The fear of carrying your truth to market

It’s not business, it’s just personal.

Especially for entrepreneurs.

When someone puts their heart, soul, sweat and capital into creating something that didn’t exist before, that enterprise becomes an extension of their identity.

It’s not just a business, it’s a vital index of the founder’s values. In many cases, it’s hard to tell where the company ends and the entrepreneur begins.

Zuckerberg built the biggest social media company in the world, completely in his own image. He sculpted the organization to his liking, as one journalist put it. Facebook has its signature blue color for one reason. Mark is red green colorblind. He prefers to look at the color blue since he can see it so distinctly. Both physical and spiritually, this company reflects his sensibilities.

Perfect example of how it’s not business, it’s just personal.

An interesting expression of this principle is within the customer acquisition process. Because ask any startup founder, getting your first cohort of users is a gradual and difficult process. In an oversaturated, competitive world, where anytime you create anything, you compete with everyone, earning people’s attention, trust and money is no easy task.

It’s quite possible you will launch something deeply personal, only to be greeted by crickets, yawns and shrugs.

Dostoyevsky’s book about the underground discusses this very issue. Known by critics as the first existential novel, he writes about being trapped in the prison of his own character. Here’s the passage that stuck out for me:

Grieving for your own insufficiency, out of the pettiest vanity you carry your truth to market, but only to be exposed to scorn and shame.

Have you ever experienced that kind of fear before? It’s awful. Ties your stomach into knots. Makes you feel invisible. Like you’re just waiting for the world not to care about your product.

I remember the day my software product went live. It was exciting and rewarding, but also terrifying.

What if I can’t get any users?

What if nobody is compelled to get behind the wheel of what I’m selling?

What if my only customers are my family members, who, god love them, would be proud of me if I took a shit in a box and sold it for bitcoin?

All of these fears were to be expected. And I allowed myself to sit with them.

But within a week of launching, I realized just how irrational they were. We started getting users. Real people who paid real money to use a real product that I really made.

Yes, many of them were friends, colleagues and relatives.

But many were not. We had total strangers from around the world who saw the value in my product and said yes.

Holy hell that felt good. Each new user set my brain’s dopamine system aflutter as the neurochemicals coursed through my bloodstream.

And not because of the money, but because of what the money stood for you.

That I’m worth it. That I built something deeply personal that’s beautiful and useful. Each person who signed up was essentially saying, thank you, I like you, I trust you, I believe in you, and I want to hear more from you. Keep doing what you’re doing.

It’s not business, it’s just personal.

What fears do you have about carrying your truth to market?