I don’t know how many Thursday nights I’ve put off work because soon it’ll be the weekend and I’ll have so much time. Guess what? When the weekend rolls around, I’m busy spending time with people and taking care of errands I also put off during the week. The abundance of time I imagined never materializes.

When I first ordered my 24” wide-screen monitor from Dell, a huge step up from the 17” monitor I had been working with previously, it was just when I was starting to build our app. The monitor was going to take a week to arrive, so I put off starting on the site until it had. Looking back, I can’t think of a lamer excuse not to get started.

The last category, stress, can often be the worst. If you waste time worrying about an upcoming interview or that talk you have to deliver, the worrying can get so bad that it causes paralysis. In school, when I had midterms or finals approaching, I wouldn’t work on any serious extracurricular projects. But I wasn’t studying all the time either. Some people have no problem with this and others are natural worriers. I can’t claim to have any secret to overcome anxiety, but I can offer that if you force yourself to work on projects and occupy your mind with other cares, you’ll feel a lot better and be more productive. This is something I am constantly working on.

Moonlighters: be especially aware

When you’re moonlighting, inventing roadblocks is especially damaging because you have less time. If you’re working late and only have a couple hours to spare before going to bed, you can’t afford to spend the first half hour just thinking about getting work done. Often times this is just the reality of the inefficiency of context changes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work to improve it. Moonlighting is also difficult because your product or service can easily slip into being a side project. Thinking of something as a side project means it’s of lesser priority and consequently will be easier to put off. Don’t label your project as such even on the days you may be less excited to rush home and work on it.

Just Build V1!

Staying focused isn’t an easy task. Overcoming these invented roadblocks is just one of the many things you’ll have to tackle along the way, but a very important one. Getting actively engaged in a project is step #1. Be conscious about how you’re spending your time and what you could do to improve. You can apply this to all aspects of your life. If you aren’t working on a project of your own right now, write down why. See how many of these reasons are invented. You may be surprised to find that they all are. So what are you waiting for? Just Build V1. (Psst.. maybe all you need is to find the right person to work with or read more articles on getting started.) But don’t read too many articles, you need to dig in and get cranking :)

What’s stopping you from building V1? How are you overcoming these invented roadblocks and getting things done?

It’s also interesting that many of the most lucrative professions leave you with the least amount of time, or as I think about it freedom. What do doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, and entrepreneurs all have in common? They tend to make a lot of money and work insane hours. Many of these people are trying to compress their 40 working years into five to ten years, but the most successful tend to be too driven to stop even after a huge financial windfall. Everyone else is left trying to stay ahead of their ever expanding lifestyles.

So if money isn’t the path to freedom, what is? The first step is to realize that the primary enemy of freedom is an employer, at least an employer that requires you to travel to an office every day 50 weeks out of each year. To escape you need to find an employer that values results above all else and is flexible in terms of tele-commuting or ideally figure out how to generate passive income, or as I like to think of it make money while you sleep. The goal is to figure out how to make money with the least amount of effort, that’s how you can truly free up your time. A few basic examples are earning income from investments or rental properties. The rub there is that you generally need a good bit of capital to start. However, there are tons of ways to generate passive income that don’t require a ton of capital thanks primarily to the internet. Many people make a good living and control most of their time by blogging, running an ecommerce website, creating an addictive online game, or selling health supplements. Creating a business that generates passive income is a big challenge, but the good news is that it’s easier than you think and the rewards are tremendous.

It’s easier than you think because you don’t need as much money as you think you do. Remember the lifestyle trap? What if you side-stepped that trap? I promise you don’t need all that stuff, and it won’t make you happier, so what’s the point? Once you figure out exactly how much income you need on a monthly basis to meet your lifestyle goals, you can research, identify, and experiment with potential businesses that will allow you to control your time. Good luck! If you’re interested, we’ll try to post more on how to identify opportunities to generate passive income. Let us know in the comments.

A lot of this thinking was inspired by Tim Ferris’ new book The 4-Hours Workweek, which I highly recommend, and a conversation with my good friend Kareem

Update: Check out Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

Choosing the right time to bring about change though is not an easy task. There is always a tradeoff between short-term pain as people adopt and the (hopefully) longterm benefits that will be enjoyed once implementation or adoption is complete. Sometimes when there are other disruptions taking place, it becomes the right time to bring yours as well. If people are moving to a different building or part of the office, why not take the time to experiment with a more open work environment by removing the sides of your cube? On the other end of the spectrum we probably all know people, including ourselves, who have become frustrated or alienated by change. A change in leadership often means the departure of loyal employees and a brave new policy is sometimes just too awkward for a few who would prefer to take off rather than to learn to live with it. Figuring out when to fight for your idea can be the difference between making everyone happier or making enemies. Often times, strategic reasons are the ones that dictate when a change should be made. Other times your co-workers need to be reinvigorated and a change that is likely to happen down the road could be made today instead. In software, when teams used to building new products suddenly find themselves doing maintenance work, the monotony needs to be broken up to keep maintain morale. Whenever you are able to convince others it’s time for change, make sure you’re ready to take responsibility for the consequences of that shift. If you run into problems, even if they are the fault of others, be ready to accept that people will look to you to explain them, which is why making sure the changes you’re making are right for the company and not just for you is so important.

