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Sunday, October 27, 2002

By Jack Roseman

Recently an entrepreneur came to see me with a serious problem. Sales were not going as well as planned, and as a result, it suddenly occurred to him that he might fail. That realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

	Jack Roseman, who taught entrepreneurship for 13 years at Carnegie Mellon University, is director of the Roseman Institute, a subsidiary of Buchanan Ingersoll founder of two computer firms and president of a third, On-Line Systems.

This is someone who had raised more than $1 million from investors and hired employees. He had worked seven days a week for two years and taken no pay. Now he may be facing the possibility of telling the investors who had trusted him that he had lost their money and the employees who depended on him to support their families that they were being laid off. The more he thought about these things, the worse his situation seemed. By the time he came to see me, he had decided that the success of his company was a matter of "life and death."

Entrepreneurs go through this. It is not unique. In fact, it is more the rule than the exception. Most entrepreneurs don't start a company and from day one and things just zoom up. Entrepreneurs go through some very depressing moments when their situation looks bleak and it is hard to be hopeful. And during these times, there is the danger that they will start building this "woe is me" mental rut.

In this case, missed milestones had triggered his doubts. The guy was saying, "I expected more people to buy my product. They're not buying it as fast as I thought they would. If I'm wrong about that, what else have I been wrong about?"

I understand doubts. But it scares the hell out of me when somebody talks about his company being a matter of life and death. It just isn't. If you think it is, you need to stand back and reconsider what you're doing. We can't be just our company. And if you look, you will find that you are much more than the starter of a company.

I don't mean to trivialize the task of starting and running a company. But the fact is, you will be a better entrepreneur if you think of it as a game; as in any game the goal is to win. And to win the game you play the best you can. This is a much healthier view of entrepreneurship than seeing it as your life.

If you think of it as a game, then during the time you're in the arena you can think of it as life and death. That's OK. I did. And you act that way. You put in all the muscle you can; all the energy you can, all the intelligence and creativity you can. But at the same time, there is another part of you that recognizes it as just one part of a larger process. You have to have a supra-awareness that there is something bigger. You're going to give it everything you've got, but if you don't win, life goes on.

I know a guy with cancer. A while back we got together and he asked me: "Why are you spending your retirement days doing what you're doing? It doesn't make any sense to me that you are working at the Roseman Institute full time, and then teaching sometimes at night and even working most weekends. You're crazy!"

He goes golfing three or four times a week. So I said: "Well, why do you spend your last days hitting this little white ball into a hole, and getting all depressed when you take too many swings at it? That makes more sense to you?"

We are each playing our game. And taking it very seriously. But it's still a game. I don't play golf, but I play Bridge. And when I play Bridge, I play serious Bridge. I am a lousy loser. But in the final analysis, it's a game and part of me knows that there will always be another game. There will always be another company too.

Now don't expect this point of view from investors or employees. If you go to investors with your doubts, they're going to think, "What a mistake I made betting on this guy." And that won't cheer you up. And you can't go to the people you hired and tell them, "You know, I may not be able to pay you next week." Can't do that. Can't go to your banker and say, "By the way, you know all that money I borrowed, I may not be able to pay you back."

In fact, you can't even look like you're thinking these things because if you look depressed, you're going to depress the people who work for you. For the outside world, you always have to have that smile. You always have to look confident, even when you have serious doubts.

So when this person came to me, I tried to help him get these things into perspective. I explained to him that many of the biggest risks of starting a business are completely outside his control. Like a deep-pocketed competitor deciding to put him out of business. Or the tent company I talk about in my classes that grew like crazy for a decade, and then saw sales go to zero overnight when Congress removed a tariff on imported tents. Or the economy.

I told him that when it rains it pours; that setbacks seem to come in bunches and how that plays with your mind.

At the outset he had said: "This could be the end of the world for me, Jack. This is life and death." I hope by the time he left he was able to get beyond this and see that there is a bigger and more important thing out there called life. Starting a company is a game -- a great game, a serious game -- but a game nonetheless. It is not life.