The dichotomy of anonymity
Keeping your head down and hustling vs. sharing your strategies with the public
As a founder I’m constantly hit with these dueling ideals...I want to build something that solves problems at scale, my skill set says it’s helping others solve problems for others.
Within this, i know more opportunities come to those who knock something out of the park or build a tribe through value-added content.
The result of those opportunities mean that raising funding is 100x easier than a nobody who didn’t go to the best school. It means that you can leverage that tribe into a $600M business. It means that you can take risks and even base hits have enough return to allow you to continue shipping new services/products.
On the other side of that, I love that I can go anywhere and not know anyone. When you’re anonymous, you don’t have to be “on” constantly. You can move around your environment freely.
Did you know that a lot of people avoid the public eye in Atlanta by simply using Postmates for everything? Great! But what kind of life is that? To not feel up to interacting with fans/followers and therefore not want to go out.
Not saying that I’m anywhere close to the talent of people that have turned their content into a tribe, and their tribe into a brand. But it does cross my mind...the fear of success is real. I’ve heard rumblings of it from a lot of entrepreneurs (and most of the time they don’t even know it’s what they’re experiencing).
My wife hits the nail on the head though, I get concerned about this before any idea works or before I have a paying customer. I begin fretting about the ability to stay out of back to back meetings, not having to manage employees...but what’s the alternative? Failure.
Not being able to accomplish what you set out to accomplish. Not being able to hav the impact that you believe you can have. To each their own, but I continue pushing through it because my wife is right. There’s a long way between launching and scale, and nothing is permanent.
Do you suffer from the fear of success? What it will do to your quality of life?