Riding a Lion

It's like a man riding a lion. People think, 'This guy's brave.' And he's thinking, 'How the hell did I get on a lion and how do I keep from getting eaten?'

The gap between perception and reality in entrepreneurship is enormous. From the outside, starting a company looks like an act of supreme confidence ... you're betting everything on your vision, taking control of your destiny, riding the lion of opportunity.

From the inside, it feels much more like barely controlled panic. You're not riding the lion because you're fearless; you're riding it because jumping off seems even more dangerous. The momentum carries you forward, but you're acutely aware that you're one wrong move away from disaster.

The "brave entrepreneur" mythology does real harm because it suggests that successful founders are fundamentally different from everyone else ... more willing to take risks, more comfortable with uncertainty, more naturally suited to the chaos of building something from nothing.

But the truth is messier and more human. Most entrepreneurs aren't adrenaline junkies who thrive on risk. They're people who found themselves on the lion for various reasons ... maybe they saw an opportunity, maybe they got laid off, maybe they were just stubborn about a problem they wanted to solve and then discovered that staying on was their best option for survival.

The real skill isn't fearlessness; it's managing fear while continuing to function. It's making decisions with incomplete information while maintaining the appearance of confidence that stakeholders, employees and customers need to see.

The lion-riding metaphor also captures the isolation of the experience. Everyone assumes you're having the time of your life, so you can't really explain that you're terrified and exhausted and would love to get off this thing if you could figure out how to do it safely.

Perhaps the most honest thing about entrepreneurship is this: you don't choose the adventure as much as the adventure chooses you. And once you're on the lion, your main job is not to fall off.

From the ground, it looks like courage. From the saddle, it feels like survival. Both perspectives are true and neither tells the whole story.

Originally inspired by Inc. Magazine's piece on the psychological price of entrepreneurship. For everyone who's ever wondered how they ended up on a lion.