Entrepreneur-ing In Public: Journey Log #12

A different kind of journey

I teach entrepreneurship at Duke and I’m publicly growing a company — Autopest — from $0 to $100k/year in revenue in order to help entrepreneurs better understanding the process of building startups. Learn more about my journey here.

Hi, everyone! I’m currently on a “road trip” style vacation with my family, which means I’m not currently thinking about Autopest, nor am I going to share any sort of update on its progress.

So why am I still sending this journey log?

Because entrepreneurs need to understand that it’s OK to take a break. Heck, it’s not just OK to take a break. It’s critically important, and I wanted to model that.

Back when I was first running startups, I didn’t understand this. Instead, I thought being a successful entrepreneur meant working 14 hour days, seven days a week. If I didn’t, I was going to miss important opportunities, and I was going to fail.

The irony of that belief was that I failed more when I was working 100 hour weeks than when I work 40 hour weeks.

Burnout is real, and so is myopia. While working hard is important (and necessary) in the startup world, stepping away from your work for a few days can help provide new clarity, it can help you break out of ruts, and it can help you see problems differently in order to find better, more effective solutions.

I hope you’ll think about this post the next time you’re sitting down for your 83rd straight day of work or whatever other dedicated-founder milestone you’re reaching. Remember that vacations don’t make you a weak startup founder. They make you a startup founder who understands how to have constructive and productive balance in your life.

-Aaron

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