The Problems with Entrepreneurship
I sometimes have trouble concentrating. Times when my mind wanders instead of focusing on the task at hand. Meditation (and all its benefits) has so far been illusive for me. Luckily, I can still focus and get things done, though it may take longer to settle into a groove than I’d like. I have attention deficit disorder (ADD), which in today’s information age is pretty common. Though I had it before the internet started interrupting our daily lives.
Sometimes I long to live in the past in some Indigenous society, where life was run by Nature instead of technology. When I visit my backyard and admire the forest beyond, I’m reminded that many of the trees I see were there before I was born, and will be there after I’m gone. There is a peace in this realization—a slowness to life that says, “Why are you in such a hurry? Why are you worried all the time? Us trees have been through it all. And we’ll always be here, standing tall.”
Being an introvert and a generally self-motivated person, I can combat my ADD with hard work and various tricks. TV is the enemy, and I avoid it at all costs. Bringing my laptop to a different room can renew my focus. Music in the background helps me complete mundane tasks. Sometimes, I just need to take a break from my laptop and go visit the trees.
Now, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) seems to be a whole other beast. I’ve met a few people who appear to suffer from ADHD to the point it negatively affects their businesses. Of course I’m no psychologist, so I’m only guessing. A friend of mine has ADHD and is also a social worker, so his insights have probably piqued my interest. To clarify, the CDC says:
Adults with ADHD can struggle with:
- Managing their attention
- Completing lengthy tasks unless interesting
- Staying organized
- Controlling their behavior
- Hyperactive symptoms, such as feeling internally restless and fidgety
To put that in context, a client I worked with seemed to be starting a new project every time we met each week. The problem was, he could never finish any of those projects. But he also couldn’t give them up. He was always pushing forward on multiple fronts with minimum effort, rarely getting any results. Unfortunately, that meant he also rarely had any money to hire the people he needed to help him succeed.
A marketing manager I hired years ago may not have had ADHD, but she did have the “bad bug” of entrepreneurship—she wanted to have as many customers as possible and charge a premium for each, but that meant spending less quality time with each person. She was good at what she did, but her prices didn’t match the lack of attention she gave me. She was always running off to another meeting.
More recently I was emailed out of the blue by someone I didn’t know, and I marked it as spam. But the emails kept coming, and each email was slightly different. I did some research and verified the guy was real, but I couldn’t quite figure out what he wanted. But you never know, so I agreed to a meeting.
After a 30-minute conversation, I still wasn’t sure what he wanted from me or how we were supposed to support each other. He calls himself a serial entrepreneur. He has a speaking business as well as a PR firm and he’s starting a magazine… Perhaps, he said, I could advertise in his magazine for free, but actually he wanted me to contribute an article without payment, and also refer authors to his PR firm, and maybe something else. I really have no idea.
People often tell me I should scale up my business, but I haven’t seen a reason to. I enjoy working one-on-one with authors, making their books the best they can be. I know I can only work on a few projects at a time, and I’m okay with that. I am not a “serial entrepreneur” because I know my limits. And because I want to have a life outside of work.
Scaling up usually means doing more as a company but doing less as an individual because you hire out most of your tasks (at least that’s how I understand it). Since I’m a ghostwriter, my main task is ghostwriting. Hiring someone else to do that would be unethical, to say the least. And I don’t want to manage other ghostwriters—I want to ghostwrite books. I sometimes hire people to help me with the things I’m not good at. But I refuse to be the head of a ghostwriting company that pays inexperienced ghostwriters less than a living wage just so I can take the rest for myself. (Sadly, this model was actually suggested to me more than once.) Because of my training and experience, I know I can charge a premium for ghostwriting books—and I want to make sure my authors get what they’re paying for.
I’m glad I don’t suffer from ADHD or the “serial-entrepreneur bug.” But all of us can suffer from the side effects of today’s fast-paced, never-ending quest to be the best. And when you’re trying to write a book on top of everything else, it can be easy to feel to feel inadequate and overwhelmed.
When I start feeling this way, I’m reminded I need to slow down, take a break, and visit the trees.
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