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| Written by Akiba | |
| Monday, 12 April 2010 | |
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I promised a while back to write an article describing what I’ve been through in starting a micro-manufacturing operation. There are a lot of books available to guide you through becoming independent, starting a website, and also starting a business. However there is a huge aspect to all of it that is neglected or just given lip service. It turns out that striking out on your own is a huge emotional and mental head game. When I started down the micro-manufacturing path, part of it was to create a wireless tool set that I could use myself, and part of it was to create a business that could sustain myself and my family while I continued to work on open source software. While there was a lot of technical hurdles that had to be overcome, what I was completely unprepared for was the mental aspect of it all. While I was trying to design products, build the website, figure out manufacturing, create documentation, generate content, understand accounting, source parts, and the millions of other things that it takes to start up a manufacturing operation, I spent a lot of time by myself and in my head. I had to confront a side of myself that I tried to suppress for a long time. It’s a very ugly side of me that is the culmination of all the emotional baggage I’ve accumulated over my lifetime. When you go down the path of starting any business, there’s one huge thing you have to deal with: uncertainty. How you deal with it depends on a lot of factors. Preparation, experience, and skill level will take you to a certain point but you’ll eventually find that you’ll be facing situations that are completely new to you. This is where the head games start. When you’re in a situation that you’ve never faced before, you naturally feel anxiety. People deal with this in different ways. Some people avoid it and some people go at it head on. When you’re on your own, you can only face things head on, but it’s not quite as simple as that. People also feel different levels of stress associated with being placed in new situations and that stress can manifest itself in different ways. The amount of stress that people feel is probably related to many things, but I think the major cause of this stress is insecurity. There are a lot of types of insecurity: insecurity about your job, finances, self, skills, knowledge, age, body, and just about anything else you can imagine. The biggest part of starting the business for me was dealing with my insecurities. Will people buy what I’m selling? Are my skills high enough? Do I have enough money? Enough time? Are the products wrong? The features wrong? Am I wrong to be doing this? This is where it gets into the uncomfortable prospect of having to deal with yourself as your own worst enemy. I had to get past all the tiny voices whispering doubts into my ear and de-construct them. These voices are accumulated from various sources like my parents, teachers, friends, education, or traumatic experiences and in many cases are designed to protect me and my fragile ego. This protection eventually becomes a limitation that needs to be overcome which is a highly stressful experience. Getting past the insecurities, or at least feeling comfortable defying them is a crucial skill in becoming mentally tough enough to handle a business and one that I am still struggling with. All of these already exist in most people, but starting a business painfully exposes them. I think it’s hard to explain this in a lot of detail, so maybe I can try an analogy. Imagine a game where you’re put into a room by yourself with the door unlocked. Other people are playing too and they each have their separate rooms with an unlocked door. There’s only one rule which is that the winner of the game is the last person left in their room. You’re not told how many people are playing or how long the game will last. There is no clock in the room or anything else. You just need to sit and be the last person to stay in your room. I was basically socialized as a child through games and sports with very clear rules. There were clearly defined criteria for what was legal, illegal, how to advance, and what decided winners and losers. Unfortunately, life is not so kind and clearly defined rules and criteria are not as common. I don’t think the skills needed to deal with these types of situations are generally taught so I had to learn a lot of things on-the-fly. Dealing with uncertainty was, surprisingly to me, one of the hardest parts of starting up FreakLabs and my micro-manufacturing operations. I had to face a lot of hidden demons that I didn’t even know existed inside of me. Fear of failure was a big one, but there’s also fear of not being liked, being wrong, being good enough, being homeless, being fat *sigh*, and probably a dozen others. And when faced with the unfamiliar situations that triggered these insecurities, the resulting stress ended up manifesting themselves in strange ways. There was avoidance, emotional hyper-sensitivity, ie: wild mood swings, depression, infinite mental loops, muscle pain (constant muscle tension due to the fight or flight response), panic attacks, and allergies. I was actually really surprised at seeing how stress and anxiety could physically affect me so much. The good news was that since I was able to experience such a broad spectrum of symptoms, often simultaneously, I was slowly able to recognize them for what they really were. Being able to diagnose the symptoms of anxiety, differentiate my stress triggers, and see the underlying insecurities that cause them was extremely important because it made me more self-aware. As I became mentally stronger, going into unfamiliar situations became less terrifying because you can recognize the individual voices of self-doubt and deal with them much more easily. Eventually, the unfamiliar situations became familiar and those voices subsided. It’s still an ongoing struggle to deal with a lot of the mental and emotional aspects of being a business owner and a manufacturer, and I think it’s an area that’s really neglected in the available business literature. There’s very little support infrastructure for people going through these types of problems and I had to deal with many of them on my own. It was a very painful experience and I hope that others that are either going through this now or contemplating it in the future won’t need to think they’re going insane when they experience something similar. Hits: 8487 Trackback(0)
Comments (13)
  written by Akiba, April 13, 2010
Ha ha ha...I think putting yourself out there is already a sign of success. The next time will be much easier. As for me, the insecurities will constantly follow me around, but I'm getting better at handling them.
