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Instagram sells for $1B. Evernote is now valued at $1B. Pinterest at $1.5B. 3 month old companies coming out of YCombinator are getting investments based on $10M+ valuations. And today will be the Facebook IPO which will likely put a market cap on the company north of $100B. 

This is not a post about bubbles, it’s a post about maintaining perspective when you are no where close to being one of these companies and never will.

As the founder of a small company in Chicago who only took $17k from YCombinator 6 years ago (YC-W06) and now runs a classic “lifestyle” business that support myself and a small team from client revenues, I find myself wavering between being fairly satisfied with the state of my business life to mild depression and jealousy that I’m not in a situation to be cashing in myself. 

Regardless, I still have a lot of passion and belief in my business and won’t be leaving it any time soon. Our growth path has been slow and steady, not meteoric. In the face of an ever frothy investment and acquisition environment, the need for emotional discipline as a small business owner who will never be the next tech or investment community darling is critical.

Assuming many others are in this same position or will be in the coming months/years, here is what I’ve learned over time to keep myself optimistic and psychologically healthy (my wife would beg to differ :) 

Spend time with friends who are not in tech or startups
I didn’t realize how important this was until I actually made an effort to spend time with people who work in insurance, are lawyers, or work at non-profits. It’s refreshing to hear about someone else’s work life, realize that the latest .ly startup who claim they will be  ”changing the world” still has complete irrelevance to most people’s lives, and even finds my business interesting and exotic.

Read the newspaper
I read the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and numerous political blogs religiously every day for one simple reason. They give me perspective that beyond the screen, there is a messy world out there of happiness, scorn, betrayal, heartbreak, victory, life, and death that has absolutely nothing to do with technology.

Go for a lot of walks
I walk our dog at least once a day and often twice. Walks are a great way to clear your head and gain a sense of optimism by the time you get home. I mix up my walk between residential streets and streets filled with small businesses. Every day I walk by those businesses I see the owners toiling away: organizing shelves, working the fryer, wiping counters. I am even on speaking terms now with a few of them. Camaraderie. Those guys are in the same boat I am.

Go visit some of your customers in person
Surprise, surprise, even in your little business there are customers or users who care about your product and have spent time (and hopefully money) on it which means they have opinions about it. They can tell you what they like and don’t like, tell you how it’s benefited them in some way. You’re not doing this just to plan new features. Spending time with these people will make you feel relevant and needed which is critical to maintaining the drive to keep pushing forward.

Maintain a healthy relationship with parents
The great thing about parents is they’ve known you all your life. Hopefully they’re proud of you no matter what and they often have a knack for being able to put things in perspective and not let your head get too small or big. If parents aren’t around, maybe another family member can play the same role.

Keep a journal (not a blog)
So much of what we write these days is for others. We are constantly worried about how we are perceived, whether it’s a FB post, tweet, or blog post for our companies. A private journal is a place where you can be brutally honest with yourself and get everything out of your head. When I’ve been at more extreme points of depression, I’ve realized it’s because I’ve been obsessing over one or two things for more than a day. Writing it down in my own voice with my own insecurities included that I would never tell anyone else about is a huge release.

Find a therapist, life coach, or mentor
I can’t recommend this enough. You need someone in your life who has seen your situation a hundred times before and can share with you lessons learned. More importantly, you need to go through the process of knowing yourself and learning what your trigger points are for your full range of emotions: happy, depressed, lonely, fulfilled. If you don’t know yourself, you’ll never find the stability you need to carry yourself. And this person can’t be emotionally invested in you, like a husband or wife or close friend. They’re too biased to tell you what you may need to hear.

Appreciate your time more
Here’s when I feel best about my business life: when I take vacation whenever I want, when I take naps almost every day, when I go in to our office for half days, or when I look at my calendar and realize I have complete flexibility with my schedule. I answer to no one. Value this rarity immensely.

I hope these techniques are helpful to all the 10 or less employee, 500 sq ft office space (or home office), bootstrapping, revenue-based business founders. It would be great to have millions to buy lots of stuff, live more lavishly, even donate more. But if you constantly dwell on what you don’t have, your life is passing by far too quickly and that’s no one’s fault but your own. 

4th smartest thing you’ll do all day: Follow me on twitter

I had my last drink of alcohol 3 years ago and it’s been a dance-battling, boat-cruising, skinny-dipping, word-traveling, HUGE party ever since.

