How I learned that keeping your start-up a secret may be a good idea
There is a theory that says that you should tell everyone about a great goal so that you stay motivated to achieve it. While this is true if your you are planning to run a marathon for example, it may not be that helpful if your goal is to start a business. As, I found out the hard way.
Before I took the very scary step into the brave world of Entrepreneurship I was a senior Manager for a very busy 300 seat restaurant in an affluent area in the outskirts of glamours Dubai. It was a breakfast, lunch and dinner operation with a late licence bar, an on site bakery and a huge terrace overlooking a golf course.
Being in the position of General Manager I was certainly respected by many and it may seem that I had everything to be happy about. I was paid well, the restaurant was doing well. But It was also lonely because everybody knew your business, or if they didn't know they made it up. Expat life makes many people feel that have the right to be more demanding than they would ever be at home and often rude too.
Emotionally the feeling that I was not learning anything new was also wearing me down. I love challenge but the kind that makes you think or pursue a target. I started feeling more and more like I was in a prison and the hours where gruesome, so I felt I was trapped in a goldfish bowl.
Starting a business
Increasingly thinking of my next move I thought, ‘I have 25 years experience with this industry and I have worked for some of the biggest names in London and Dubai, I should just start my own business’. Super excited I told my friends all about my wonderful idea. I was going to start a recruitment and training business focusing on pre-opening restaurants. After all I had opened plenty and training was something I had been involved heavily in during my whole career.
I had a good friend that I had worked with previously who I told my idea to and she was all ecstatic, thinking it was the best idea ever. She was job hunting at the time with not a lot of luck, so she wanted to get involved. Great! I thought. She was far less senior than me but she had worked for me before and she was good at her job. Besides I did not really want to do it all by myself anyway, I’m kind of social and the idea of having a friend to bounce ideas on seemed a great prospect.
Sour friendships
It did not take long for my friend to start behaving strangely. She registered the company fifty percent in her own name without telling me and eventually started demanding a salary for her work. Our relationship completely changed as I found out more and more that she was just in it for the money and it was not long before we fell out completely.
Another friend started behaving strangely also. She was always mocking me when I was talking about my business the way we used to talk about work before I started my business. I could sense the jealousy from her instead of support and eventually our friendship also eroded. I had more friends that kept telling me how crazy I was to have left job security and position and that I should find a job instead. They simply could not understand that I was following my dream and pursuing it.
Hard times
Stating a business the traditional way is extremely hard work, the costs are high and there few securities especially in Dubai. It does not matter how good you are, if you don’t have the right contacts it is near impossible to open doors. Soon I was in financial trouble and really struggling. I ended up working projects for less than half what my salary had been and could not afford to keep my apartment. I’ll be honest, sometimes I did not know where the next meal was coming from and had to start asking people to borrow money to survive. You quickly find out how few friends you have when you are in trouble. Gone where all the ‘so called’ friends I had when I was in a good position as a General Manager.
New friendships
Then by chance I bumped into a woman who I had only briefly known as the wife of a work acquaintance. She was going through a divorce and needed a tenant to help with her mortgage that she had been left with as she was buying her husband out. I moved in and we became really good friends. The divorce was very fresh and she was hurting badly. Her friends had all been entangled with her husbands life so many of them disappeared when the split was going on.
Eventually she started to smile about life again. And I closed the business and got a job. It turned out that I had gained a friend for life and as I write this now, years later, I am in fact staying with her in her bed and breakfast in Italy.
Keeping things quiet
When you have a dream so powerful it is compelling you, it is near impossible to not pursue it. It feels like your whole happiness depends on it. I have again started a business, online this time and with far less start-up costs. It is still early days and I am doing freelance work also on-line to keep the cash flow going. This time however I am not talking about the business in detail. In fact I just say I am ‘studying marketing’ when people ask. My friend is still my best friend but I have learned that keeping things quiet in the beginning is wiser.
The transformation
When you are starting a business you can feel very vulnerable. You worry if you will get it to work, if you will have enough money to survive. And of course what people will say if you fail. The real transformation though has been in finding the support I need in communities with other people pursuing their own dreams. You can find them in business forums, face-book groups etc.
You definitely need support when you start out and a place to share your ides, thoughts, problems with others. I have just learned now that it is healthier to keep your closest people in your life close without involving them too much in the beginning. After all, they have a different reference in life when it comes to work and security and that is fine. But when a dream is a dream and it will not go away, you owe it to yourself to make it happen. And your friends are too valuable to fall out with in the process.
