The Making of Desperate Entrepreneurs

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Bet you’ve seen or worse, worked with one. These special breed of entrepreneurs, or for the lucky ones, is just a temporary phase, usually portray one or more of the symptoms below:

• Change company direction every 3 days
• Change team member’s and staff’s roles every 3.5 days
• Quote Sir Richard Branson and his 500+ companies every 3 hours
• Use the term pivot too often
• Do the “pivot” as often too
• Jack of all trades but master of none
• 5 years later at the school reunion, he’s still working on that idea/startup with no apparent growth (his mom secretly texts you to help “advice” his son)

If entrepreneurship is a mix bag of many skills, traits and mojo, then the equation for desperate entrepreneurs are:

Just like my favourite Add. Math teacher, Good Ol’ Mr. Cheng, would say, “Let’s breakdown the equation.”

Balls Of Fire

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Entrepreneurs are passionate creatures, and usually optimistic (or overly at times). They are risk takers too. Normally these two characteristics are good ingredients in the making of a good entrepreneur, but just like how too many bad spices can mess up your miso soup, they can totally work against the person.

Balls On Fire

Ever had someone bring a Bunsen Burner near your balls in the science lab? Entrepreneurs are grilled almost every day, and the chef in the BBQ apron comes in different shapes and sizes – investors, VCs, grant-givers, not-savvy financiers, banks, self-appointed/justified mentors. Unrealistic growth goals, lack of domain experience, constantly missing KPIs are some of the reasons why the financial backers fire up the BBQ pit in the first place, and the entrepreneur usually feels the heat the moment they are taken out to be defrosted.

Tons Of Unpaid Bills

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Having a low monthly overhead (business and personal expenses) is key, and growing the war chest is advisable. The world of business is like a sandwich date with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton; you just don’t know what’s in store around the corner.

If you’re not prepared enough, your bills will start getting unpaid, you start paying interest, and thus begins a spiral downwards. Personally, I went through that too over the last four months, and let me tell you, aside from noisy neighbours and a broken ceiling fan, nothing keeps you up at night more than the thought that in every passing second, the interest on your debts grows. #truestory

That One I Also Can Do

Not sure if it’s a pro or con, but entrepreneurs are usually multi-talented and multi-skilled. If applied properly, that’s a huge pro. But sometimes when the entrepreneur is put in a hard and hot position, he will start looking around and realise there are many other ways where he can pay his bills.

I’ve also fallen into this trap many times before (no, I’m hardly multi-talented, but just prone to itchy-backside and bad decisions), and after pulling myself out of the holes for too many times, I devised a simple process of three questions:

1. Does this go into growing my business and brand?
2. Can I close the deal within 3 email exchanges and get paid in less than a month?
3. Will it take me longer than 4 hours to execute it myself, or 4 hours to manage someone else to do it?

Notice that I don’t add growth questions like “Will this develop my skills and knowledge?”, or “Will this make me a better person?”. Those are the questions that usually will fool you into thinking that the opportunity is worth pursuing, and one that you come to regret later.\

Slap-Worthy Ego

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Confidence is an interesting thing. Without it, you get pushed around, can’t decide what to wear or to ditch that asshole of a guy. Too much of it, you become overly-optimistic, cocky, and plainly just a dick. Add a dose of stubbornness inside, and you’ll come face-to-face with the crippling force of ego-land. Don’t get me wrong, nothing attracts me more than an individual who is sure of himself and his capabilities, but I also know stupid when I see one.

Lack Of Focus

Keeping your eyes on the goal despite being thrown around, yanked aside and tombstone-pile-driven into the floor, is hard work. Always be flexible with the means taken but firm with the end goal, and knowing when it the best time to pull the plug are what separate the good entrepreneurs from the bad ones.

It’s just funny how the moment entrepreneurs get desperate, they become short-sighted and develop tunnel vision. How would I know this? Same answer as the guy who sticks a bottle of Tabasco in his nose and have burning tears streaming out of his eyes. Been there, felt that (no, not that stupid Tabasco stunt) #overlygraphicmetaphor

In truth, we all have been a desperate entrepreneur before. Some, like me, still becomes that every season. My best advice? Find comfort in self-reflection and reaching out for help. I know. That’s hard too.

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Hi there! Thanks for stopping by. I mostly blog about Steemit Success Strategies, business, marketing, entrepreneurship, psychology, community and random thoughts.

Talking about Steemit Success Strategies, if you want to 10x your results on this platform, perhaps some of these guides will be able to help you.

1. How to generate at least 365 post ideas for your Steemit Life (and possibly never run out of ideas again!)
2. The 4 Big Cs of Steemit Success
3. 8 Content Strategies to Excite & Engage your Steemit Followers
4. 29 Steemit Post Types to Attract More Followers & Boost Your Popularity (Part 1)
5. 29 Steemit Post Types to Attract More Followers & Boost Your Popularity (Part 2)
6. Copywriting Magic for Steemit: "How To" Post Titles
7. Copywriting Magic for Steemit: "List Type" Post Titles
8. Steemit Success Strategies #1 - The Law of Requisite Variety
9. Steemit Success Strategies #2 - Batching + Parkinson's Law
10. Four + Four Free Tools to get more exposure for your Steemit Projects
11. How to apply the 80/20 rule to your Steemit Life
12. Steemit Experiment Report: 21 days, 21 minutes, 21 posts later, PLUS an 8-Step Guide on How to Write a Steemit Post every day under 30 minutes
13. Case Study on Bid Botting - A Steemit Bootcamp follow-up module, a cheatsheet and why I probably won't use it

At least once a month, I run Steemit community events and training workshops with my buddies at #teammalaysia too. Some examples are:

1. Steemit Bootcamp March 2018 - KICKSTART Your Steemit Success
2. BoilerRoom 03.03.2018 | Let's Huddle, Hustle & Hack Out Awesome Steemit Contents!

I'm also grateful to be part of #steemitbloggers , SmartSteem and the sndbox.

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Wait, why's Mav posting on Steemit nowadays?

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