Should You Start a Business? Use This Test | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, our first question comes from H, who asks,

00:00:05.360 | "How do I get over fear of starting a business?

00:00:09.200 | I've always wanted to be entrepreneurial to maximize autonomy over my life and alignment

00:00:15.680 | of what I do in my career with my values, but I have a lack of confidence in my personal skills

00:00:20.640 | or any domain expertise. And more than that, I'm very, very scared of the risk of entrepreneurism.

00:00:26.960 | Do you have any advice?" Well, H, the right advice for you, I think, can be found in my book,

00:00:35.280 | "So Good They Can't Ignore You." And in that book, I introduced the idea, which we've talked about

00:00:40.800 | on the show before, of money acting as a neutral indicator of value. It's a term that I borrowed

00:00:50.240 | from the entrepreneur, Derek Sivers. Now, the concept here is the way you de-risk a change

00:01:01.280 | in your career, especially a change, let's say, from a steady paycheck job to an entrepreneurial

00:01:07.920 | vision, is that you look to see if you can make money on the new thing. You don't ask people,

00:01:15.360 | "Is this a good idea?" You don't ask people, "Do you think I should go out on my own and start

00:01:21.120 | this business?" You don't just look to your gut and say, "What's my passion or what do I feel

00:01:25.920 | like doing?" You instead, on the side, start doing to a reduced degree the thing you're considering

00:01:33.760 | and see if people will give you money. Because here's the thing, it costs me nothing to tell

00:01:38.080 | you something's a good idea. It costs me nothing to compliment you. It costs me nothing to get you

00:01:43.600 | fired up about going big and betting on yourself. That costs me nothing. And I'll just do that. Why

00:01:50.480 | not? I'm a nice guy. I don't want to be mean to you, but you want my money. That's different.

00:01:55.600 | People are different about that. They're not going to give you their money unless they actually

00:01:59.680 | value what they're getting. And so Derek Sivers says, "Use money as a neutral indicator value."

00:02:05.600 | It's a way of evaluating, "Is this business idea good? Can I get clients? Will they pay me?

00:02:09.680 | Can I sell these things?" Derek Sivers used this before he left his job as an A&R executive to

00:02:16.240 | become a full-time musician. "Can I make enough money off gigs on the side to replace my salary?

00:02:22.000 | Then I will quit the A&R job." And when he left his job as a musician to start

00:02:25.520 | a online music company, CD Baby, he ran it on the side until he was making enough money to

00:02:32.800 | support him. And then he quit touring to work on the company. So if you're really, really worried,

00:02:39.840 | let that worry be your motivation to use this strategy. Get a specific idea. Run it on the side.

00:02:46.000 | See if you can make money. And if you're making enough money to live off of,

00:02:50.960 | then you won't have the fear. Or at least your fear will be greatly diminished.

00:02:55.360 | And if you're not making enough money to live on, that's a great signal. That means

00:02:58.880 | don't go quit your job. Don't go try to do this new thing. There be dragons.

00:03:04.640 | I'm surprised how often people skip this step because they don't want the answer.

00:03:10.000 | They love the romance of doing something different. They love the romance of what life would be like

00:03:15.760 | if they didn't have a boss. But they don't want to confront the reality that their idea might not be

00:03:19.920 | that good, that people might not actually pay them, they might not actually make a living.

00:03:22.960 | So they avoid this step because they don't want an obstacle to the thing that they want to be true.

00:03:27.600 | And I think it's a very dangerous way to go about career shifts. So H, try what you want to do. See

00:03:33.680 | if you get paid for it. If you don't, try something else. If you do, your fear should be pretty

00:03:39.040 | diminished.