Fear: The Driver for the 95%
I was talking to a would-be entrepreneur recently about the risks of starting a business, especially during an impending recession. I have realized recently that there are risks inherent to almost every human decision, but 95% of them are overblown.
The problem is our fearful lizard brain. Your amygdala formed way back when our ancestors' fears were literally life and death - if you didn't get out of the way, that lion would eat you - but now, it lights up for every little fear you have.
Fear of getting fired Fear of declaring bankruptcy Fear of being seen as a failure Fear of living in a smaller house
None of these fears are as real as a lion staring you down in a field and yet your brain thinks of them in the same way.
Most people let these irrational, overblown fears guide them. Instead of leaning into fears as a way to build new skills, they spend their energy anticipating and running from anything scary.
So how do you get out of this fear-driven mindset?
Like any skill, it takes practice and with practice, it gets easier.
A few weeks ago, I did a firewalk and arrow break. There's nothing like walking over 500° coals and putting the sharp end of an arrow into the soft part of your neck to practice ignoring fear!
But I'm still practicing this. Every time I look at my 5-year plan, I'm a little afraid. There are things there that I cannot imagine doing today; they scare the crap out of me. That said, I'm taking one little step each month towards them and running headlong into the unknown.
Startups
You Don't Need to be Enterprise-Ready on Launch Day
"Enterprise SaaS startups, quite often, start to consider the scaling challenge too soon. Truthfully, most business software does not need to worry about scale for a long time."
Paths Up the Mountain
You are finally ready to climb the mountain. Now, which path will you take?
Here are my thoughts on starting out as an entrepreneur.
No-one knows what they are doing
"Most of us who are running businesses had no real idea what they were doing when they started, and still struggle with decisions now."
Software Engineering
A career ending mistake
"It's a good idea to dip your toe into independent working by doing a few small, one-off side gigs...And if it turns out that you don't enjoy the experience of working for yourself, it's better to find that out before you rage-quit your job, isn't it?"
Using Ghost as a Headless CMS
"Ghost, an open source publishing platform built with Node.js, provides a good editing experience and integrations with popular apps and tools out of the box. Its extensive feature set allows users to set up a wide range of content-focused experiences, from developer blogs to newsletters, and exclusive paid-for articles. Ghost can also be used as a headless content management system (CMS) and is compatible with the major frontend frameworks."
Finding Opportunities as an Entry Level Technical Writer
I’ve enjoyed writing since my college days, when I lived with a bunch of English majors. In the 10 years I spent as a software engineer, I maintained a blog as a hobby. When clients came knocking to offer me paid writing opportunities, I was unsure.
One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding
"When I spoke with VCs it felt like I was speaking with aliens. It's not that they made no sense it's that I couldn't understand what they wanted or how they wanted things presented. And they didn't understand the problem I was trying to solve or where I was headed."
Leadership
Organizing and scaling an effective data team
"It’s natural for a data team’s first member to be a technically-skilled bizops person or analytically-skilled engineer who gets sucked into doing analytics work and may not naturally think of themselves as a founding data team member. Encourage them to embrace the opportunity!"