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by RangerScience 678 days ago
> company is to take a bet that I can succeed without being anything other than myself, both to prove it to myself and to everyone else

I’m about to try the same, any tips? (Can I email you for advice?)

2 comments

Sure. Although most of the tips I'm going to give you are just business tips. Being yourself is easy; being the most successful version of yourself is very hard.
i've always wanted to try to start a company and really strike out on my own, but it's a terrifying prospect.

if i'm honest, the real reason isn't that i want to be my own boss or control my schedule -- it's that I think succeeding as your own business is the only way I could vanquish my persistent imposter syndrome.

It's no less terrifying to do it. But speaking as someone who did pull the trigger: it doesn't vanquish your imposter syndrome, it just makes every downturn feel like proof of it.

Ego's also a very dangerous thing in business. You have to have enough of it to get started, but it's also very easy to refuse to change course or deal with an inconvenient reality when you feel like it's a referendum on you. For me, at least, it helps to remember that "I am a smart person who is doing a really hard thing pretty successfully" and "I will be horribly wrong frequently" are not mutually exclusive statements. There's a good reason I wrote thousands of words about how a lot of very smart people ended up not succeeding; it's probably the most important thing I learned at my last job.