All Entrepreneurs Are Liars – But We Don’t Do It On Purpose

Posted by Jeff Carter
on August 8th, 2012

Robbie acts as an interim CTO for startups, and helps corporate rockstars quit their full time jobs at no cost. Visit his blog & follow him on twitter @RobbieAb. His content has been featured on Forbes, Lifehacker and has been on the front page of Hacker News numerous times.

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9am Coffee Meeting:

Entrepreneur: Robbie, how’s your startup going?

Me: Things Are Great. Definitely some road bumps, but it’s definitely moving along. How about you? Did you put your notice in yet?

It’s 9am on Monday morning and the first three words out of my mouth are a lie. The rest of the sentence is the truth, but “things are great” is a lie I’ve had to tell myself and others for the first 6 months after quitting my full time job. I am all about full transparency and complete honesty, but when I’m talking about my own company – The words “things are great” roll off the tip of my tongue so easily. What else am I supposed to say to this person?

“Thanks for meeting for coffee with me. I just want to let you know that every assumption I had about my business was wrong, customers aren’t paying for my service and it’s been about 6 months since I’ve made any real money. People like me, but they don’t like my business. So, how many creamers did you want in your coffee again?”

I had to resort to lying. But I promise you, I didn’t do it on purpose. I really thought my business was doing great. It was making progress, albeit slow. It was going through multiple iterations & pivots but it still was moving along. I was content with where it was going, but “things are great” is and was a lie. At month 6, I had my doubts of where this company was going to go. If I didn’t quit my fulltime job and this was a side job, then “things are great” is an acceptable answer. Because it was my only source of income, it was a lie.

But, there’s no way I’m going to sit there over coffee and tell this person that it’s not going as good as I want it to be. I convinced myself that it wasn’t a lie. Once I realized I was lying to myself, I was able to take corrective action and move the business to an area that I know the best: Consulting. I act as an interim CTO for startups and couldn’t be happier with a very strong client portfolio and pipeline.

The first step is accepting the fact that you’re lying to yourself and others. The rest becomes much easier after that.

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