WHAT YOU FEEL: you can’t seem to get people to understand how much they need to put into this to make it successful

PERSPECTIVE: We lose perspective as entrepreneurs.  We lose sight of the fact that the rest of the world does not wake up with the passion and focus that we do. Something has spurred us to take this wild journey to create our venture. Our hearts and souls are in it. Our business lives and personal lives (if we have them) are intimately intermingled.   We think about it twenty-four hours per day and our dreams are not of sipping pina coladas or a relaxing day at the spa, but rather having our first yoga class with real paying students. We must accept that this is a unique place that we occupy and if we expect others to have the same perspective, we will be disappointed.

No one cares as much as we do. It is unlikely anyone else is losing sleep, shunning their personal lives, or investing their heart and soul. We have this expectation that anyone associated with our venture wakes up with the same visceral desire to see it come to fruition as we do. This comes to life in many ways:

• Work Ethic. Needless to say, while we all likely have people who are dedicated, driven and hard working, to us this is oxygen. If we are lucky, to others this is not just a job but it is unlikely that it is an obsession. For me, it wasn’t the work effort of my people, it was my (lack of) perspective.

When we started our company, I had been a corporate attorney at a New York law firm for a few years. For anyone who knows anything about New York corporate lawyers, they work long hours. When we started my company, even though I was working around the clock, I might have been one of the few people that did not work longer, crazier hours when they started their company. My expectations were that anyone who saw the vision that I saw to fix the healthcare system with rewards for healthy behavior would be driven to work as I was. I became disappointed by their work effort, even though they were working their asses off. I expected that everyone would work till ten o’clock every night. I’d get frustrated when people would be leaving the office at 6 p.m. to get a drink with friends. I would think “how the hell can they leave early when we have so much to do.”

Imagine that. Going for a drink after work with some friends.

An entrepreneur was talking to me about an employee she was paying $30,000 per year. She said “I’m not sure she is right for the team.” When I asked her why, she said “I was talking to her and she said that she needed to have her weekends. She liked playing volleyball at the beach and she wanted to spend time with her boyfriend. I’m not sure she is cut out for this.”

We usually understand this when it comes to people that are tangentially involved in our business. It also applies to your team. We must have realistic expectations not only about their work effort but also about how much they care about all the things that run through our mind each day.

• Money. Lack of attention to money used to drive me crazy. Especially when it is your money or if you left a career or job with a regular paycheck, we are incredibly sensitive to money. It’s not that your team is not, but they don’t have the same obsession with it as we do.

It drove me crazy when people going from New York to Philadelphia, Boston or Washington DC, would take the Acela instead of taking the standard train. It would cost about another $100 to save thirty to forty-five minutes. Don’t they know we are a startup?

We are always thinking about saving money.

When we had a team travel to trade shows or to finalist or investor presentations, I wanted team members to share rooms together even though most of them were in their 40s. In retrospect, not sure this was realistic when it comes to professionals over the age of 35 but it was my perspective at the time. When they questioned it, I questioned their dedication to what we were doing.

• Attention to Detail. This also comes to life when it comes to attention to detail. We are willing to leave no stone unturned, to proofread a document at midnight when we have already been working for fourteen hours and to redo a presentation that is wrong despite spending hours on it.

The sooner we accept that there is no one out there that cares as much as we do, the better off we will be. It is our perspective that is off, not theirs. This can be detrimental when team members and other resources that are working hard are criticized for not being committed. Telling that to someone who has just worked a long day or a weekend is a great way to turn them into an ex-employee.

No one cares as much as you do. Don’t get frustrated with that. Be proud of it. It takes a true spirit to bring an idea to life. Not everyone has what it takes to bring the energy to create something from nothing.   I always felt lucky not only that I stumbled on to something that might turn into a good business, but that I was working on my passion every day. People will say to you, “Work is fine but it’s not like I wake up passionate about credit card marketing. I wish I woke up every day working on something I really believed in.” We are lucky to have found our idea or our vision. We are lucky to have that glow in our eye. What goes with that is the reality that no one will care about it as much as you do.

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