At What Point Have I Sacrificed Too Much?

There is absolutely a point where the cost of building our startup is simply too high. And this is what happens when we get there. [View this email in your browser]( • [Forward to a Friend]( At What Point Have I Sacrificed Too Much? TL;DR: “I'm hearing all of this talk about Founders working remotely on their own schedule, traveling, and enjoying life while growing their amazing startups. Meanwhile, I'm working 80 hours a week in a cramped office and the only thing growing is my waistline. What am I doing wrong?" Building a startup that drives our lifestyle choices is incredibly hard, no matter what that care-free Founder's Instagram might suggest. In order to make our startups work around our lifestyle, we have to make a deliberate choice to bend the fabric of reality to meet our demands. It's crazy hard. But it can actually be done. Today’s Advice Sponsored by [Zendesk]( How Much is Our Health Worth? Invariably, the first casualty of sacrifice is our health. It comes as the perfect trifecta of destroying our mental, emotional, and physical being — pretty much all at once. When we're young, we tend to overlook the physical toll this takes because our bodies may not have gone into a full-on revolt, but as we get even a little bit older (30s at a minimum) that goes away quickly. I was well into my late 30s when my heart stopped beating altogether (that actually happened), and I realized I had pushed too hard. Yet, the mental and emotional toll comes much faster at any age. Being depressed and anxious is almost simultaneous with being a Founder. I don't know any Founder that doesn't have some sort of mental health issue. But more importantly, we assume that these issues are "OK" since it happens to everyone. It's not OK, and what we're doing to ourselves is not OK. Panic attacks are not OK. Should Our Relationships be Sacrificed? Two big parts of maintaining any relationship are having time and contribution. We need the time to see our friends or loved ones, and we need the mental capacity to make a positive contribution to that relationship. When we're working 80 hours per week and are constantly buried in stress — we're doing neither. It's no wonder so many relationships implode through building a startup. You don't ever hear a Founder say, "Wow, ever since I launched my startup, I finally have so much extra time to hang out with my friends on nights and weekends!" At the point that our startups are directly destroying our relationships without repair — we've gone too far. During all of those years when I never saw my family, you know what happened? I lost touch with all of them. I lost my relationships with my family because I was building my startup. How fucked up is that? Is it Worth Going Broke to Get Rich? As if we haven't already sacrificed enough, we'll almost certainly have to not only burn through our savings but create a mountain of personal debt along the way. Even if we wind up raising money, it's usually after we've exhausted any and all of our personal means to get there. Going broke sounds like a reasonable sacrifice if we're going to get rich — but obviously, most of us never get rich, we just go broke. So how broke is too broke? Before my first company turned around, I was 22 years old with $100,000 in personal debt. That's enough money that I would have never paid off and would certainly have started my career in bankruptcy. It worked out for the best, but it could have easily gone another way. Call Your Limit Sacrifice may be part of the startup creed, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have reasonable limits. What we need to do as Founders is to identify what our limits are and create systems of accountability for them. Whether that's putting our remaining savings in someone else's hands ("Hey, Mom and Dad, can you hold onto this for me, so I don't spend it?") or telling our friends and loved ones that we're not allowed to say "No" when they ask to spend time with us — it's addressable. But the only way to avoid those limits is to set them early and be accountable to them. Otherwise, yes, we will absolutely sacrifice too much, and honestly, it's rarely worth it. [Read More Here]( Founders: Zendesk wants to give your startup 6 Months of Support Tools for Free "How can we cancel?" ~ Nearly Churned Customer 😔 We have partnered with [Zendesk]( for Startups to help you see fewer emails like this 😜 Zendesk is the gold standard for customer support software and has been used by 15,000+ 🚀startups including a few former ones like Zoom, Slack, Airbnb, Uber, etc. You can “hack” growth, but please don’t “hack” customer experience… Zendesk’s service-first CRM makes it possible to create, handle, and track customer service tickets across phone, chat, email, social media, and any other channel you can imagine — and all from one place. Because it’s built to scale, it’s the perfect fit for startups and enterprises alike. [Right now, Zendesk is offering]( Startups.com users 6 months for free. Zendesk’s support, sales, and customer engagement software are quick to implement and easily scale to meet changing needs. With Zendesk, it takes hours—not weeks—to get up and running. In Case You Missed It [Treat Departing Employees like Future Employees]( While saying goodbye to departing employees isn’t easy, how we handle it is totally in our control and can impact our future professional relationships. [Why Selling a Startup Brings No Validation]( There's a huge difference between getting some validation from a job well done and literally validating our ego solely from our startup. [Founder Reputation (podcast)]( Reputation: we all have an understanding of the long-term & lasting impacts it has on your standing as a Founder, but how do we cultivate our reputation? Remember, your reputation is very hard to build & very easy to destroy — so listen up! Love this topic? Hate it? Let's chat on social media! Wil Schroter Founder & CEO @ Startups.com [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( Copyright © 2023 Startups.com, All rights reserved. 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