[As_You_Wish]

Sorry, don't mean to be mean here, but this is exactly what I'm talking about.

To start out, my last comment not about me. It's about "loving what you do" unthinking mantra. Which I think the whole idea is a load of crap.

As far as your saying to work in a FAANG....that pretty much exemplifies my point. You prove it for me in your first sentence. You do realize that it is more difficult to get a job at Google than it is to get into an Ivy League school? And let me tell you, there's on way in heck that I, or 99.999999% of the USA is going to get into an Ivy League school, let alone Google...want to see my GPA? I graduated with a 2.01...2/100s of not graduating because of GPA. So yeah. No way in heck am I going to get into a Ivy League shool OR a FAANG company.

There are people who have to work at McDonalds or as a cashier at 7-11 their whole life. They can't do anything else. Do you think they like it, or hate it? If someone has a high school education and is not a Stanford graduate, that's what it is. Minimum wage job for so many. And no real hope of getting more.

So prattle on about having to love your job, otherwise you're not going to work at it and will fail...I've always seen this as the height of arrogance. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad if you love what you do. But if someone with all the advantages in the world (university degree, great parents, etc) is going to whine because they don't LOVE what they do, while the lowly peons have to suck it up and work two minimum wage jobs to make it...just total arrogance, and tone deaf by most of the startup community. The world is chock-o-block full of people that hate their jobs. But they go in, every day, to a job they hate, to support themselves and their family.

That's all I'm saying. And, this is not meant to be aimed at you personally, because there are SO many people that repeat this. It's aimed at the startup community's philosophy of you must love what you do or fail.

[JohnFen]

> It's about "loving what you do" unthinking mantra. Which I think the whole idea is a load of crap.

Which is not the mantra I was intending to evoke.

My only point is that starting a business is something that consumes your entire life. You will eat, drink, and live the business 24/7 for a very long time -- if what you're doing isn't something that you inherently derive enjoyment from, it will make your life very unpleasant and reduce your ability to make it succeed.

This is very different from some sort of bland "do what you love" thing. This is recognizing the human truth of what starting a business entails.

[As_You_Wish]

>My only point is that starting a business is something that consumes your entire life.

John - this is for sure not true. I've known a lot of business owners that work a straight 9-5 and have done VERY well. Not Facebook, but $300,000-$400,000 per year, that's top 1% earners.

I know a LOT of business owners that come in one day per week to check on how their team is doing.

This whole "24/7 work" is just a load of nonsense. Do some? Sure. But we all have a choice, and I know as an actual fact so many people that are successful do not do that. For a fact. And, I know people in the exact same industry, don't pretty much the exact same thing, that work 18 hours per day. Usually the one working 8 hours per day is wealthier, because generally, the person who works 8 hours per day is organized and prioritized, and the person working 18 hours a day is unorganized, doesn't know what they are doing, can't prioritize, etc.

So, John, it is just not true. I urge you, if you are starting to run your own business, not to fall for that false god of working 8 days a week, 48 hours per day. I don't care what Elon Musk or anyone else says.

So again, if I were you, I would say to work 9-5 and then when you are done, leave the business at your office, come home and do other things. It's ok, really.

Starting a business does NOT entail what you think it entails. Heck, even someone building a nuclear power plant, all the workers and CEO don't work 18 hours per day.

>This is very different from some sort of bland "do what you love" thing.

I don't think so. Do what you love is at the root of all of the whole work 18 hours a day thing.

>This is recognizing the human truth of what starting a business entails.

I know what starting a business entails. I've started many. A lot of what people say is just simply not true. I've read the same exact things as you have, about how one has to work 24/7 and live and breath it every day. No. I know this is not the case, I've seen it personally. Reality is what you make it. If you say reality is working 18 hours a day, that's what you're going to do. If you say it is 8 hours a day, that is what it will be. And both can succeed, have succeeded. I've seen it, in person.