The first question to ask yourself before implementing a new idea is “Who will be the biggest beneficiaries?” If you’re both the instigator and the beneficiary, you’ll likely have a more difficult time convincing others to go along even if there are clear benefits to the company as a whole. Be honest with yourself about whether or not you’re being selfish. Often times it’s all too easy when you want to pursue something to dream up a reason why the corporation should support your endeavor. If your arguments aren’t credible and your scheme looks designed to allow you to pursue personal goals, you’re not likely to garner much support. Changes you’re trying to bring about are likely to put a co-worker in a difficult situation because they’re forced to do some work that isn’t familiar to them; or, if you hold the expertise or drive required to make the changes successful, there may be higher-ups that are forced to consult with you. Which is all to say: the benefits better be clear up front. Some people have an easier time selling ideas than others. Plenty of things sound great from the outset when you’re showing off new features for the user interface or telling everyone how much more productive you and the team will be if you’re working remotely. If you convince people to come along, take responsibility for the consequences and be accountable. Just remember, if at some point you leave the organization with work that you fought for that was never completed, rest assured that they’ll be cursing your name until they’ve completely rolled back your changes. Like a product, ideas also need strong leadership to prevail. It isn’t easy to pick up someone else’s idea and make it successful; for the same reason, “we encourage everyone to share their ideas“http://blog.buildv1.com/article/10/what-if-im-afraid-someone-will-steal-my-idea. Make sure what you want to push through is in the company’s best interest and be ready to back it up.

In any situation where you find yourself defending a position, there will always be legitimate criticism and counter points made to your proposal as well as criticism that cannot be justified. The latter form of criticism is always fairly obvious. While generally it can be filtered out and ignored, when you’re proposing a more radical idea, irrational fears can be enough to dissuade you from your efforts. This is a shame. It’s important to remember that there will always be those who have something at stake that will not only disagree with your proposal, but will also work against you. You should know that it is only human nature to resist change when previous ways have worked, even if they are less efficient. When this does happen, it isn’t time to go back and question the conceptual model you’ve constructed from your research and intuition. While you open yourself up for the inevitable “I told you so” if your plan doesn’t live up to expectations, you should already have come to terms with the risk involved in being a catalyst and presumably accepted it. That’s life. If you believe strongly enough in what you’re pushing for, go for it. It’s important to keep in mind that any legitimate criticism you get should be leveraged to refine your idea; ideas are usually improved when others are able to voice their concerns or suggest improvements. Working with your co-workers and letting them know you’ve incorporated their feedback will make them feel more invested in your plan.

Collaboration on change is in everyone’s best interest: you should always ensure that there is a consensus to go along with you and make sure to recruit others to help out so that they too are invested. This can be as simple as having them take on part of your project or even just sharing the knowledge required to implement your idea with them. Getting others on board and working with you means that you have their tacit approval. If something goes wrong they’ll be on your side helping to explain why certain complexities arose and how these roadblocks can be overcome. If you’re all alone, people will slip into blaming you for a bad idea, potentially even proposing that it’s a sunk cost and should be abandoned. This is much harder to do when a group of people have subscribed to a shared goal.

Being a catalyst is rewarding, scary, and a lot of work. If it wasn’t scary, everyone would do it. Companies have both prospered and faltered on the beliefs of of their employees who have brought about change, but my guess is that more often than not they falter when there isn’t enough innovation. The most important thing to keep in mind is that because others are trusting you, you have to make sure you are honest and trust yourself. There’s no doubt that successfully introducing change will make you a hero and people will be more accepting of new ideas that you bring to the table in the future. The rewards are many, but it still isn’t easy knowing that even while you may have convinced people to let you pursue something, they still aren’t entirely sold on the idea and the its benefits. Personally, this only increases my own drive and in the end this works out for everyone because I’m completely invested in making the project a success and working at it harder than I would something else. Despite what you might read, it isn’t easy for everyone to decide to be an entrepreneur and live the life that comes with it. Being a catalyst in your company is a safer alternative and is sure to leave you with similar feelings. Not only that, but if you haven’t stepped up before, perhaps when you do, your new feelings of independence, worth, and confidence will allow you to take that leap into entrepreneurship. Or maybe you’re satisfied being the catalyst your organization relies on. That’s fine too.