It wasn’t a choice of restriction or having less fun, but rather of fully experiencing everything and truly having the most fun possible.  The way I pitched it to myself was “You should be able to do all the dumb, crazy adventurous, fun stuff you do drunk… sober.  If you’re drunk, you’re not fully there.  You don’t remember everything. You can’t experience the adventures fully.  You’re half-assing partying!” I took the challenge, but I was in a place where one reflects on life and big changes like this are easier to make.

I had recently been recruited to work in Microsoft Live Labs getting paid $100k+ a year to do a job that didn’t take my full mental abilities.  Late twenties. Newly single.  Big house. Nice car. In good shape… And then I found out I had cancer under my right eye.

Basal Cell Carcinoma.  I was soon told it wasn’t terminal, but having any kind of cancer in your twenties comes as a shock.  And it didn’t help that I immediately started searching the web for information… where with anything medical you end up on WebMD which is a choose your own adventure that always ends up with you dieing of cancer.

I wasn’t going to die from this cancer but was going to get a big ol scar smack on my face.  If you’re going to get a reminder that life is fragile and you should be living it to the fullest, in the middle of your face is actually a pretty good place to have it.  My life had a dramatic moment to help me make a change, but you don’t need to get cancer to change.  Every day is a dramatic moment.  Every day you have the opportunity to change you life for the better.  Tomorrow looks open in your calendar…

My past 3 years have been the most exciting, interesting & passionate of my life.  I’ve partied in exotic places on levels that are on par for music videos.  I went skinny dipping with the hottest girl from my childhood… and then married her and made a beautiful daughter.  I quit my cushy job and went full-time on my startup with $1M in venture capital from top investors.  I traveled to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Boston, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Hawaii, Miami & Haiti.  And I was fully present for all of it.  I made those experiences awesome.  I owned them.  And I want you to experience life the same way.

Wasted

If I write a book about this topic some day I’ll call it “Wasted” because that’s the perfect way to describe both sides of the coin.  You get wasted drunk… and totally waste an opportunity.  It’s fun beating a game on easy mode… it’s much more satisfying to beat it on hard mode.

Winning a marathon probably still feels awesome, even if you did it riding a bike… But so much better to win the race on your own two shredded legs. Making good love is amazing even if the lights are off… but do it with the lights on where you can see the person with you and remember everything… Now that’s REAL good love.

My point is. Being sober isn’t being a party pooper, it’s about being a party. All the time.  If you can achieve this, to party sober and have as much fun as you would drunk… you realize you have the ability to have an awesome time anytime.  It’s like finding out you have a party super-power!

And being drunk doesn’t make you more awesome, funny, adventurous and charismatic.  It just helps you forget that you don’t think you are.

Lessons Learned About Sober Partying

Permission to Be Stupid.

Liquid courage is nice.  It helps you get up the nerve to dance, spark up a conversation, relax… But you don’t need to drink in order to do this.  Chances are if you’re in a club/bar, everybody else is drunk.  Go ahead and act like an idiot.  They won’t know.  This is something I’ve experienced several times.  Somebody will offer me a drink late into a night of partying, or 3 days into a party-fest and I’ll have to say “no thanks, I don’t drink.”  Which almost always gets a “WHAT? Dude you were so fucking drunk the other night.”  No dude, you were.  And I was just having an awesome time along with you and you couldn’t tell the difference.

Social Crutch.

Twiddling your thumbs isn’t very sexy.  Having your nose up in your phone isn’t very engaging.  Truth is, having a drink in a bar/club helps socially.  It gives you something to hold onto and fidget with.  Taking sips allows for pauses in conversations.  And cheers-ing people is pretty fun.  But that drink doesn’t have to be alcoholic.  A bottle of water screams “I’m sober & no fun” to drunk people, so drink something bubbly in a glass.  A coke in a drink glass will just look like a jack & coke.  (Warning, you can end up drinking several cans of soda in one night which isn’t very good for your body, so I recommend switching it up to something like soda-water with a splash of cranberry and a lime on the rim.  Or just soda-water and a lime wedge.)

Bigger Bank Account. Smaller Waist.

In my drinking days, I could put down 8-10 drinks in a night… which can end up being your entire suggested caloric intake for a day.  And at $10 a drink, you could save $4k from year of social drinking.  And $4k is a trip to an exotic place and a true once in a lifetime adventure.

Best Idea Ever!

