I just read this great post - "When you want to quit because it’s just not worth it" - about how it's generally pretty shitty being an entrepreneur if you consider all of the emotional ups & downs you have to endure. As I was reading this post (by an entrepreneur whom I have loads of respect for), I realized that I've had so many such situations in the last 3-odd years and if I had to tell an upcoming, sparkly-eyed entrepreneur about all of that, being an entrepreneur is probably the last thing that they'd want to do.

What is even more appalling - even to myself - is that during most of the down periods, I'm totally emo & irrational. (I think it takes big balls to admit that, so am hoping for some kudo's for that at least... :))

Let me tell you about one of these recurring emo episodes that I experience every other month...

I'm a very impulsive guy, which means that momentum and adrenaline are the things that generally keeps me interested in projects. So in business and in my daily to do's I always try to make sure that there's as much momentum as possible on all fronts (of which there are multitudes), because this is the only way I know how to work. This also means that I've taken all of my time and dedicated it to as many projects as possible, because I avoid being in limbo like a plague. Let me explain...

The bulk of my to do list compromises stuff that I need to get done for WooThemes, where we are always working on multiple different projects at any given moment in time. The WooTeam compromises of 10 of us, which means that I need to have a hand in a bunch of different pies as the "strategy guy" making sure that we're all working in the same direction. All of this is just dandy, because obviously that means that some days my time / energy is quite stretched in trying to get to all of these to do's.

Yet I found a way to complicate that even further: create even more projects. Along with WooThemes, I also founded Radiiate where we're working on a variety of different other projects. Then there's also the Rockstar Foundation of course, which is purely a passion project considering that I'm definitely not involved in there for the profit. :)

So now most of my days end up being a juggling act, whereby I try to figure out what's the most pressing to do and to get to as many of those to do's as possible. I might add that I've become really, really good at this too in the last couple of years.

But what's the problem then?

Every other month I become a tad emo and I start to question everything I'm working on; especially the projects that either don't have enough momentum at that stage or simply aren't growing in the direction that I'd like. Questioning myself turns into massive self doubt and eventually turns into utter denial, where I simply want to drop everything that I feel is causing my emo-state at that point in time.

My logic generally sounds something like this: eliminate the things that is causing me unhappiness, free up my time / energy and then be happier. But cue my inherent personality: I'd just find something else to fill up my time again, causing the same old cycle of questioning, self doubt & denial.

I think I'm genetically incapable of sitting still (in terms of being an entrepreneur), which means I'll always be chasing the next idea. I can't not have ideas suddenly. This obviously means that there's no way for me to serve both gods here and I'm thus destined to become overly emo and irrational once every couple of months as I try to figure out just what makes me happy (I think that's it).

At the moment I'm dealing with these episodes in a very simple way: I ride out the storm and then I continue as if nothing ever happened (normally after a pep talk and a proper slap from my wife). And everything has been working out just fine.

But that doesn't detract from the fact that - as an entrepreneur - these emotional rollercoasters are part and package of my job and I have to deal with that.

Tweets like this makes everything so much more worthwhile. :)

I'm an ambitious guy, which means that I'm currently working on a bunch of different projects (to name only a couple). And on top of this, I'm hiring a new Rails developer to help push it even more projects...

The thing is that there are some days - like today - when I feel as if it is absolutely impossible to be working on all these projects and I just crave the simplicity that comes from only working on one thing at a time. But no, I have this uncompromising ambition which means I want everything done yesterday and that instead of multi-tasking, I just multi-project.

This isn't intended to be some kind of emo tale of how I can't cope, how I can't find time for everything and how I'm not executing enough to be happy / successful. Nope, I'm incredibly happy with my life and I have many blessings which I'm incredibly grateful for.

But this uncompromising ambition has a few consequences though.

I have sacrificed most of my hobbies in life as a result of this ambition... I can't use the internet anymore, without checking my mail or checking in on sales / progress from my different ventures. I only read business- or web-related books and / or content, instead of just chilling out with a mindless novel. Heck, I can't even let my thoughts wander (and relax), without it veering to new ideas, optimizations or business experiments.

Is it a curse? Probably not. In fact, this ambition is probably a good thing, because it makes me work really hard. And deep-down I know that everything doesn't need to be finished yesterday, that I need to delegate & prioritize better and that I need to learn the skill of switching off properly.

It's just that some days - like today - it feels as if I'm completely standing still.

I believe in entrepreneurship and capitalism, in every man and woman's right to create value and awesome products, whilst in turn building businesses on top of that. I also believe that as a part of this freedom and opportunity, entrepreneurs need to give back to the communities on which they've built their success. This is entrepreneurship for social good.

I briefly mentioned this in my 2011 "goals" post and this is one thing that is firmly on my radar for this year. I really want to make a difference, using my various successful businesses as a platform for that. Along this way, I also hope to inspire other, like-minded entrepreneurs to do the same, because a bigger, united team can have a much bigger, collective impact.

For me, it's also about so much more... Worldwide poverty is a massive issue and a problem which our societies have not been able to resolve for centuries. I believe that entrepreneurs - by creating value and new opportunities - can help solve that problem.

Aboard Entrepreneurship

Enter the latest brainchild from Radiiate: Aboard Entrepreneurship.

We're just announcing the launch of this project now and whilst it's very much in its infancy, we're super excited about the momentum that we have already been able to build.

Aboard Entrepreneurship (as the site details) is an upcoming book, which will be a collection of entrepreneurial essays contributed by some of the leading entrepreneurs on the internet. We've already secured contributions from the likes of Matt Mullenweg (Automattic), Anthony Casalena (Squarespace), Collis Ta'eed (Envato), Garry Tan (Posterous) & a couple of others. Not a bad team of contributors there, right?

Where's the social good? All of the contributors have volunteered their time and content for free, which means that once the book is ready, all of the proceeds will go back into empowering and educating new entrepreneurs. We plan to use the proceeds to create bursaries for promising business students, as we believe that this will complete the circle.

Aboard Entrepreneurship does aims to empower, educate & inspire both established entrepreneurs (to build better social businesses) and help educate the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

Follow Our Progress

In the next couple of weeks, we'll be announcing a whole bunch of new contributors. Our hope is to get as many as 30 (maybe even 40) contributors to the book and you can expect a couple of big names to be included there.

The project will have a couple of phases. For now, we're hoping to finalize our contributor's list and build some interest in the project with the newsletter list (we hope we can count on your help here). Thereafter we will finalize the content & the design for the book, which will go up on Kickstarter (where we hope to use the initial interest in the project to get it funded). Final phase will be releasing this beast. :)

So head on over to the site & register your interest. A couple of tweets would be pretty awesome as well. :)

I've started to doing something new. Instead of just posting my photos randomly to Flickr (usually a case of finishing the editing and then uploading months after the photo was taken), I've started a bit of a photoblog there.