Yes, start you already enjoy what you are doing

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How one phrase can help start a startup: Lifehacker shares the experience of Mariam Khan, the creator of a bakery delivery service.

Over the past year, I have been building my business from scratch and have come to the conclusion that achieving personal and professional fulfillment is not as difficult as we think. These are surprisingly simple concepts. Of course, they require compromises, a fair amount of commitment. But life in a big city helps to understand one thing.

If you are not enjoying yourself, you are doing something wrong.

Don't you think that a glass of milk and crumbly peanut butter cookies are not fun?

It takes time to understand what is helping to achieve personal and professional fulfillment. What I was looking for was hidden from me by apathy. As I grew up, I jumped from place to place. Replaced seven schools, three colleges, four states and two countries. I have dealt with this by not allowing myself to invest too much in something, just accepting things as they are.

This continued until I got a job in San Francisco for a small startup. So small that 10 employees in a modest office were sitting with desks close to each other. I worked as a graphic designer and had to “create icons and layouts, and whatever else might be required of a designer” (this, by the way, is part of the actual description of my work).

It turned out that they weren't joking about “everything else”. My responsibilities spanned the entire spectrum of work from icon design to UX and UI design. Towards the end of my first week on the job, the CTO and co-founder came up to me with a subtle HTML / CSS tutorial - a still foreign industry to me - and remarked in passing, “Facebook apps are very popular. Think about it.

I thought about it. I haven't slept for a week. More than a hundred applications, a subtle tutorial … Later, with the help of a talented engineer, I developed the design for the applications and did "everything else." And I loved it: hurricane speed, a sense of community with genius people working together for the same goal. It was impossible not to get carried away with the process - there was simply no room for apathy in life.

Let's quickly rewind the story of my life three years forward, to the moment when a small business turned into a successful company. I now have a large desktop and an unlimited travel card. And apathy began to creep into my life again.

I became lethargic in an environment in which I felt ill at ease, could not join the system built by cheerleading managers according to all the rules. She was reliable. And absolutely sucks.

And what?

I knew I needed a change when I first met my co-founder. Without much interest, I helped startups with design for free (they were poor, and I was bored), and he was going to develop the idea of a business to deliver quality baked goods right to the doorstep. We immediately found a lot in common in the love of good cookies, in the desire to invest in business, in the desire to do what you love. And we were able to successfully launch the beta version.

So what followed?

We had to do our best to get the chance to win and feed the entire San Francisco Bay Area with chocolate chip cookies and sea salt. We learned about the existence of the 500.co project, in which investors help start-up businessmen to start their own business. They collected applications for a new training stream. I began to communicate with people who quit a stable job for their own business, and clearly understood: I need, just need to do what I believe in. The rest was a matter of technique.

And I plunged headlong into the world of dough, San Francisco logistics and chocolate chips.

A couple of months later, when we sent 36 (yes, 36) videos, an attachment, an interview and several dozen letters to investors, we were accepted into the program. This is how our project began. We were in a hurry at full speed, our faith forced the business to develop. Joining the big family of the 500.co project was our first breakthrough, and we were not going to miss our chance!

It's an open day. We were part of a new group of founders of our business. We had a work plan in our heads, our hearts were filled with energy. For most of them, it was a time of action on the principle of "pan-or-go", and absolutely everyone felt the nervous tension created by such an atmosphere. Finally, we were all gathered in a conference room, and Sean Percival, the investment partner of the project, invited us to the program.

Of course, we were told to move quickly and overcome obstacles. We were inspired to challenge ourselves and create our brands. But we were also told to be honest with ourselves. And getting this damn pleasure.

I liked that.

This simple, straightforward piece of advice seemed to tie together everything I went through in my life. I became part of the Doughbies cookie delivery company because I believed in it. I remembered how much I loved working at a startup when I first arrived in San Francisco because I enjoyed working on an amazing team that I believed in. I loved the new project because I had a great time doing what I believe in.

Have your fucking pleasure. Not the most original thought. But I needed to hear it.

And during the four months that the investment program lasted, we thought about it when we thought that collapse was inevitable. We looked at our business from the other side, imagined that we could never start. And they wrote down on a card five rules, which they told us about at the open house, in order to constantly remind ourselves: "Have this damn pleasure!"

These words were repeated like a mantra all around. When I hadn't slept for two nights, another member of the 500.co program took me aside, helped me find a support service, and reminded me to keep getting high. It was the intangible fuel on which ideas worked.

I am writing this post a month after my startup presentation, reflecting on what I have learned. I've come a long way: working in a startup, working in a large organization, finding a co-founder for my business, and finally building my own startup with 500.co. I will never go back to apathy, it is not worth it, because life is too short.