Entrepreneurship is a life reset

There are things about yourself you never have reason to examine when you are in the flow of the trajectory of your typical career. This is not to say that career progression in a large organisation is easy by any means, I should know. But over time, the process of organisation building has ironed out any wild swings needed to go up the ladder. It’s by design. It’s not nefarious, it just makes cold business sense to not expect incredible personal development from your average employee. The incentives are aligned away from your having to experience massive developmental upheaval. The unit must perform, and multiple good shoulders applied to the task is a far more realistic (and scalable, and repeatable) goal than is the search for a miracle woman or man who’ll do it all by themselves. Note also that the career path for any employee is laid out linearly over years: you’re never expected to show a step jump in performance from year to year. Entrepreneurship is literally the opposite of this, and not recognising this causes so much pain for first-time entrepreneurs, especially those that quit a corporate job they’ve experienced success at. Buyer beware: you’re signing up for a life reset.