Foundership is defined somewhere on Google as “the condition of having founded something.” I suffer this condition. I have my whole life. I’ve always been an entrepreneur. Said condition, overlaid with my personality which 16personalities1 (multiple times over the years) has described as a Myers-Briggs INTP-A2 and the environment I was born into (NY Jewish anxiety/pressure); the life of this entrepreneur has been like a roller coaster. My expectation, though, is that if you overlay foundership with any personality, religion or upbringing, the soup comes out the same. Bitter-sweet soup?
The evolution of the internal narratives
My personality has historically been kind of extreme. Like most things in life, I’m neither unique nor alone in this. Yet, for the faint of heart, I’ll tone down the narrative as the voice in my head (yes, we all have a voice in our heads that almost never turns off, chill out) can be kind of a dick sometimes and I don’t want to frighten anyone. My classic example is, let’s say I drop something, like… a pencil. That little voice in my head may say something charming such as “you stupid, stupid idiot.” It’s generally more than that. Cue therapist DMs. Conversely, I may have an idea, let’s say, a pretty average idea. That same voice may say something like. “Diamond hands, we’re going to the moon. Can’t wait to talk about it over lunch with Musk and Bezos after we cruise by their insignificant minipires3.”
As a younger man (not that I’m particularly old, but it feels like I’ve matured multiple lifetimes over the last couple decades) I took pretty much everything my internal narrative whispered to me quite seriously. “I’m some kind of idiot savant that can wrangle complicated concepts, lead companies, all my ideas are brilliant but again, I’m still also a schmuck.” Needless to say this stuff doesn’t jive and a lot of it isn’t true. I’m told I’m actually quite smart as well as creative and a good leader (wow). Needless to say, this narrative underpinned a dramatic ride of a life for me with very high highs, and what felt like even lower lows.
I think it’s safe to say that, like most of our internal dialogs, they were born of needs I developed in the environment I grew up in; likely mechanisms to protect me and help me grow. And that they did, until they became limiters instead of accelerators. But as the saying goes, what got you here, won’t get you there.
The Einstein Dialog
How it served me
The, what we’ll call “Einstein Dialog” gave me unwavering confidence and conviction in the face of what would seem to others to be absolutely insurmountable challenges and odds. It helped me survive some incredibly difficult places and times in my life and overcome crazy odds in multiple business and personal “challenges.” It kept my confidence almost offensively high, even after multiple failed attempts and any number of things. It made me a brilliant sales person because I believed, with conviction, anything I said as indisputable truth to be followed blindly (I can also, on occasion, be both articulate and charming). Companies grew, clients purchased, people followed.
How it hurt me
The Einstein Dialog also (and perhaps quite obviously) created a bottleneck — me. I was always the blocker and it made all flow to and from a single location in the company (this guy). This meant that we weren’t able to aggregate and discuss everyones’ ideas because I already knew best. I mean, this was my thought process in my 20s, so really, I probably knew everything there was to know about everything anyway. It probably didn’t help my humility that I had built multiple, 7-figure revenue businesses4 from scratch during my 20s and managed hundreds of people in aggregate during that same time. The Einstein Dialog (ie rampant arrogance) also caused another interesting challenge. I hired almost exclusively very junior people. The back of my mind probably read something like this:
Who needs expensive senior folks when all my ideas are the best ever. We will just hub-and-spoke this.
Everyone had the same exact latent potential and ability as I. I can do anything better than anyone (really). But also I’m an idiot, so somehow, anyone can do anything and why pay up for someone senior when anyone out of high school can accomplish as much as anyone else, including me (because I am dummy), but not me (because I am a genius).5
The Three Stooges Dialog
How it served me
The “Three Stooges Dialog” (cute right?) told me I was kind of fundamentally flawed and an idiot. This, somewhat surprisingly, served me extremely well because I was obsessed with learning, researching, and sucking up data like a sponge. I learned as much as I could as fast as I could and it was a lot. My old friend and business partner used to call me Taz because I essentially spun at a million miles per hour and could learn a new business or strategical pivot, inside and out in enormous depth, in hours and launch a new business in that same period of time. I could (and did) regularly bootstrap a company from true $0 with no startup capital to $1M revenue, profitably, over and over. (I could also blow that company up, over and over.) It further served me because I was (and am) extremely tough on myself. No need for someone to crack the whip. I was like a 16th century Christian (but still Jewish) flagellant, and my back was bruised. But I worked 12-15 hours a day, every day, from my early 20s to mid 30s.
How it hurt me
Although the Three Stooges Dialog was helpful in some ways, I was never able to really learn from others’ experiences because of my Einstein Dialog and I was never able to let myself truly excel and break through my self imposed ceilings like raising capital and/or building a public company or doing something that I would consider to be a real success, because deep down, I really thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me and failure was inevitable. “I was under the impression that I could do anything better than anyone (really)” but in the recesses of my subconscious, I thought I was pretty broken, so I only took on challenges that I thought I could crush. Those challenges may have often been super difficult, and things that other people would never even contemplate, but I never really exposed myself to something that I thought I could categorically fail at, because what if it was all true and I was this flawed, stupid kid faking his way through life. Funny, the way things work… I failed at a lot of things anyway, because of the same dialogs that I used to propel and protect me.
Transcending the noise
My story now is that the internal narrative is kind of like noise not to be taken too seriously in the background. It doesn’t go away, but it’s tuned out. Every few months or so I accidentally hear too much of it and have to sit down and get back in alignment with reality; often with the help of others. I try to take everything with a grain of salt. Am I self-sabotaging? Is this a really good idea? Let me ask a few people I trust, write about it and think about it for a while. Am I really a stupid idiot because we missed a sales target? Maybe, but probably not.
The coolest thing I’ve taken from my growth here (besides the new and massive potential I acknowledge that both my business and I have and the vastly better relationships with loved ones) is that now that I know (1) I am not a genius (2) I am not an idiot (3) there is so much that I do not know that other people do know or have experienced; that I get to read a lot of books, white papers, essays, and studies and that has become one of great joys of my life (subordinate of course to family, friends, and colleagues). Here are some of my favorites.
One of my struggles as a founder over the course of my career has been navigating between the very real risk of failure that underpins all entrepreneurial ventures and the firm belief that we’re doing something amazing, that will touch the lives of millions and create billions of dollars in long term value for investors, employees and customers (not arranged in any particular order). Both are extreme scenarios and, both, possible outcomes. My job is to think and then work (in that order) to ensure the ergodicity of my organization while maximizing for long term, sustainable, profitably growth (as aggressively as possible). To do this, my narrative has to be muted (or really turned down) and the input of my peers (colleagues, employees, advisors, family, authors, podcasters, etc) allowed to flow in. I love this.
If you are an entrepreneur and you have two saved Zillow searches; one for homes for sale on the ocean over $20M and one for studios for rent under $400 per month. I feel you, you are not alone. Sometimes we can just be our own worst enemies. That said, once we’re aware of the narratives we sing ourselves, we can work from there. So, sit back, separate from the dialog and have a clear think.
I suggest you explore your Meyers Briggs personality as well. It’s enlightening plus they’ll tell you somebody cool who shares your personality and then you can draw totally non correlated conclusions about your new trajectory and abilities. For example:
Einstein and Gates would be proud to know they share my personalty, so… that’s kind of a big deal for everyone involved.
Mini empire. Not a word. I discovered this footer widget for annotation today and can’t stop.
Omg! I’ve annotated within an annotation!
You should consider unsubscribing.
Most of those businesses failed or fizzled out, except for one, which I sold at a significant discount to what it was once worth.
Really, these were real thoughts in my head. I absolutely believed that if I dedicated my life to it I could levitate. I was hyper competitive and took challenges very seriously and head-on. Particularly physical ones.