For the shop, I'll be happy just getting it open. I'm currently planning to do it on 4/19 which gives me a week to make small adjustments and take some time off. Thanks for the great comment 
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 written by Conn Clark, April 13, 2010
Starting a business is never easy. The best advice I can give you is to become friends with and seek advice from others that have started small business. I have a friend that is just getting his business off the ground. He totally committed to it by cashing in his retirement and quitting his day job. He hasn't made a cent yet because his fcc certification hasn't come through yet but he does have customers lined up.
It is probably better to keep your day job until you start having some money coming in from customers though. report abuse
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 written by André, April 13, 2010
Thanks for sharing.
I haven't experienced any like what you described in such detail. I've been wanting to start my own business but just planning and thinking about it, makes me fight me. I hope to achieve the understanding of myself soon enough. By the way, I lost the game 
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written by Akiba, April 13, 2010
Ha ha ha. Its tough to take the plunge, but its also really interesting and rewarding. Although what I described was pretty rough, I'm completely different than I was just a few years ago. If you want to start up a business, I wouldn't rush into it. There's plenty of skills you can build up as you stay employed that will help you a lot when you start. Some off the top of my head are: web site design, accounting, writing, graphic design, photography, video editing, webshop usage...the list goes on...and those are just the non-electronics things
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 written by Lucian, April 14, 2010
I liked the first part, where you explain about the insecurities. I understood your explanation, since I am facing the same uncertainties: should I start something on my own, what innovative idea to find - today when everything you imagine seems already done by someone else on the other corner of the world, how to attract customers... Well, for the moment I'm coward and I still work for others...
But, good luck with your struggle and hope to read some other articles on this subject, as you go along. report abuse
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 written by Phil, April 14, 2010
I know how you feel with the insecurities, I started my own business 16 months ago, leaving a pretty well paying job to do so. Im in the same field as you(only not so much RF/wireless) and my main concern is always, without a dounbt, is my product ok to sell/will it function as it did in testing/did I test it properly?
This always gets to me upon the release of a new product and is happening now as Im finishing production of a custom board and getting it ready to distribute! I suppose I may get over it one day! report abuse
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written by Akiba, April 15, 2010
@Lucian. I think I'm misunderstood in that it's not cowardly to work for others. I think that's actually a better way to start your own venture. It will remove a lot of the pressure and give you time to build up the skills necessary for running a business.
There are many skills aside from technical that are important. For the website alone, you will need to learn basic HTML skills, probably some graphics design, how to operate a website (usually hosted platforms are easier), and how to operate a blog/CMS platform (ie: Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress). For a webshop, you will need to learn how to photograph products, edit photographs, run a shopping cart platform, do accounting, handle payments, calculate shipping, and many other things. This is just a few of the non-hw/sw related things that are required and you don't need to be an expert at all of them, but you should at least be comfortable and have a working knowledge with them. It takes time to build up and if you suddenly quit your job to start a business, the time required to learn these skills would put additional burden on you. That's why I think its best to keep a day job and build up a lot of the necessary skills in your free time. report abuse
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written by Akiba, April 15, 2010
@Phil: Yeah, I hear ya. I've been going through a lot of similar questioning in opening up the shop. I've finally run out of excuses so I'm gonna just cut off the tweaking and get the first versions out the door. I think anyone that puts anything out for public display feels self-conscious about it. I remember going through the same thing when I was a dancer and had to go out in front of large audiences at concerts or on TV. My sister is also a writer and she'd be a wreck when she had to display/publish her work or do a reading.
From my experiences at dancing, you never get over that nervousness which is probably a good thing, but you do get better at handling it and dealing with any problems that unexpectedly surface. report abuse
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 written by phang, April 15, 2010
It feels so much relieve that I'm not alone after reading what you have wrote. I'm exactly at the same point as you, where I already have a proper web shop with all the product ready (or half ready should I say). But, that feelings of trying to make everything so complete before launching it, is dragging everything down. There's so many things to learn and I guess if I never set a date line, I might not be able to see any outcome at all. At the same time, I'm still stuck with my full time job that keeps my bills and home mortgage paid monthly.
By the way, your web shop looks pretty nice.
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written by Akiba, April 20, 2010
Thanks. Hoping to open the shop up tonight.
As for what you're going through, I think its the norm rather than the exception. I've learned that you have to set a cutoff point and even though there are always things to make your designs better, you should let go and release a design that's good enough. Future versions can always improve things and its better to build up the experience in running a live business sooner rather than later. Of course, I'm speaking from the experience of doing it the opposite way and realizing that its not the way to go. report abuse
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 written by Lib, June 25, 2010
Hi, Chris
Been a long time! Just catch up on your blogs. You showed us an excellent decription of insecurities for starting up a business. Thanks for sharing, 'cos I'm attempting to do a similar thing with my friends. There are tons of knowledge to learn and things to do. I'm learning the PS now to make photos look better. Regardless of depression and mood swings sometimes, I do enjoy the course of learning and self-improving. Good luck! 
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I'm looking forward to seeing your products appear online and maybe even buy a few things. I'm more of a software guy, but I've learned the hard way that software alone doesn't make money these days.
Back to the point of my comment. Thanks for sharing! I agree that more resources on the subject of the lonely technology entrepreneur would be very useful.