Doing the Dirty Work
Being a startup founder has lots of positives. You get to be the boss and make the decisions for your company. You can decide who to bring onto the team, and you get to set the vision for the company. You can also make a bunch of money if the business is successful. However, you need to understand that you are also responsible for everything that happens in the company. In the early days, when staffing is going to be limited, this means you have to be ready to step in and do pretty much any task required to keep the business functioning. This means a whole lot of dirty work for you.
If you left a job at a big company, you were probably supported by a big crew in IT, HR, finance, legal and more. Well, kiss that goodbye. When you start, it’s just you and maybe a co-founder or a few early employees. You are going to have to figure out everything. You’ll learn how to set up your own computer and maintain the printer. You’ll sort out the process for payroll and paying contractors. You will need to write contracts and track financials. It’s a lot to learn. For me, I was watching YouTube videos and doing frantic internet searches to sort through these areas. On numerous occasions, I would lose hours of my day to stupid problems with my computer that brought all work to a halt. It was super frustrating. When these things happen, take a deep breath and remember the mission behind your startup and the good parts of being your own boss.
Behind the basic business support task, chances are you will be doing literal dirty work too. If you have an office, you probably won’t have the money to hire people to do a lot of the things your big company handled for you. You will probably be driving to Costco or Office Depot for supplies. You might be buying furniture. I was lucky on that one. My wife loves to shop for furniture, so she headed to the office liquidator place to buy desks for my FinTech startup. If you are in a smaller building, you might be cleaning the bathroom in your office unit, yuck! Unfortunately, there is no one else to do a lot of these tasks, so they will fall back on you as the leader of the business for the first year or so.
Even if you don’t have an office to maintain, chances are your startup will be doing some things out in the real world. When I ran a high school sports startup, I had the pleasure of doing a ton of tough assignments. I covered a summer football tournament in 95-degree heat that was so bad I had to periodically bring my camera back to my air-conditioned car because it was overheating and shutting down. I also lugged around a 50-pound equipment bag to broadcasts booths up 50 stairs to the press box for our livestream broadcasts. I spent two hours in traffic going to cover basketball games on Tuesday nights for weeks on end. Your own experiences will likely be different, but they will have the same flavor. Running your own startup involves a lot of sacrifices. You need to be ready and to believe it is worth it. The people that work for you will know it if you are not all-in. You need to set the right tone on these dirty work tasks.
Thanks for reading today’s post, I hope this prepares you for what is required as a startup leader.
