughs in the world happen via innovation and entrepreneurship. The collective wisdom of governments, large organizations, and not-for-profit organizations certainly contribute to the advancement of the human race, but I would rather bet on entrepreneurs to solve the major issues facing us today than any of the aforementioned entities.
Simply put, we need more entrepreneurs building solutions to tough problems. However, for a lot of potential entrepreneurs, the path forward is hard to imagine. It certainly was for me. I grew up in a low-income family in the Rust Belt of the United States. I struggled to visualize a path forward, and my role models — as you will see later on in my book if you choose to read it — were not exactly inspirational characters. However, I humbly recognize that I am a white male who grew up in the United States in a time of relative peace and prosperity. It wasn’t simple, but comparatively speaking, I had it easier than most.
The lack of diversity in entrepreneurship is real. In 2018, less than 3 percent of the $85 billion invested in venture capital dollars went to women and minorities. This is a complicated cycle and well beyond the scope of my book. I don’t have all the answers. But I do know that entrepreneurship is critical to many aspects of our society by changing lives and communities and creating jobs and wealth.
So how do we get more potential entrepreneurs to raise their hands and get started? What are the mental roadblocks that typically get in the way? How do we get more talented people working on real problems, big or small? How can successful entrepreneurs stay on track and avoid the “dumb shit” that trips them up?
I believe that the opportunity of entrepreneurship can only start when someone has the confidence to begin the journey. To raise their hand, so to speak, and say “I want to give it a shot.” The goal of my book is to help you find the courage to raise your hand, see the opportunities in front of you and pursue your dreams.
I want you to approach entrepreneurship wisely and with the support of a formula that can help you survive and thrive as an entrepreneur. I am going to tell you a lot of stories in my book, and I hope you enjoy them. I also hope they help you relate. You’re not the only one who’s stumbled in the process of building entrepreneurial success. I believe your dream is important, and I want to help you make it happen.
Why I Wrote My Book (and What’s in It for You)
I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college. To afford the cost of state school tuition, I worked three jobs during the school year and another two most summers. I graduated with a degree in accounting from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and moved to Chicago to start my career as a CPA. My first job paid me a whopping $27,000 a year, which immediately made me the highest-earning member in Smerklo family history. How exciting!
I spent my early career in jobs that taught me business fundamentals, but I hated those jobs — they drained my soul. I extended my education with an MBA and finally started my entrepreneurial journey right after 9/11. I took an unusual path to entrepreneurship, buying a small business and then running it for more than a decade. I experienced all of the highs and lows that go with being an entrepreneur. I screwed up so many times I lost count and damn near went crazy along the way.
I loved being an entrepreneur. It’s the best job in the world…but damn, it was hard. So fucking hard.
These days, I spend my time helping other entrepreneurs reach their dreams by investing in startups across the United States through the venture capital firm I co-founded in 2015, Next Coast Ventures. Now, I am able to provide money and expertise to the next generation of entrepreneurs, which allows me to help them in the ways so many people helped me along my path. At the point of writing my book, Next Coast Ventures has raised two venture capital funds and invested in over forty companies, deploying several hundred million dollars in capital to help startups grow. Each year, I meet with nearly a thousand startups in the hope of finding one or two founders to back. This provides me with another lens into what successful entrepreneurs do — and don’t do — to remain mentally strong throughout the rollercoaster ride that is running a business.
My book will delve into the mindset required for successful entrepreneurship: ways to cope, how to build mental toughness, and specific work-life lessons that can only come from someone who has been through it all. The real story is one of grit. The rollercoaster highs are thrilling, but the gut-wrenching lows have damn near killed just about anyone who has tried their hand at starting and running a business.
The sobering truth is that most startups fail. Skip over this incredibly important fact, and we’d be doing an injustice to the courage it takes to step into the entrepreneurial arena.
I’m not here to discourage you, though.
