Entreporn: The Fallacy That Wastes Your Life

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Entre porn, the fallacy that wastes your life by Justin Vincent. Entre porn, a term brilliantly coined by Amy Hoy, holds us back from our true potential. It works to the advantage of almost every player in our industry that we believe is chasing the next big thing. They need us to keep chasing it. In the truest sense, the next big thing is a carrot on a stick that keeps us occupied and keeps them in business.

I wish I could point the finger at one specific company, person, or party and say it's their fault, But there's no conspiracy here. It simply is because each player, VC Corporation Media, has become so good at optimizing their part that the system as a whole keeps us distracted and chasing after a shimmer in the desert. It behooves the likes of TechCrunch, Time Magazine, and 60 Minutes that we care about Mark Zuckerberg's outlier story because that's how they sell advertising. It works for VCs that we keep chasing investment because that's how they make their daily bread. It's awesome for corporations that we chase very unlikely to succeed, break free strategies, because then we don't leave our job.

What they don't publicize and what they scoff at is the concept of the, quote, lifestyle business. You're led to believe that it's a waste of time, and in fact, the category was recently derided by a VC talking to Mike Arrington as, quote, dipshit companies. But here's the truth. If every developer was to focus on the very achievable goal of building a lifestyle slash micro business. The entire house of cards would crumble, and they know it.

The absolute truth is that each and every one of us can build a business that can support us. We don't need a $1,000,000 business to survive. We just need a regular paycheck, just like the paycheck we already get from working from someone else, except it's a paycheck we pay ourselves. If you build a micro business, it means you're your own boss. You make your own rules.

You live life on your terms. If you genuinely have the spirit of an entrepreneur inside you, it's perfectly possible to build a $10,000 a month web app business that can set you free. But even better, once you have the knowledge that comes along with building a successful $10,000 a month business, you also possess the exact same knowledge that it takes to build a $100,000 a month business. The chances of building a Google, YouTube, or Facebook and scaling to the millions of users required to be considered for VC investment are vanishingly small. We're talking in the region of 0.000 1%.

However, the chances of building a $10,000 a month web app business is pretty high. In truth, there's no reason to fail other than failing to learn from your mistakes. Imagine if we all did that, we would be free. This is one that I have been super guilty of in the past, and it normally starts like this. I've got a great idea.

I just need to build it out real quick, and then it's gonna be huge, and I'm gonna make a $1,000,000,000. And I think being a developer, I see this a lot too because people come to me with their ideas because they know I'm a developer and can build stuff for them. And they say, hey. I've got this idea. I think it's pretty easy to develop, but it's gonna be huge.

So not only have I seen it in myself, I've seen it in a lot of people that come to me asking for advice or opinions or help or whatever. I think most developers see this a lot. Just to open the kimono a little bit, for me, I was a financial accounting tutor in college. I ended up getting my degree in accounting and went on to work at an accounting firm. But during college, I would tutor the intro to financial accounting class.

Absolutely loved it. Loved tutoring. Loved helping the kids understand accounting. And being a developer, I got this idea. You know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna record tutorial videos, post them online, and do, like, a subscription website thing. Now what would have been smart would have been to actually do that. What I did instead, which was stupid, was decide, no. I need to first build a platform where I can allow any tutor to upload their videos, set a price. I take a portion of that, and then I become fabulously wealthy.

And so you know what I didn't do? Anything. Well, technically, I did something. I got started, started building it. Obviously, it's a huge undertaking, and so I never got anywhere.

What I should have done is focus on one class at one school. The school I know very well because it's the school I actually went to. And it would have been helpful had I done this when I was still in school there, but, you know, can't win them all. And so I had a serious case of entrepreneur porn where I thought, I can't just do this this little thing to make some money and then, you know, maybe scale it up later. I thought I have to build the next big thing because that's what we've been sold, which makes perfect sense because 23 year old kid turns down $3,000,000,000 from Facebook is a much more interesting story than guy in his spare bedroom makes $12,000 a month, works sometimes, is pretty happy, also gardens.

