The Entrepreneur's Emotional Roller Coaster

My wife is getting a Master's in Professional Counseling, so I hear a lot about psychological conditions and diagnoses. But I have not heard her talk about Entrepreneurs Emotional Roller Coaster. I don't think it is an official diagnosis, but I know it is real.

The emotional trauma of being an entrepreneur is really tough. There is the high of the new idea. The idea hits you while you are driving or in an important meeting. It is not that it came to you out of the blue, because you have been thinking about the idea for some time. But in an instance it clicks. And it is so clear and so obvious. You've got it. It is a winner.

For the next few days you have a hard time thinking about anything else. You refine the idea a little more. You start calculating the revenue for the first couple of years. And then you do a multiple of EBITDA and start thinking about the world travel you will be able to do--and all the other new business you will be able to start. It is a real high.

Then you go online and find almost exactly the same idea that someone else is doing. It hits you like a two by four. Wow. How could they have come up with something so similar. Then you think about it some more and realize that you do have a unique angle.

Then you start working on the business plan and raising capital. At first it is exciting and exhilarating. When you are on draft seven, however, is starts to get tedious. You wonder how each potential investor can come up with a unique question that requires you to do in depth research--do they get together and plan the harassment.

When you realize that the seventeenth investor you meet with really gets it, it is such a relief and another high. This is an influential investor and if he invests, you are confident that at least three others will invest also. You start calculating the multiple of EBITDA again.

Then, just before this investor plans to execute the documents and write the check, the CEO of one of his other investments becomes gravely ill. And of course the investor decides that he has to put his focus on that company. He does not have time to do any new investments. Just how close can you get, and how low can you feel?

You start thinking about having to get a real job, and you really start feeling bad. Then out of the blue a friend of a friend calls and wants to meet . . .

Let's just call it EERC--Entrepreneurs Emotional Roller Coaster.