On Achieving Goals In Entrepreneurship
When you work for years on something, the feeling of completion that comes from actualized progress is inexplicable. Like a scene straight out of the T.V. show ‘Silicon Valley,’ I experienced a similar comedic moment to that of Richard Hendricks shortly after releasing the whitepaper for my company YawLife (and our currency LifeCoin®).
I was at the entrepreneurial hub at the University of Alberta here in Canada, and it had been a couple days since I had released the 50 page whitepaper I had been working on. Never mind the fact that we would be releasing a version later on with a new design — the content was finalized. Up until this point, it hadn’t quite sunk in that I’d released anything.
After not having anything to eat all day, and it being nearly 4 PM, I decided to grab a couple of burgers from A&W. I then get back to eHub, and I’m about to eat my burgers when I happen to walk past the entrepreneurial hub’s co-founder. I said hi, and mentioned that I released my whitepaper draft, to which he responded, “Oh yeah, I think I heard about that, I’ll be sure to check it out later. Congrats!”
At this point, I go to sit down and eat my burgers. A simple task you’d think. Put on some extra ketchup, take a single bite out of one, and then… All of a sudden I feel this wave of sickness come over me. I put the burger back in the bag, threw both of them out (meanwhile hearing random laughs of people wondering why the hell I did that), run to the washroom and…
BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
After no food at all that day I still somehow managed to puke… Apparently there is such thing as a delayed mental reaction (with physical effects) when it comes to entrepreneurship. After that moment, I walked home and realized the entire walk back (and for a long while after being home) that I’d finally released something that had taken years to get to this point. After so many iterations, so many prototypes… So much change, and research, and time… Something of immense quality was finally released. A major step towards our success. And it was terrifying. It seems that at the most random of moments, when you least expect it, reality seems to come into focus with one fell swoop of kick-ass.
Simultaneously invigorating, this journey of uncanny proportions is riddled with random bits of healthy puking along the way.
It might just be a 50 page paper and not our actual end product, but the resultant feeling that comes from releasing an amazing creation out into the world truly brings justice to 100+ hour workweeks. As Elon Musk says, if you work 100 hours a week, in a year, you’ll get 2.5 times more work done than the average person.
Entrepreneurship can be as unexpected as life. But when it is your life, and when you’re willing to put everything you have into making those dreams real, anything is possible. It’s normal as an entrepreneur to feel overwhelmed at times, and yet it is equally normal to be beyond calm at others. During the times when everything’s turned on its head, and you’re underwater, you have to flip around and swim to the surface. And when you go to take a breath of fresh air, don’t lose hope of land just because it’s not within sight. You might have to swim for a while, but you’ll get to your destination.
If there’s anything important to take away, it’s that puking out of delightful terror is better than than venturing aimlessly into a future without a driving force for betterment. And that, the thought I would ever be writing an article about randomly puking at this happenstance of progress is a testimonial to some of the wonderful chaos entrepreneurship has to offer.
