Am I, Or The Others, Crazy??
In entrepreneurship, like life, you’ll often need to pull from opposing forces to build your own success. There needs to be a willingness to listen to feedback, whether it be from consumers, investors, or friends, as well as a deep sense of self and the work you are building. If you get negative feedback, for example, you might ask yourself if you can fix the flaws, or you might ask if the person giving the feedback is even correct in their assertion. Who is right? Can you both be correct? I believe so, because reality and “rightness” is often rooted in how we perceive the world, and no one else is going to quite interpret the world in the exact same way.
Albert Einstein famously once said, “A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” I came across this quote at a time when working on my company, The Hub, started to get really intense — at the time, my way to unwind was by watching episodes of Criminal Minds, which often opens with a quote. I remember hearing Einstein’s words and thinking it was the perfect quote to encapsulate entrepreneurship. At its core, it’s about asking if your idea could be the thing that everyone is missing and you're the brilliant visionary who sees what no one else does, or the opposite.
I’ve had moments of massive success, but I’ve also had moments where investors told me I was not onto something and chose not to invest in my company accordingly. Those opposite reactions can create a lot of friction. Something I think a lot about is how, as an entrepreneur, you retain the modesty to check yourself and to learn from those who know more than you, but to also have the confidence in self and conviction in your beliefs and your idea to forge ahead and keep going.
Finding that balance is really hard, and it takes constant work. But I also know that it’s possible to make that doubt work for you, and balance you out as you take bigger risks for your business.
Your reality will always be different from everyone else’s
While there is definitely room to doubt your own vision and take someone else’s criticisms on board, it’s also powerful to remember that doubting yourself — in this case, asking if you are crazy — is most effective when looking at the macro decisions that might impact your company.
I don't fundamentally doubt myself for small tasks like writing emails or executing Facebook ads. For me, doubt crops up in bigger questions: Does this idea have merit? Is this all like a ruse? Am I just lying to myself? These are not easy questions with easy answers, because the concept of “fake it ‘til you make it” is really multiplied by entrepreneurship. You have to sell something to investors or to clients or to your team or to yourself that doesn't fully exist yet: Are you lying? Is it that your idea isn't as compelling as you assert it to be? Or are you painting a vision of the future?
What I think it boils down to is a fundamental question: How do you believe in yourself without completely losing your grip on reality? But that belies an even broader question: What even is reality? How you understand every element of the world around you is utterly different from how others experience the same elements of that world, based on everything from the morning you had to your upbringing to other elements of your identity. You might assume the people around you share your beliefs about any given thing, but as you grow up, you tend to realize that there is nothing that is universally true. Definitionally, your reality is only your own.
I believe intimacy is all about sharing in someone's reality, and trying to see the world through the other person’s eyes, which helps them feel safe and seen, and like their version of reality is the version of reality, if just for a second. And I think as a company, it's the same thing: How can you convince other people — including employees, cofounders, clients, and investors — to believe in your idea fully and unequivocally? You need to make people see and believe your vision as if it were their own. And that requires a certain amount of skill and human connectivity to connect with someone else and convince them to take on your reality as theirs.
Believe firmly in your own reality, and others will join you
If you really believe in what you’re selling, what you say to convince others to believe in it will be coming from a truthful place. It's not just spin. If you think fundamentally that your company is horseshit, it's really hard to give an authentic sales pitch because the world is so noisy.
It’s like what they say about how you have to love yourself before you love someone else; if not, you're projecting a version of yourself that you don't feel attached to, and people pick up on that. And if for some reason you're able to sort of con someone into loving this projection, you have to remedy the fact that they've fallen in love with something that isn't actually you. The same thing is true for companies: If you seduce investors into believing in an idea that's not actually possible, or that you don't believe in, you’ll have to deal with that down the road.
We live in an age of ubiquity, and the best way to succeed is to be sharp is to break through the noise that exists everywhere. Now, everything is so fast and immediate and easy thanks to horizontal marketplaces that cater to people’s laziest sensibilities. A vertical marketplace like The Hub, by contrast, is very sharp. And as a function of that, it can pierce through the noise and disrupts the cultural numbing to which we’ve all grown accustomed.
When I started The Hub, I did so with the broad strokes and the vision for the company. I knew about the mission, as well as the underpinnings and the emotional direction, but I didn't know the nuts and bolts of it. The details of our software platform as it exists today wasn't part of the original vision. And in the beginning, it would take me 20 minutes of marinating someone in what my company is before I felt like they really understood before they could pass judgment. All of that has evolved, and honing my company has made it sharper, and into a tighter sales pitch, which makes it easier for me to believe in — and for someone else to react and decide if it is for them.
You refine your method, and your sense of reality, by putting in work
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or just a human, life is bound to be unpredictable. Algorithms change, or platforms enact new rules about ads, or consumers’ tastes simply change. Every time I go out to dinner with a friend, they tell me a story about how something in life caught them off guard and has been a massive disappointment.
It’s critical, as an entrepreneur, to think about conservation of energy. Let’s say you were pumping energy into a job, a relationship, or moving to a new city. But something happens and those plans come to an end. Instead of just losing that energy and chalking the experience up to failure, how do you reallocate it in a different direction? How do you say, “OK, let’s find another way?”
