Not All-or-Nothing: Balancing Professional Dreams with Reality
You know what will kill your dream; build systems to keep it alive.
Welcome to A Founder’s Life for Me! I’m Alek. Based on my experiences building tech companies, I provide practical recommendations on how to build your company and career.
Pursuing your professional dream isn’t an all-or-nothing decision.
What would be the first step on your journey to start a company or pursue your professional dream? Too many people answer, “Quit my job.” Pursuing your professional dreams doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing decision. You’ll leave this article with:
examples of how I’ve pursued my professional dreams without neglecting reality
ideas for practical early steps you can take to pursue your dream
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Understand what you need so you never need to stop.
What’s one thing that every successful founder has in common? They never stopped pursuing their dream; they kept pushing until they achieved their desired outcome. Success is not guaranteed if you never stop, but failure is guaranteed if you do.
One of two primary constraints stop the pursuit of most professional dreams: money and motivation. If you run out of money or motivation, you’ll stop. So, when you start building a company or pursuing a dream, ask yourself:
Money: What monetary constraints do you have? How much do you need to earn to satisfy your short- and long-term financial needs? In my case:
I need to earn enough to have a strong mortgage application when we buy a house this year (2024)
Motivation: What motivates you? Where does this motivation come from? In my case:
I’m motivated by solving thought-provoking problems, making an impact on other people’s lives, and collaborating with smart people.
So, as I’ve pursued my dream of building a successful technology company, I’ve built a system optimizing for these needs.
Meet your financial needs in other ways.
You can’t count on money flowing in the minute year you start pursuing your dream. I’ve been building SolidlyAI for over a year, and it’s still not generating enough revenue to meet my financial needs. Building something people will pay you for takes time, so factor that in when you start pursuing a new professional dream. To comfortably meet your financial needs, have other ways to cover them.
In my case, I’ve spent 80% of my time working on SolidlyAI and 20% of my time consulting. My consulting income is enough to meet my financial needs for the foreseeable future. So, I won’t have to stop pursuing my dream of building a successful technology company as long as I can keep consulting.
When pursuing your professional dream, consider how you could continue earning money. Here are three strategies you can deploy:
Start a side hustle, working on your professional dream for a couple of hours every night when you finish your day job.
Find other ways to earn an income.
Raise money from investors. In a previous article, I share why I haven’t pursued fundraising for SolidlyAI.
Don’t solely rely on meeting your financial needs through your professional dream until you’re confident you can; find another way and do that in parallel.
Give yourself what you need to stay motivated.
Find reliable long-term sources of motivation.
While pursuing your professional dreams is motivating in its own right, we often need other motivation to keep us going. The novelty of pursuing your dream wears off quickly as you get caught in the day-to-day minutia of execution, and you need to rely on other sources of motivation.
In my experience, external sources are not reliable, consistent sources of motivation. I’m motivated by “making an impact on other people’s lives,” but I’ve been working on SolidlyAI for over a year with minimal impact to show for it. How long could you work on something with only a belief, “This will help people eventually?” To keep myself going, I lean into two other sources of motivation:
#1 Solving thought-provoking problems
Right now, the “right thing” for SolidlyAI would be for me to spend all of my time on sales. I’ve recently written about why this is important and how long it can take to find your first customers. But I haven’t found sales inherently thought-provoking.
However, the engineering behind SolidlyAI is an endless well of thought-provoking problems. So, even if it’s not the “right thing” to work on, I dedicate time to engineering every week to keep myself motivated. I use my time-tracking app, LevelUP, to stay motivated while doing what’s right for SolidlyAI.
#2 Collaborating with smart people
Collaborating with smart people can be challenging as a solo founder. I’m using two primary strategies to maintain this source of motivation:
I collaborate with friends, family, and old colleagues who aren’t directly involved in SolidlyAI.
I collaborate with smart people through consulting.
These strategies have worked for me; find what works for you.
I've stayed motivated through the two strategies above while working on Solidly for almost two years. These strategies motivate me without needing to hire other employees to work on SolidlyAI (which would put my financial needs at risk).
Not everyone is motivated by the same things. As you start pursuing professional dreams, think about what gives you energy and set up systems to reliably give yourself those things.
You know what will kill your dream; build systems to prevent it.
Whether you want to start a company, write a book, or become a travel blogger, the #1 cause of death for your professional dream is you’ll stop pursuing it. So, develop a system that minimizes the chances you need to stop.
The most common reasons that you would need to stop are money and motivation:
To avoid stopping for financial reasons, avoid relying solely on your professional dream to meet your financial needs until you’re confident you can. Find another way to meet your financial needs and do that in parallel.
To avoid stopping for motivation reasons, think about what gives you energy and set up systems to reliably give yourself those things.
Thanks for reading! Questions or ideas for future topics? Email me.