From my perspective, both as an entrepreneur and from watching amazing leaders build tremendous companies, I can tell you that there is no better job in the world than starting, running, and growing a business. It takes time, sacrifice, and hard work to develop a solid idea that customers will be willing to pay for and set up the infrastructure to support it. Most importantly, successful entrepreneurship takes a level of mental strength that cannot be understated.
It might be the number one differentiator between success and failure.
But the mental aspect of entrepreneurship rarely, if ever, gets talked about. When it does, it’s typically a passing mention of “self-care,” as if it were an afterthought of the journey. My book brings the mental aspect of entrepreneurship front and center to help you build the mental fitness you need to really be successful.
Of course, mental fitness alone will never be a substitute for a good business model, solid strategy, and access to resources such as capital and talent. Without these ingredients, your idea will likely never get off the ground. However, all other elements being equal, the right mental mindset can be the difference between success and failure.
In the chapters that follow, I am going to tell you all the shit they don’t teach you in business school. We’ll talk about mental toughness, how to manage self-doubt, how to ask for help, and how to find a real-world work-life balance (or cope when you can’t).
Through my experiences as an entrepreneur and now as a venture capitalist, I developed the SHAPE Mindset. It’ll help you take care of yourself and grow your abilities by exploring these key areas:
Self — As in know thyself
Help — How and when to find the support you need
Authenticity — Make decisions based on who you are as a leader
Persistence — Keep after it, even if it seems impossible
Expectations — Set your sights on the right goals to maximize your success
The goal is to provide you with some context and specific, actionable steps to help you get out of the shower, dry off, put some clothes on, and get after your entrepreneurial dream. At the end of each chapter, you will find what I call “monkey minders,” or clear actionable steps, to help you make it happen.
One final note before we dive in: I want to be clear about what my book is not.
My book is not a victory lap, and it’s not a memoir. I’d place my career somewhere in the “good, not great” category — like a solid B-list actor in Hollywood. I’ve done fine, but let’s save the memoir bookshelf space for the A-list entrepreneurs.
In my time as an entrepreneur, I screwed up just about every aspect of the SHAPE formula. I could fill countless pages with my failures and the endless struggles I encountered with my own personal demons. But something tells me that sharing stories of excessive drinking, explosive temper tantrums, and suicidal thoughts won’t necessarily help you “get out of the shower and get after it.”
The mindset formula you’ll learn really comes from wisdom I gained from a broad spectrum of entrepreneurs much more successful than me. The SHAPE formula includes the best practices I’ve compiled from the extraordinary leaders, mentors, and entrepreneurs who have shaped my life.
I am going to share some stories from my life, but these are really to help you relate. I hope they make you laugh (or cringe) as you get to know to my inner voice of self-doubt — Mr. Monkey — and come to recognize his debilitating power. The goal of the SHAPE formula is to help you neutralize your own Mr. or Mrs. Monkey as best you can. I haven’t learned to make him go away entirely, but I have learned to quiet him, even if just for a short time. I want to help you do the same.
I am here to help you through your entrepreneurial journey. I want you to make the third of your life you spend working intentional and meaningful. I want you to know that you are not alone. It might feel like you are, and maybe you don’t think you are worthy of giving business a try. Trust me, I know the feeling — it’s the number one reason I wrote my book. It is time to get out of the shower, dry off, and get ready to make it happen. It’s time to raise your hand.
For more information on being a disruptive entrepreneur, you can find Mr. Monkey and Me: A Real Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs on Amazon.
Mike Smerklo is the co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building disruptive technology companies. Previously, he was chairman and CEO of ServiceSource, a technology services business he took from a small startup to a public company with over 3,000 employees around the world. He was an early employee of a pioneer cloud services company, Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, that also went public. He serves on numerous boards, writes for Forbes, and is a guest lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mike and his wife spend the bulk of their free time chasing after their four young children. For more information, visit www.mikesmerklo.com.
