It seems like everyone’s an entrepreneur these days.  What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?  I don’t care.  But I have noticed that I’ve gone through various levels of entrepreneuriness.  I call them levels since they’re more like achievements rather than required stages in development.

Level 1 – Nothing
I was comfortable working for The Man and spent my leisure time playing the role of Obedient Consumer.  I was content with punching in/punching out and then consuming shit.  Ahh, life was bliss!  Why worry when you can buy shit and be merry?!

Level 2 – Dreaming
The Man was becoming a drag and as an Obedient Consumer, I started desiring even more bigger shit to consume.  I began to think, “Hey I can do and buy more than this!”, and start telling myself and my friends, “If I only had an idea!”

Level 3 – Ideaing
And just like that, a superfantastic idea smacks me in the head.  I immediately get to work on a business plan with grand schemes of ruling the world with the assumption that people will fall over each other trying to hand me $20 million in funding.  I start telling everyone and their moms, “Dude, I have this awesome idea*!”

Level 4 – Executing
Having quickly learned than a business plan with an idea attached to it is meaningless, I take a new approach – build first, then ask for money (”Brilliant!” – Jung Lee).  With a new, more plausible idea, I strapped on my boots and put together a functional prototype and a working team.  In person I proudly claim, “I’m bootstrapping right now” but in my mind I continue “So can you please spare some change?”

From here on, I can only recount the fairy tales and legends, that have been passed on through generations of bloggers, of the few that reached the next levels of entrepreneuriness.

Level 5 – Funding (optional)
Through sheer will and determination and/or just knowing the right people, you’ve managed to score capital.  Not because the idea was frickin amazing but more likely because you’ve accumulated enough experience points/revenues to be taken seriously.  Great job…but you’re not out of the woods just yet.  Keep truckin baby!

Oh but if you can skip this level entirely, well what do you want, a cookie?!  But seriously dude/tte, that’s awesome!

Level 6 – Exiting
Congratulations.  You’ve been acquired or somehow frickin IPO’d.  Great success…ya bastard!  And I say that seething with envy.  The next option seems to be to go straight to Level 7 or go back to one of the previous levels to start over.  But at this point, I don’t really give a crap.

Level 7 – Investing
Who’s in control now, yatch?!  Yeah son, that’s right.

So yeah, I don’t really know what goes on in the brain during Level 7.  I mean, I know.  But I don’t know.

The end.

*seescout.com – World of Warcraft meets Google Maps. Control an avatar in a 3D version of Google Maps. Explore NY, interact with businesses, take on side-quests and compete with your friends.  Advertising, casual games and virtual currency, how could you go wrong?!

Update: Made Level 5 optional…cuz really, who needs it?! (Thanks Jason)

I was talking with a friend the other day about how I was building qrisper.com.  He was quite impressed with the amount that I had accomplished so far and at some point said something like, “Dude, at least you fing took the initiative and actually built something, not like the 90% of the population that just sits at home watching fing LOST all day (sorta also paraphrasing @garyvee).

To the uninitiated, that sounds like a tremendous compliment.  And while I truly appreciated the sentiment, I had fast discovered that taking that first step was merely a formality and, for the most part, completely meaningless.   Because once you’re over on the other side, you quickly realize that there are tens of thousands of people that are just as determined, if not more so, and they’re all a lot smarter than you.  They all took that first step months, nay years ago, and are already way ahead of you in terms of building the next great thing and pursuing that same pool of funding.

So to summarize, being an entrepreneur isn’t glamorous, it does nothing for your health and you will most likely fail.  Yet for some reason, I want nothing more than to keep going and prove everyone wrong.  That researcher who said that entrepreneurs aren’t risk tolerant, just overconfident in their abilities…think he had something there.

Slightly off-tangent but this is probably why the U.S. has such a history of entrepreneurship.  We’re instilled into our identity starting from grade school that we can accomplish anything, as long as we put our minds to it and ignore all of the naysayers.  And if you believe this article, that could also explain why Americans have the highest rate of depression in the world.

Anyway, to end on a pseudo-positive note, last night I dreamt that I was climbing a mountain covered in poop.  Each time I went to grab onto something, I got nothing but a palm full of sticky, brown poop.  It was the largest amount of poop that I ever handled in my dreams, ever.  Touching poop = $$$ (in Korea anyway).  Looks like I have a mountain of cash headed my way!  Yay!

A constructive discussion between the missus and I enlightened me to the fact that I had become a workaholic.  Which was surprising to me because I had never had a problem separating work and life before.  But as I commented on Tom’s piece about the insidious nature of entrepreneurship, I realized that I no longer had that mental work/life barrier to cross.

As soon as I left the office in my previous life, I ceased to care about the ordeals within the 9 to 5 (partly aided by my refusal to carry a Blackberry).  But now, from the minute I wake up till my second or third round of REM sleep, I just want to qrisper all the time, qrisper all the time, qrisper all the ti~ime~!

Problem was, amidst the stress and planning involved in creating my own business, and without the weight of other people’s money propping me up (yet), I was enjoying this life a little too much.  I mean, to create a product using only your brain and a few appendages, that’s some hot stuff right there!  If I wasn’t tempted by modern, materialistic goods, I’d be a carpenter right now.  But alas, I like shiny things.

Anyway, as soon as I became cognizant of the monster that I had become, all it took was a little self-control and a bit more planning to transform from qrisper mode into whisper mode, if you get what I mean, wink wink.

Yeah that was pretty gross.