But, man, the lifestyle business should not be derided. You have a much better chance of making it than you do of making the next Facebook or Pinterest or Snapchat or whatever it is. You know? Whatever $1,000,000,000 company you're trying to emulate. Now there are some people out there that just feel called to make a $1,000,000,000 company.

Great. Do it. But if you're not one of those people, don't waste your life thinking, I have to make the next big thing. I mean, look at Mark Cuban. He's trying to get this cyberdust, social network off the ground, the disappearing text messages, And he's having a heck of a hard time, and he's got 1,000,000,000 of dollars already.

So don't delude yourself and think that it's easy. Building a $10,000 a month company is also not easy, but it's easier. One of my absolute favorite talks on this subject is a talk by a guy called David Hana Meyer Hanssen, who runs a wildly profitable software company called Basecamp. He's got a talk called the secret to making money online, and I'm gonna play a little bit of it for you right here. This is David Hannah Meyer Hanson.

Now kind of the problem with all of this and kind of the problem with attacking the Fortune 5000000 is this notion that if you're doing so, you're making a life style business. You're making a small mom and pop store, and you're just gonna be those 2 old folks behind the counter counting the pennies, and that's kind of the life. And people look at yeah. That's nice. So you have a few customers.

That that's good for you. And I think that's well, in in the in the great words of, Eric Cartman, that's bull crap. I mean, it's really, not that notion that either you're gonna be this sad mom and pop store counting the pennies, or you're gonna get be this $1,000,000,000 company. There's a lot of room in between of just, enjoying life. If you're going for that $1,000,000,000 slot, you're giving up a ton of things that I don't think most people are considering.

And the great thing about this is the notion that we have these big hits. We have the YouTube. We have the guys catching those big waves. It kinda reminds me of of the movie industry, and this is not it. This is, in general, is not like the movie industry.

There's no need to dominate the box office. There can be lots of winners. Just like there's lots of small Italian restaurants out there doing pretty great even though there's lots of other Italian restaurants. There could be tons of companies out there who are just solving small, simple problems. They might have 2,000 customers, and now I have 10,000 customers.

And in any case, most of the great companies who've been built over time started out with that. They started out with the 200 companies. The exceptions are the Facebooks of spending 2 years and being worth $15,000,000,000 on paper. Don't use that as your role model.

That makes it sound pretty possible, doesn't it? Doesn't it make it sound not that bad? So maybe instead of thinking, what's my $1,000,000,000 idea, think, what can I do in the next 4 to 6 months to make, let's say, 2 or $3,000 a month? And then once you've gotten there, you are a 1000000 miles ahead of the old you that was thinking about building a $1,000,000,000 company, but hadn't done crap yet. So I'm working on something.

I'm working on tutoring, accounting tutoring, one school. Do I want it to be a bunch more schools? Absolutely. Do I want it to be a bunch more classes? Not anymore.

I used to. I used to think, it's gonna be the one place to do tutoring. That's stupid. I'm good at tutoring accounting. So I'm gonna start by tutoring accounting at Texas a and m.

And, yeah, maybe that is a small idea. But you know what? That's okay. I'm okay with that now. Because, man, a lifestyle business provides for your lifestyle.

Right? We have jobs, so we can get money. We have money, so we can get food and medicine and shelter and, you know, whatever else we use money for. Clothes probably. But imagine if you had a business that provided all of those things for you.

What would you do with all your spare time? Probably work on your business because, you know, you think it's pretty fun. What would you do if you didn't have a job and you had a small business instead? What if we all had small businesses? It would be kind of liberating.

Right? Let's go do it. You can find the show notes for this episode or leave a comment at musicmakers.fm/8. You can subscribe to us in iTunes by searching for Musicmakers. And please leave a 5 star review by going to musicmakers.fm/review.