The idea of pivoting is talked about a lot in startups, whether it’s changing your mind, your business model, or anything in between. The most successful people are constantly pivoting, and they tend to enjoy the process of iterating, optimizing, changing, and finding calm in the chaos. They show up every day and do the work. Complications and frustrations will always come up. But so long as you show up the next day, barring Armageddon, you can always get through, and you can always reframe and find a new way.
Good entrepreneurs are constantly playing jazz with their available options when the fail-safe version no longer works. One of my clients had amazing Facebook funnels when I began working with her. But her product has CBD in it, and Facebook has recently been cracking down on those products, even though they’re legal on a federal level. Just like that, all of her sales that were coming through Facebook are now gone. We’re finding new ways to sell her product, and asking ourselves what we’re going to do to rebuild the 80 percent of her revenue that was just cut off. How do we take that energy and reallocate it out into the world in a way that feels exciting and different, to both ourselves and the customer?
The minute you stop believing that is the minute you have to quit. That’s the minute that you’ve actually failed. But only you can define when that failure happens, or if you’re recalibrating to pivot again.
To believe in your company, start with yourself
We know that things happen in the world, and most people have a reaction to those things. But I believe you also have thoughts that precede an emotional response, and you have control over those thoughts and how you speak to yourself, and therefore your emotional reaction to whatever happened in your life.
To better understand how you perceive your idea, focus on your mastery of self, and your understanding who you are and how you react to things. The next step is to find those that are very close to sharing your reality, whether it be really close friends, family, or a life partner who mostly sees the world as you do. When there's divergence, they will have enough respect and love for you, that they will choose to share in your reality. And then maybe find yourself in a community or situations where people broadly agree with you as well. That’s called building a network.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn't trust myself or fully believe in my company by extension in the beginning, which is why I was so hesitant to bring others in when people started gathering ‘round and wanting to be involved in a meaningful way. I thought they must have missed something — how could they want to take on inordinate risk for this idea that might not be right? Nine out of 10 startups fail, and seven out of 10 startups with venture-backed funding also fail. Everything is working against you. So I wanted to hold all the risks myself, not because I wanted so much of the company or something like that, but because I just didn't feel comfortable asking other people to share my burden.
It was only when I started really fundamentally believing in the business and in myself that things change. That belief gives you immense power because you suddenly realize, “Wow, people would be so lucky as to partake this.” It suddenly makes all the sense in the world that someone would want to sacrifice or work for cheaper or get equity to be involved.
Hold space for the possibility that everyone is a little crazy
I do cognitive behavioral therapy and something my therapist always says is, “What does that say about you?” Or even, “What's beautiful about that thought?” If you're feeling anxious, why are you feeling anxious? And what does that say about you? Self-doubt can eat you alive, but what does it say that's beautiful? For me, that answer is often that I care so much. I want to be my best. At the same time, if you doubt yourself too much, you can completely undermine any progress. If you just think you're crazy all the time, then you're going to stop believing. If you think the others are crazy, then you're arrogant. You absolutely need some self doubt, but if you have too much, it can be your undoing.
If you want to succeed in a relatively small way, or if you have limited funds to work with, 99 percent of your decisions will be based off what the market is telling you, and one percent will be what your gut is telling you. If you want to succeed in a way that changes the world, I would invert that.
Any idea that's changed the world, definitionally the world wasn't ready for it. They didn't know what it was, they couldn't conceive of it. 10 years ago, people didn't walk around with computers in their pocket and now they do — that’s because a group of people had the idea to create the iPhone. If you followed the market and what people were doing or what they wanted, you would never change the world. That’s okay: You can still sell several million dollars’ worth of cold brew or t-shirts.
Other people can’t live without taking the 99.9999 percent chance that they will fail, and they're okay with the likelihood that they'll die trying. They’re done when their bank accounts says they’re done. If you're Elon Musk or Gary Vaynerchuk, you have nine lives and you can fail, because you can go back to the till and try again until you change the world. Otherwise, you’re probably listening to the market and adjusting to what the market tells you and what Facebook ads are working.
What people want to hear is the fastest way to succeed. But it's also the fastest way to succeed in a predictable, boring way that doesn't change the world. Succeeding is a lot easier than saying something totally new and having people actually listen.
I want to both be successful and have people actually listen. To do that, you need to take on the opinions of others without letting it permeate your core psyche. If you love yourself and believe in your idea, people can hate your business for reasons that might be valid, but you will still believe in yourself. You can then take on that feedback, let it permeate the first level of your psyche and let it inform your next move, but you still have to have that fundamental belief in yourself.
I think it's healthy to wonder why the others think you're crazy and to try to learn and get better while also holding the belief that you are not in fact crazy. Because if you believe in yourself and you are fully enlightened then you are, definitionally, not crazy.
“I trust my version of reality. I don't need any external validation. The way I see things is right.” If you can say these things and agree with them, you don't have to look around and ask people for their opinions. The thinking becomes, “I am crazy... to you.” And in that space between is a world of potential, and the key to success.