I used to think I was awesome. Google burned that dream.

Here at the Coaching Blog- one of the world’s leading blogs on the subject of Leadership and Coaching we quite often post articles by leading authors and authorities- today we are delighted to post an article from Medium.com by Jon Westenberg.

The entitled don’t get breaks. They get broken.

When I was in my early 20’s, I was relatively certain that I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was arrogant. I was self obsessed. I’d founded and sold a music business, and to my mind that made me a superstar. I was looking for something to do, and it seemed to make sense that I’d go and work for a tech company. When I applied at Google, there was no hesitation, no moment of doubt. I didn’t even consider the possibility that I wouldn’t even land an interview.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. It left me dumbfounded. Not even an interview or a conversation. I applied again and again, over the years, looking to land a marketing role with the company. Again and again, I was knocked back. Somewhere along the line, I stopped trying, and I started blaming Google for never giving me a chance.

It was their loss, I decided. Theirs and only theirs. They needed me, more than I needed them. They were missing out on a superstar. I started to hate the company.

Looking back now, I can’t believe how entitled and conceited I was. Why would Google have given a job to a kid with no formal qualifications, no alignment with the company and a shitty attitude?

Being young is often about making mistakes, and learning to live with them, and then growing older and learning to take responsibility for them. That’s what my career since has been about. Over the past few years, I’ve stopped focusing on trying to land a tech job, and I’ve enjoyed following my passions. I’ve also let the school of life kick the shit out of me, and take me down a peg or two.

That conceited kid feels like a lifetime ago. Being him, doesn’t even feel familiar. But I know he’s a part of me, a part of some of my worst qualities, and a part of the entitlement I used to be prone to.

I don’t know where our entitlement comes from. I don’t know where we get the idea that we’re worth more than others, that we deserve more, are more, or will be more. But it’s an attitude I see in more than a few startup founders, in some of the entrepreneurs that I talk to. They almost act as though they’re entitled to winning.

I know this doesn’t apply to all founders. In fact, it doesn’t even apply to most of you. But it does apply to a little sliver of entitlement that a lot of us pick up without even knowing it — myself included — and it does apply to the vocal few who are building startups because their Mom told them they were unique and wonderful and deserved only the best.

If you believe that having a big idea, or being in a tech company is enough of a validation that it proves you’re the next Elon Musk, then you’re bound to run into problems. In startups, as in a professional career, as with any opportunity, you have to follow the words of the great Malcolm Tucker: get the fuck in, or fuck the fuck off. You can’t hang around waiting for the world to give you a big invitation to the grand stage, just because you think you’re owed a shot.

When you realize that shot just isn’t coming, it’s going to break you.


What does that look like, for a founder?

Let’s say you want to be an entrepreneur. You want to tell people you’re an entrepreneur. You want to be on top of the world, and on top of your to-do list, and be interviewed about productivity, and make a million, and change the world, and get funding, and meet Miranda Kerr, and take it to the top, and crush it.

And you know it’s going to be hard. You know it’s going to be hard because you’ve read the blog posts, and you’ve read the biographies and you’ve learned how shit the pathway is, and you think you’re ready to take on the challenge and struggle through.

You’re a dreamer. You’re a visionary. You’re a believer. You’re a would-be genius. You’re a future king of the valley. You’re the spiritual successor to Elon-fucking-Musk and the entire PayPal mafia, and if you just throw one more dice, everything will come up you.

You start a business. And that’s where the trouble starts.

You’ve decided to call your new business a startup. It’s a good word, and it’s the one everyone uses, and you know it has a lot of buzz. You can’t quite define what it means, but you know it’s something to do with a few other words, like “lean” and “agile” and “innovation” and “disruption.” Why shouldn’t the word apply to you? How many books do you have to read, and how many blogs do you have to follow to earn it?

The timing is right. It must be right. New startups are funded every single day, minting new millionaires by the hour — at least on paper, and there’s no reason you can’t be one of them. After all, you’re a bright spark, and you deserve it.

So what’s your first step? What do you do?

Most entrepreneurs begin with a landing page. They’ve got a plan around putting out an MVP and getting people to sign up to buy the most basic version of your product. They might have zero idea of how it’s all going to work, and how the product will function, or they might have a cobbled together, automation and integration, sticky tape and band-aid solution that barely gets the job done.

Which one are you? It doesn’t matter. You deserve to have customers, and you’ll figure out what to give them later. Your goal right now is to drive the people, the faithful flock, to your landing page and get them to convert. What happens next can be worked out later. You have to get something onto the great information super-highway and find yourself some traffic.

Next stop, you’re on ProductHunt. You’ve done some research, and now you know the best time to launch, the optimal time to post your product and get the world going crazy. You’ve lined up some nice images, and you’re standing by to answer comments and questions, and encourage people to join what you’ll inevitably call a movement.

There are two things that will probably happen now.

  1. Your product is released to zero fanfare and nobody gives a shit. 90% of you will give up right here, and right now, after attempting to launch on one channel, with one attempt. This is it for you. It was always going to be it for you, because you didn’t have the creativity or the guts to go further or prove that you had anything special.
  2. You get some traffic, and some feedback, and you start getting a few customers. This is where you believe your idea has been validated. Unfortunately, you’re not doing nearly as well as you thought, because you’ve had the sudden realization that you’re not a smash hit.

Why can’t you be a smash hit?

Sure, there’s a chance that you might be outcome 3, that your product will go viral and it’ll change your life in an instant. The problem is, many of the founders I talk to have this assumption that they really are outcome 3. By some natural gift of destiny.

When they don’t achieve this huge, instant, world record smashing success, it strips away their entitlement and a lot of their arrogance, and with it their confidence. It happens so quickly, with such a shock, that it can entirely demoralize them. And knock them down with an incredible force that prevents them from ever getting back up.

What they should really do is take the initial failure, or modest success, and find a better way to approach their business. Find a better product. Learn and grow. But the entitled founders don’t do this, they get discouraged and they quit.

This is the large problem with entitled founders, and the same applies for anyone who holds a sense of entitlement in their fields. The chances are, you’re not as hot as you think, and when that comes home to roost, it’s incredibly damaging to you. For you own good, and for the sake of your own resilience, you have to let go of the concept that you deserve to make it.

Which is not to say that you can’t be confident. You do have to believe in yourself, and you do have to have a little faith. But there’s a big difference between that, and between honestly or subconsciously thinking that the big break is coming because you deserve it. There’s a difference between expecting, and earning.

I’m coming to you from the angle of a guy who used to be an entitled asshole. I’ve been taught a few rough lessons by the world, and I’m sure I’ve got a lot more yet to come.

The thing is, nobody really owes you shit. You’re just like the rest of the pack, and there’s nothing that makes you special. If you can reach that point of self awareness, and start to accept that you’re not a special snowflake by default, you might be able to gain a little more understanding and become something special.


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