Lessons from second time company owners on how to motivate themselves.
With their first ventures behind them, company builders have an easier time enlisting investors and employees for their next endeavor. But one key ingredient takes work to find: their entrepreneurial fire. How these veterans fuel that flame offers lessons to first-timers, too
Tom Weldon could not escape the feeling: he was missing something.
It started at the copying machine, as he was collating the pages of his fledgling company's business plan. And it trailed him as he headed back to the rickety table that served as his desk -- and as everybody else's desk, for that matter. Something, he knew, was lacking. Something that would help him feel more assured that his two-month-old venture, Novoste Corp., a maker of therapeutic medical devices, would follow in the successful footsteps of his first company, which he had started in 1987 and sold five years later.
Certainly, Weldon wasn't without resources in that late fall of 1992. Investors had already ponied up $2 million, and they didn't even ask as many questions this time. And the members of his carefully selected management team -- all three of them -- were pitching in just as he had hoped. Not to mention the fact that he had spared no expense in purchasing the finest office equipment he could find -- well, among the card tables and folding chairs at the local Kmart, anyway.
Leaning against the doorway, he watched proudly as Cheryl Johnson, director of marketing and business development, tapped away on the company's sole computer, which rested atop a packing crate. Nearby, vice-president of product development Jonathan Rosen -- a Ph.D., no less -- balanced on a folding chair while talking excitedly into the company's only telephone. These two, neither of whom had been part of a start-up before, seemed so energetic, so enthusiastic. Whether analyzing spreadsheets or taking out the trash, they seemed to love every minute of it.
Weldon knew the feeling well. He had experienced it himself back when he started his first company, Novoste Puerto Rico Inc. But not now. And that feeling, it struck him, was exactly what was missing. "They were just happy to be part of it," Weldon says. "It made me think, 'I need to get that back."
He's certainly not the only second-time entrepreneur to wish that for himself. Folks like Weldon can cite many advantages when they compare their subsequent outings to their maiden voyages: a proven track record makes for eager investors and employees, and the benefits of experience lessen the personal toll that each challenge can take.
Still, such entrepreneurs often find that they don't feel the same level of passion and involvement that fired them up during their first ventures. That makes sense. This time, of course, they don't have the same do-or-die financial motivation; they've presumably amassed enough of a financial cushion from the first venture that they're not really worried about where their next latte is coming from. Also absent is that oh-so-motivating fear of failure. True, they might embarrass themselves. But they are unlikely to end up cleaning windshields at busy intersections. "In your first company you always wonder whether you're doing the right thing," says two-time entrepreneur John Overby. "With the second company you bring the authority of your experience. You're more confident, and the experience is less stressful."
As a result, although it's hard for them to admit it -- even to themselves -- encore entrepreneurs can easily drift into a dangerous state of complacency. "I was afraid I didn't have the hunger, the sense of urgency, the drive it took to succeed the first time," says Weldon. "I was no longer terrified on a daily basis. Fear creates urgency." Weldon calls it the halo effect: you think because you did it and beat the odds that you're blessed. And, he says, "that just isn't the case."
Intellectually, of course, most company builders know that. But how can they ensure that their feelings stay in sync? "In the second venture, you don't have anything to prove," advises Dennis Jaffe, a psychologist and management consultant in San Francisco. "So you need to find something to get passionate about."
The challenge, he says, is shifting from the external motivators of the first company -- proving to your father-in-law you're not really a slug, attending your 30-year high school reunion clad in head-to-toe Armani -- to internal motivators. Often that means zeroing in on particular aspects of the process itself that you enjoy. According to Jaffe, that could entail anything from helping other people grow, to focusing on social-responsibility issues, to rethinking and redesigning your role within the company. The point is, find something. "People who have trouble the second time are not finding intrinsic meaning in what they're doing," Jaffe observes.
That's why Tom Weldon, John Overby, and folks like them find that it's best to battle such issues up front. Part of what shapes their second ventures, in fact, is their own knowledge about what they did and did not like about the first effort. That insight may affect how they define the mission of their next company, as well as what shape they give to its structure.
As counterintuitive as it sounds, passion is like any other raw material needed to run a business: if you don't have any, you'd better find a supply somewhere -- inside yourself. Nothing's worse, experts warn, than having to trudge through a company start-up as if it were torture. And that's not the kind of atmosphere that is likely to produce results. "You can't fake it," says Steven Berglas, a Boston-based psychologist and management consultant. "It's like trying to fake interest in sex. If it's not there, it's not there."
The following are some of the emotional demons that entrepreneurs plant inside themselves to ensure that they love their second company as much as they loved their first:
