Here are all the things that feel like being an entrepreneur that aren’t: Getting CIMs from brokers Listening to business podcasts Playing with Claude code or Grokbot Getting a full recourse loan Buying a course Building a new logo Negotiating a partnership agreement Hiring someone Rebuilding a website Hiring a vendor Networking Organizing a social meetup Going to conferences Building an excel model Getting a QofE done Having meetings with advisors Working on your pitch deck Bookmarking Twitter posts Opting in to a free lead magnet Writing a strategy Implementing EOS Here is what being an entrepreneur is: Making a living being paid more for something than it costs you to produce it, over and over again.

I bought a business with debt because an influencer on Instagram said it was easy. They got the views. I got the loan. I watched the first video at 1 a.m. while my daughter slept down the hall. A content creator in makeup stood in front of a whiteboard: “Buy a boring business. Use the SBA. Be CEO of your life.” Hell that sounds good! THE GRAY WAVE!! It had 2.3 million views, and the thumbnail showed a laundromat with dollar signs pouring out of the dryers. I watched forty more that week. I’d been playing with Claude Code every night after work. Now I knew what it was for. I changed my LinkedIn to “Looking for one great business to buy,” like the videos said I should. I made a personal website for my holding company: Ridgeline Blue Capital. I was SURE the boomers running these companies had no idea what was possible. I’d walk in, use AI and marketing like crazy, and double the margins by Christmas. I just needed a business to do it to. I wasn’t reckless. I bought the $2,997 course and religiously finished every module. I'd join the weekly coaching calls - and take lots of notes! I wouldn't have time once I was THE CEO OF A BORING BUSINESS! I joined the paid community, where the posts were all closings and champagne: “Just got the keys!” “Month 3, already cash-flowing!” Then I found it: an HVAC company doing $1.4 million in revenue. Sure it was a bit smaller than my "buy box"! But hell, gotta start somewhere! HVAC is super hot these days, right? I saw a video on instagram. Hell, the business had been around for 20 years, and I was WAY smarter than the owner. He didn’t even go to college! I paid a CPA $18,000 for a quality-of-earnings report and paid a lawyer to read every page. My spreadsheet had three downside scenarios, and on paper I survived all of them. I was finally able to use some of the skills I'd learned at my w-2! Wow this is entrepreneurship! So I bought it. I signed a personal guarantee on a $1.6 million loan and put the house up as collateral, because the videos called that “just the price to become CEO of your life.” But it’s just content, right? The lead technician, Ray, quit in the first week. He’d thought the owner was going to hand him the business. When he found out otherwise, he left. No QoE report could have told me the business was really Ray, and that the customers were loyal to Ray. Two more techs left with him. By summer I was in crawlspaces at 9 p.m., trying to learn a trade I’d only ever seen in B-roll. I had to pay a random guy a grand a month to rent his license, just to keep the lights on. Make money? Fuck. I was just trying to make it to Friday without touching even more of my savings. I barely even understood what I'd gotten myself into... just trying to make payroll, my debt, and the lease. The letters in the mail. OH THE LETTERS IN THE MAIL. But everyone on the internet seemed to be making it work? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME? I finally posted in the “community.” The replies poured in. “Proud of you for sharing.” “This is the messy middle.” “Sending strength, brother.” "My brother owns a plumbing company, are you posting on facebook? Happy to connect, lmk!" Forty-seven likes. I read them in the truck and felt worse. They called it “support,” but what the fuck did that even mean? Nobody offered to cover payroll. Nobody’s wife was asking where the money went. It was my house on the line, not theirs. In the morning they’d all scroll on to the next “just got the keys!” The loan payment came out on the 1st every month. It never missed. I stopped sleeping. I stopped coming to dinner. My wife found the line of credit I’d opened to make payroll, and all the stuff I'd been shuffling on our credit cards. She didn’t yell. She said, very quietly, “You didn’t tell me,” and that was way way worse. BUT IT’S JUST CONTENT, RIGHT? I kept watching. Then I noticed something I’d missed before. At the end of each video, after forty minutes of cash flow and freedom, the influencer would glance at the camera: “Look, nobody said this was easy.” Three hundred hours of entreporn, and six seconds of reality per video. But that was the rear view mirror. I was in now. So I hid it all: the line of credit, the sleepless nights, and eventually the six-pack a night and the weed every night to get to sleep in the face of crippling anxiety. Texts from crew in the middle of the night. Unexpected bills. Calls from vendors I'd been slow paying bc I didn't have the money. I kept up a highlight reel, because that’s what the internet demanded. I changed my LinkedIn to “Acquisition Entrepreneur” so the people I went to college with would be impressed. My wife saw through it anyway. She took our daughter to her mother’s, and the house went quiet. One night I sat in the truck outside the shop and couldn’t think of a reason to drive home. I scrolled. A new post in the community: “Closed on deal #2!” Fire emojis. Everyone else seemed to be making it work. I wondered how many of them were sitting in trucks, too. BUT IT’S JUST CONTENT, RIGHT? I put the phone down. Then I picked it back up and called my brother. “I’m not okay,” I said, and my voice broke on the last word. It was the first sentence in eighteen months that wasn’t a performance. Then I looked in the mirror, honestly, for the first time in eighteen months, and said under my breath: “This guy SMBs.”