“The number one question people ask us at Y Combinator is: Where can I find a co-founder? That’s the biggest problem for someone starting a startup at 30… Most of the questions people ask Y Combinator we have some kind of answer for, but not the co-founder question. There is no good answer. Co-founders really should be people you already know. And by far the best place to meet them is school.”

from paulgraham.com/mit.html

I have to disagree with Paul Graham on this one. I think there is a good answer to finding a co-founder. It’s not easy, but it’s very possible.

The key is to help great potential co-founders find you. How you ask? Prove to potential partners that you’re passionate, have vision, and can get things done. Get started, build a rough prototype, and start a blog to document your progress. If you can’t build a prototype, consider learning how to and blog about your idea; how it came to you, why you’re passionate about it, and how you plan to realize your vision. Explain why you’d be a great person to work with. What’s your experience? What are the key lessons you’ve learned? Do you have a philosophy about how companies should be run? Why do you want to start a business? Why won’t you give up when things inevitably get tough?

As you build a blog that demonstrates why you’d be a great person to partner with, network like crazy online and off. Find local groups of entrepreneurs. Meetup.com is a great place to start and if you’re in nyc, check out nextny.org Learn as much as you can about the business you want to start and figure out where great potential partners are likely to hang out online. Engage those communities and post comments and messages that add value and include a link to your blog to help people who found you insightful learn more about you. Joining the BuildV1 community is a great place to start : ) By submitting great links and posting insightful comments, you can promote yourself, add to the body of evidence that you’re a great person to partner with, and help other entrepreneurs find great info. Other great sites to check out are news.ycombinator.com and www.startupping.com

As you promote yourself through an online prototype, blog posts, and insightful comments, you’ll be amazed by the interesting people who start to contact you. Engage everyone who reaches out to you and try to figure out whether they could be a good fit. If you want to accelerate the process, create a job posting on your blog and find online job boards where great co-founders are likely to hang out. BuildV1’s job board is a great place to start. When you create a job posting, it pays to be as specific as possible about what you’re offering and exactly who you’re looking for. Try to communicate your personality and vision. The goal of your job posting should be to weed out everyone except for the best potential co-founders.

When you start to get great responses to your blog and/or job posting, the fun begins. You get to meet and learn about great potential co-founders. If you’re fortunate enough to have a few great potential co-founders, don’t agonize. After talking with the best candidates, make a quick decision and agree to work together on a mini-project to test working together. It’s critical to test working together with a small, well-defined project. As you start working together, you’ll quickly discover whether you enjoy working with the person and whether you think they’re smart and able to get things done. You’ll also quickly learn whether they’re as committed to the project as you are. At the end of the mini-project, or even before, evaluate whether you want to continue to work together. Be ruthless. If you question they’re capability or commitment at all, thank them and move on to one of the other great candidates you spoke with or start your search again. Don’t worry about the time you spent, it’s a sunk cost, and it’s critical to find the right person. The goal of each mini-project should be to figure out whether you want to work with the person as quickly as possible. If a mini-project goes well, start a new mini-project and keep going until you’re convinced that you’re working with the right person. When you get to that point you’ll know, trust me. It’s an amazing milestone. At that point it’s off to the races.

Still skeptical? This approach worked for me. I found an amazing co-founder, Ben, online. It wasn’t easy, but it worked out and it’s incredibly rewarding.

Here’s the short version of the story:

I tried to build a simple contact manager/crm app with a great friend. We hired a designer to build out our wireframes and a developer to bring our application to life. The designer and developer were very talented, but it was clear that they weren’t anywhere near as excited about our app as we were. We were bootstrapping and couldn’t afford to pay enough to be anyone’s top priority. I realized that if I was going to bootstrap I would need to build as much of the product as I could by myself and I would need to work with people who were passionate about the idea. I had learned html and css in the past and decided to design my next project myself. I spent a lot of time improving my chops and it’s paid off.

As we looked for a new developer to help us improve the contact manager, I became frustrated by the idea of hiring another programmer who wasn’t passionate about the project but through the process I met a great programmer who I pitched my next idea, BuildV1. We spent the next few months building the first version of BuildV1. We enjoyed working together, but it became clear that he just didn’t have enough time for the project. I realized I needed to find someone else if I wanted to ramp up and expand BuildV1 the way I wanted to, so I created a post on BuildV1, my blog, and a few other job boards. I received a bunch of responses and considered working on a mini-project with a few different people. I planned a mini-project with a developer, but he ended up not having time and it never got off the ground. I moved forward and received an email from Ben. Ben stumbled on to BuildV1, saw my post, thought it was a promising idea, and had been looking for an interesting project. He had a few great ideas and after a brief phone call we decided to work together on a mini-project. Since then we’ve been off to the races on the new BuildV1.

BuildV1 has already helped me and Ben and a few others, and we’re just getting started. Please let us know if you’ve found great people through BuildV1 and if there’s anything we can do to help. Good luck!

Thanks,
The BuildV1 Team, Eric, Ben, and Michael