Blizzards, Bank Accounts, and Broken Toes
5-minute read covering Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as Applied to the Life of a Founder
šš¼ Iām Alek, a repeat founder with a successful exit. Every week, I share my thoughts on navigating career and company-building challenges in 5-minute reads. My posts typically focus on building resilience and applying a practical, data-driven mindset to your ambitions.
You Need to be at the Top of the Pyramid
Itās amazing how quickly you can lose your drive to succeed. Over the past two years of building my company, most of the time, Iāve had the drive to push through the uncertainties of a founderās life. But there were a handful of days where I struggled to find that drive. I've struggled to maintain my motivation whenever my ābaser needs,ā according to Maslowās hierarchy (depicted below), arenāt fulfilled. Today, Iāll share stories about my experience tumbling down the pyramid and how I climbed back up.
Blizzards
In early 2023, my wife and I lived in a redwood forest in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It was an awesome place to live; we love the outdoors and I generally dislike being around other people. But in early 2023, we woke up in the night to the loudest thunder weād ever heard. We looked out our bedroom window to discover it wasnāt thunder; we were hearing untested redwood trees crumbling under the weight of falling snow. We were getting hit by a massive snow stormā¦ unusual for California.
We lived in the middle of hundreds of these redwood trees. On most days, we appreciated their natural beauty. On this night, we respected (and feared) their destructive capability. At any point a tree could decide, āIāve had enough of this snowā and fallen on our house. Redwoods are huge. If a tree fell on our house at the wrong angle, weād be toast. That night, my fiancĆ©, dog, and I went down to the garage to sleep in the car. Sleeping in a metal box with wheels in the basement felt like the right decision at the time.
Fortunately, we woke up the next morning unscathed.1 We took inventory of the house. Some trees had fallen in the yard and others had precariously leaned in our direction, but we were through the worst of it. Now to deal with the aftermathā¦ we trudged through feet of snow on our morning dog walk and got the lay of the land. Trees rested on power lines. A neighbor had accidentally driven their car off the road in the night. A power pole had literally split in two, the top half suspended over the road supported by the still-intact cables.
We checked the electricity and internet outage map. Pretty much everywhere was red so we knew it would be a while before they got to us. Our landlord had a generator on the property and we had enough gas to power the house for 24 hours. We didnāt know when it would be safe to drive to town and get more gas.
Literally over night, weād fallen to the bottom of Maslowās pyramid. Time to focus on building my company..? Not a chance. We set a schedule for when weād run the generator, optimizing for keeping our food from spoiling. Ultimately, we survived. After a few days, we were able to get the car down to town to acquire more food and generator fuel. Our electricity and internet didnāt come back online for about three weeks, but we made due by running the generator, tethering to our phones, and frequenting coffee shops.
Bank Accounts
In āThe Dark Side of the Foāunder's Life: Uncertainty,ā I shared my experiences dealing with uncertain paychecks.
There have been several times over the last two years when Iāve stared at the possibility of a $0 paycheck or watched my bank account swiftly flow down the drain.
Whenever Iāve dealt with this financial uncertainty, Iāve doubted myself. At times like this, Iāve struggled to focus on just building my company. Iāve explored job postings and updated my resume. Fortunately, the strategies I outlined in āThe Dark Side of the Foāunder's Life: Uncertaintyā have helped to carry me through.
Broken Toes
Earlier this year, Iāve took a less dramatic trip to the bottom the pyramid. It was January 2024, and I was gearing up to watch a football game. I hadnāt watched much football over the last few years, so I was excited to watch my first game in a while. I plopped down on the couch and flipped on the game. I watched the kickoff and realized my rookie mistake, āYou know what would go great with a football gameā¦ a bowl of chips!ā I started the not-so-long walk from the couch to the kitchen and retrieved the chips. I quickly strode into the family room to make sure I didnāt miss anything and **whack** my right foot slammed into an ottoman. Youād think Iād have been more careful after the meatball incident of 2014!
The next day I limped around the house and, for whatever reason, grabbed my toe with two fingers to move it around and see what hurt. It was either broken or fractured. I maintained a limp for a couple of weeks.
As I limped through life, my motivation to work on hard problems also bottomed out. I did what was required for my existing clients, but I struggled to work on the problems with questionable, longer-term payoffs.
Lessons Learned and Moving Forward
How would you motivate yourself to build a company when youāre concerned about food, shelter, or your physical well-being? In my experience, you canāt. And, thatās OK.
Whether itās an act of mother nature or your own idiocy, we all end up in situations where our base needs are unfulfilled. In these moments, itās hard to motivate yourself to solve hard problems. The best thing you can do is stay the course. Understand why you feel the way you do (e.g., āI broke my toeā). And, if itās a temporary state-change, donāt give up on your long-term goals based on solely that feeling.
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By sharing my experiences, I hope to provide insight and advice to entrepreneurs facing similar hurdles. Please leave a comment or email me with any questions.
Mostlyā¦ our dog developed a fear of thunderstorms that weāre still working on a year and a half later.