Obsession can be a double-edged sword when starting a business: Bird Lovegod

Certainly the opposite is true. Don’t start a business on a whim, or because you think you’ll make millions in an exit.

Starting a business is hard. Building a business is very hard. Maintaining the life of a business in The Struggle is super hard, and there is always a struggle in the life of a business, depending on the time, place , sector, and market.

And even if all those are favourable, it can change in a moment.

A corporation competitor opens up and eats your breakfast, a key employee leaves and takes your customers, you get sick and have to fight on two fronts, the landlord doubles the rent, the place gets looted in a riot, and so on. To play the game of business is to understand that you are not in control of what happens, only how you respond to what happens.

If it’s an obsession you won’t know when to quit. This may be a good thing or a terrible thing. If it gets you through the storm and into clear waters and a safe harbour, great, if it means you don’t abandon ship until it’s lost with all hands and nothing but debt to show, then not so great. Sometimes you just have to hold on and find a way, perhaps the only way, to survive.

For every success story touting the Be Obsessed line there’s another line of failed companies and bankruptcies and heartbreak. Maybe it’s safer to be more detached than obsessed. But if you’re detached, will you even start? And will you be willing to take the risks? There’s always risks, and always a price. And will you care enough to deliver the best version of whatever it is you’re trying to do?

If you are not obsessed you will get bored when it's easy and despondent when it's hard and you will give up in the struggle. There is always a struggle. But if you are a founder you will have many ideas, and the obsession idea is the one to go for.

The one that will not die in your mind will not die in the market either.

I think that’s the key point really, for me at least. The idea, you must be obsessed with the idea, because that’s the right idea to attempt, the one that won’t go away, the one that keeps coming back.

I had an obsessive idea for ten years before I acted on it, the idea was to travel to a foreign country, a ‘poor’ country, with a few thousand dollars, and see if it was possible to save someone's life. Is it possible to save a life? That was the question. That question, and its offshoots, needled me for a decade before I had to answer it with a solo trip to Cambodia. That trip transformed my life, and transformed other people’s lives, and saved a life as well.

The other piece of internet advice was don’t start with an exit strategy. Why? Because if you do, it’s not your obsession.

As a final word, I would say this. If you’re not sure, try not to start it. And see if you can avoid it. You may find you start moving towards it regardless. Sometimes the obsession is something else. Sometimes it’s a calling.