Comfort Is The Enemy Of Progress

Comfort is the enemy of progress.

 

Over the past nine months, I have been getting asked by my friends, family, and even old professors, where I get my motivation from when a high-risk opportunity presents itself, and I go all-in with it.

 

They tell me that I lack reasoning, that it’s not what you’re supposed to do.

 

What you’re supposed to do is to go to college, get a corporate job, and start saving through your 401(k) and paying off your student debt. Eventually, you’ll have enough saved up that you can put a down-payment on a home, and then take out more debt for the rest, and start a family.

 

I know this, and to everyone who tells me that the way I have gone about things are not traditional, my answer is always the same: Elon Musk.

 

I came across a video from Tim Urban at the Talks At Goldman Sachs, which I found was able to perfectly summate my thoughts, and I would like to share an excerpt with you:

 

“The perfect example of this is, at the time PayPal was built, people thought it was insane; the thought that people would put their financial information on the internet – obviously no one was going to do that. But, he looked at the reality, the current reality; the current reality made it very clear that – no, no – this is reasonable, people are going to do this.

 

Conventional wisdom, which lags ten years behind, says, this is ridiculous.

 

Everyone else is reasoning by analogy; he is reasoning by first principles. So, there’s PayPal.

 

So then, he gets $180 million dollars. Young guy, thirties. The thing you might do with $180 million dollars in your thirties – you might become an angel investor. Maybe you just go and hangout and be extra conservative. Maybe you build something with a little piece of it, or you raise other people’s money at this point to build something.

 

What you don’t do, is you don’t put it all down on a rocket company, okay? It’s not something that anyone does.”

 

Twenty billion – yes, with a B – twenty billion dollars later, Elon Musk is still the biggest risk-taker in business.

 

Now, I am not him and I don’t claim to be in his arena; he is truly one of history’s greatest innovators.

 

But his tolerance for risk and his ferocity to never give up has no equal.

 

And in that vein, I can relate.

 

So, when someone asks me how I got my motivation to leave my comfort zone, and turn down a high-paying corporate job to face my fears and start my own business in Philadelphia, my answer is simple...

 

If you are not taking a risk, you are not being an entrepreneur.

 

Elon taught me that.

 

- Tyler