{"id":5487,"date":"2013-09-20T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=2457"},"modified":"2020-04-03T18:01:32","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T22:01:32","slug":"battled-serial-entrepreneurship-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/community-stories\/member-spotlight\/battled-serial-entrepreneurship-won","title":{"rendered":"I battled serial entrepreneurship and won"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was less than two years ago when Fast Company shared a story about all of the startups and projects I had started. I had a lot of them, but at the time I thought it was cool. And the way to success. Hey, I was a serial entrepreneur.<\/p>\n

Since then I\u2019ve learned a lot. For starters, splitting your focus not only confuses your to-do list but also confuses most of the people around you when it comes to what you\u2019re working on. Giving a pitch turns into: which project should I tell you about today? Oh, that one doesn\u2019t interest you? Here\u2019s another. It\u2019s exhausting and most of the time you wind up with mediocre results.<\/p>\n

One of the most important lessons is that focus is the number one thing that can and will make or break a company. So at the end of 2012 I decided to focus on WeWork Labs with my partner Matt. It\u2019s been going swimmingly\u00a0and the confusion has settled. I wanted to share three things that I did to help me ween off the startup bottle.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It began with a conversation<\/strong>. I sat down and shared all the ideas that were really interesting to me when it came to products and business. Every time I spoke to a mentor or friend about what I enjoyed working on it ultimately led back to building the best support system for other young entrepreneurs. I would talk about investing, building tools to connect entrepreneurs or products that support a company\u2019s growth. All of these led back to the community.<\/li>\n
  2. I began looking at my options<\/strong>. I could build something new or I could join an organization that existed. I quickly realized that I already had a lot of what I was looking for within my own network. It was an idea that Matt and I had already helped build, WeWork Labs. Up until this point, I had always looked at Labs as a passion project. We had never paid ourselves or taken any money off the table. Adam was building the WeWork empire and we were a part of it but it wasn\u2019t our focus. We realized it could be.<\/li>\n
  3. I gave everything else up<\/strong>. This was the hardest step but once I had I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I had spent every waking hour for over two years worrying about challenges and solutions across a lot of businesses. I was finally able to focus on just one. I could sit and think for hours on end about how to build WeWork Labs into the amazing community we hoped it would be. And I could do this while not driving the people around me crazy\u200a\u2014\u200aespecially my wife (who has been my biggest supporter from day one).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I know most of you reading this are probably thinking: \u201cDuh, this makes so much sense. Focus, focus, focus.\u201d But it took me a while to get to it. I got sucked into the idea of creating, creating, creating and forgot about building a solution.<\/p>\n

    I know that I\u2019m lucky to have figured it out and I hope that reading this helps you, just a little bit, find your focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It was less than two years ago when Fast Company shared a story about all of the startups and projects I had started. I had a lot of them, but at the time I thought it was cool. And the way to success. Hey, I was a serial entrepreneur. Since then I\u2019ve learned a lot. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":884,"featured_media":33581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43903,43911],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-stories","category-member-spotlight"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow I battled serial entrepreneurship and won<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A recovering startup junkie shares how serial entrepreneurship can break your focus.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/community-stories\/member-spotlight\/battled-serial-entrepreneurship-won\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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