I showed my wife, Beth, another website idea the other day.
I had the browser tab open and a domain already purchased and I figured I had about 47 seconds of her attention before she got that look.
Not pissed off or any blatant eye rolling or anything. Just this resigned, tired kind of patience that’s almost worse. That look of someone who’s seen this enough times to know how it ends.
She didn’t say anything discouraging but I could see her doing math in her head. The money we’d spent and keep spending with nothing coming back in. The fact that the only thing I’d ever created that actually made any real money was an eBay reselling business. And I’d walked away from that because when I chose to pursue coaching I didn’t have time for it anymore.
I made decent money reselling. And I quit it anyway to pursue coaching.
To her, from the outside, that probably looks like sabotage. Or immaturity. Or some version of not being serious enough about the thing that actually worked.
For me, it felt like an iteration.
Here’s the thing I don’t think people understand about the way an entrepreneurial brain works.
Every profession has a visible activity that matches the identity. You want to be a doctor, you study medicine. You want to be a carpenter, you build things out of wood. You want to be a musician, you play music. The activity and the goal look like the same thing. Progress is visible and you can see the related activity.
Entrepreneurship doesn’t work like that though.
The activity of being an entrepreneur is trying things. That’s literally it.
Testing, failing, adjusting, pivoting, starting, stopping, starting again. The craft isn’t any one task. The craft is the uncertainty itself.
Which means from the outside, it just looks like a guy who can’t decide what they want. And that guy is spending money.
So I get what Beth sees. I do. I’m not going to argue that her concern doesn’t make sense, because it does. A financial advisor would definitely agree with her.
But there’s a distinction that matters and it’s one that I’ve been terrible at communicating to her.
There’s a difference between being scattered and being entrepreneurial. Scattered is trying random things because you’re bored, or because you’re avoiding commitment, or because you’re chasing whatever looked shiny this week. And to be sure, my AuDHD ass isn’t immune to any of that. Being an entrepreneur, though, means testing different things all while having the same underlying goal. The activities might change a lot but the goal shouldn’t.
My goal’s been the same for as long as I can remember: to build something that I own. I want my income to come from my ideas and skills and not just from showing up somewhere and trading hours for dollars building someone else’s dream. I want to do work that actually fits the way my brain operates, instead of just work that I’ve learned to tolerate.
That’s not being scattered. That’s having actual direction. It’s just that the path to get there doesn’t come with any kind of a map that most people would recognise.
The problem is that goals don’t show up on a bank statement. It doesn’t make the doubt on someone’s face go away while you’re in month six of “nope nothing yet.”
I used to think the issue was about the money. And yeah the money is definitely a real factor. But I’ve learned that that’s not actually what it’s about. I think the deeper question, and the one that’s definitely harder to ask and answer, is something that’s a little closer to “Can I trust you to stay focused long enough to figure it out?”
And that’s a different question completely. And the answer to that question isn’t just to have a better business plan or a better timeline or revenue projections that show everything working out. The answer to that question is more about patterns I show over time.
Am I still showing up consistently even when nothing’s happening yet? Am I being honest about what’s working and what’s not instead of just pivoting to the next thing and hoping nobody notices? It’s more about knowing the difference between testing things and hiding.
I walked away from eBay because even though it made money, it wasn’t the right thing for me. I didn’t quit because I was scared or because it got hard. I quit because I’ve succeeded at the wrong thing enough times in my life to know that that’s its own kind of stuck. I’ve just learned to recognize it a little faster now.
I didn’t actually say that out loud to Beth though, and maybe I should have.
She’s still dealing with me showing her new browser tabs and she’s still doing the math every time. And if I’m being honest her concern is probably more useful than it is a problem. It’s that little bit of friction that keeps me straight and keeps me honest about whether or not I’m trying something new or just running away from something else.
But for now I have two new domains that I just bought that I haven’t shown her yet.
And I already know what her face is going to do.