I don’t know how many times I’ve been drunk… hundreds?  But I can’t say that I ever woke up the morning after and thought… “Wow, I’m so glad I did that thing I did last night.  It’s significantly improved my life.“  More often than not the next morning is full of regrets.  I for sure haven’t had the best mornings of my life hungover, but top 5 worst days of my life were all recovering from a lot of drinking.

Enlist Your Mates.

It was much easier to sell myself on the change then it was to sell my best friend.  “Dude, you’re no fun when you’re not drinking.”  Now this is a guy I’ve done countless ridiculous, well-being endangering, hilarious stuff with.  And all it took was a shady sex club to convince him, I would get into whatever adventure presented itself, regardless of being sober. (It wasn’t really an eyes-wide-shut sort of thing… more awkwardly sitting in a shady theater laughing at what was going on.)  If your friends can’t accept the change they’ll constantly make you not drinking an issue, even though the issue is clearly theirs.  My gut tells me a few nights of awesome times sober and they’ll eventually forget the issue, and more than likely appreciate the designated driver.

I Challenge You.

I challenge you to fully realize how awesome life is. To: Party hard. Go on adventures. Make good love.  Be bold. Scare yourself. Laugh it up. Be awesome. You already are, and when you can party without alcohol, the rest of your life will become a party too.

Auf dem rosa Zettel steht „Notfall“, deswegen soll ich nicht mit den anderen fernsehen und Automatenwasser trinken, sondern auf einer Trage liegen, dem Aufnahmetresen gegenüber, in Blickweite. Weißes Papierknistern zwischen dem harten Polster und mir, Hygienevorschrift. In dieses Knistern lege ich mich, versuche, unauffällig zu atmen, als sei ich Kind und presste mich auf einen Feldboden, gefallen in einem Krieg ohne Waffen.
Die anderen werden nach und nach aufgerufen, ein Lokalgangster mit angeschossener Hand, ein kleines Mädchen mit blau geprügelten Augen, eine dicke Mutter mit noch dickerem Sohn und Magenschmerzen. Neben mir sammeln sich weitere Tragen. Festgeschnallte alte Menschen, Faltengesichter und schreiverzerrte Münder. Krankenschwestern verteilen Spritzen und barsche Worte; währenddessen schlägt mein Herz, mein Notfallherz, immer schneller und nimmt mir die Luft. Ich kann keinen Notruf abgeben, weil dafür die Luftnot zu groß ist und ich frage mich, ob es das jetzt war. Ob ich in der Sterilität eines Krankenhauses sterbe, ohne etwas zurück zu lassen, das bleibt. Immerhin: ich weine, also lebe ich noch.
Die Ärztin, die schließlich auftaucht, ist klein und pummlig, sie fragt, ob ich eine Patientenverfügung hätte oder einen Organspendeausweis und lässt mich dann auf meiner Trage in ein Dreierzimmer rollen, die Pfleger sind gesichtslos vor meinem Tränenvorhang und legen Kabelverbindungen zu piepsenden Monitoren, Monitoren, die auf mich aufpassen sollen, weil ich das offensichtlich nicht mehr kann.
Der restliche Tag unterteilt sich in Blutentnahmen, die Pflasterreste an Armen, Händen und Füßen sehen wie Vereisungen aus, eine davon herzförmig: ein Ballonherz an einer Schnur. Die zwei Frauen neben mir fallen sich gegenseitig ins Wort - wenn sie nicht von Königsfamilien sprechen, dann von Einsamkeit. Ich versuche, mir einzureden, dass das Plätschern in ihren Urinbeuteln wie ein Bach klingt und dass ihr Erbrechen vorm Frühstück nur gesund sein kann; der Toast ist ohnehin kalt und hart wie das Braun der unberührten Schränke. Wir sind verkabelt, wir können nichts außer warten. Immerhin: ich bekomme Besuch. Der Besuch sitzt neben mir auf dem schmalen Bett, unter uns Plastik, ein Schutz gegen alles, was flüssig und menschlich ist. Der Besuch legt mir seinen Kopfhörer ans Ohr, Low singen „Try to sleep“ und die Blutdruckmanschette zieht sich zusammen, lässt meine Hand ein Stück seinen Oberschenkel nach oben wandern. Mit dem Besuch neben mir kann ich schlafen. Der nächste Morgen bringt wenig Neues: Mit meinem Herz stimmt etwas nicht. Vielleicht wohnt in ihm immer noch jemand, den es nicht gibt.