Better Business Building

Barry Moltz is a little crazy. As a serial entrepreneur and angel investor for the last 15 years, he’s seen a great deal of success and failure - and lived to tell about it. In his book, You Need To Be A Little Crazy, he debunks the myths of business startups by telling the truth; you have to be a crazy to start a business.

Let’s be clear, this “craziness” is used in a sort-of “modern slang” sense, which could be defined as a departing from accepted norms in pursuit of an inherently risky course, fueled by a large amount of passion.

Anyone who’s been in business long enough to have:
a) had a customer
b) had a partner (or 12)
c) raised more than $1.47 in private funding
d) fired an employee

…knows you need to have a certain amount of resiliency to survive. A sort of “needed craziness”.

As Moltz describes it:

That’s right. To start a business you must be nuts.

Admit this and you have made a good start. But you need to be a certain kind of lunatic. You need to be a lunatic who has a steadfast long-term belief in her vision - a lunatic who will try anything, ask anyone for everything, and see everyone as a source of help. You also need to be comfortable being alone in your beliefs because the only thing others will agree with you on is that you are indeed crazy.

Only someone who is crazy can survive the ups and downs that a business brings. Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and move on. It’s a start.

The truth is, business is not a rosy, romantic ride off into the sunset. You will cry. You will bleed. You will go sleepless.

But if you can bring the passion and courage long enough to solve a recognized problem for a big enough group of people, you can be successful.

Some of the other truths the book covers:

-> If you’re after money, get a job - don’t start a business
-> Passion and optimism are the DNA of resiliency
-> Timing and luck matter more than you think
-> Your business will take your family hostage
-> Having business partners is like marriage without the sex
-> Business is always about people
-> Even your successes can almost kill you
-> True growth is slow and steady - speed can kill
-> Hard times are good times too

Barry’s book is a very manageable read, built on the “snippet principle”; lots of “truths” covered in about a page and a half each. And all of them real, raw and pulling no punches. If you’re thinking about starting a business or are in the start-up phase of a new venture, you’d have to be crazy NOT to read this book.

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