Childish Tendencies
Before modern social media existed, we had forums. Websites where we could create accounts, post messages and then respond to each other. When I was a teenager and played American Football, we had a specific forum where people involved in the Dutch competition could communicate with one another. For us kids, it was mainly a place to talk trash, and I was more than happy to join in. Especially in the weeks leading up to games, there would be a constant stream of messages flying back and forth, all designed to stir up the rivalry. How did that work, you ask? You posted something and then waited for someone to respond, with a mild dose of adrenaline that could keep you going for days. In practice, this meant refreshing your browser every minute, hoping something had happened. And just like that, you could fill an entire day.
That behavior still exists. In fact, you could argue that Facebook was built, at least in part, around exactly this kind of behavior. Fortunately, I don't do that anymore. Those days are behind me. I'm 40 and more than old enough to know that there is nothing to be gained from it. Or so I thought. Because a few days ago, I found myself right back in an online battle, looking for digital likes. Casually refreshing my browser, hoping something had happened. And, as it turned out, something had.
Stupid, really, I thought afterwards. Why did I feel the need to respond to that post? And yet, even after a night's sleep, I still felt that I was right and that my strong response had been justified.
An Evening of Drama
Let me explain what happened. I check LinkedIn several times a day, the only social media platform I still use, if you don't count WhatsApp. Prominently at the top of my feed, I saw a post with a photo underneath it. The photo showed a vacuum cleaner with a hundred-euro note next to it. My first thought was: did he buy a vacuum cleaner for a hundred euros?
Nothing could have been further from the truth. It was an entrepreneur explaining that he spends a hundred euros a week on a woman who cleans his house. Although "cleaning" was actually an understatement: she does pretty much his entire household and even gets the groceries. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. I've had domestic help myself for a long time.
It was the rest of the post that bothered me. This entrepreneur explained that it was actually very simple: his hourly rate is significantly higher than that of his cleaner, and therefore it is a better investment to spend that time working on his business. After all, that produces a better "ROI". In fact, he believed that every entrepreneur should take a good look at how they spend their time.
There is a certain logic to that, and it's an idea entrepreneurs repeat all the time. Because let's be honest: a forty-hour workweek is for wimps. If you want to be successful, you have to work your ass off. At least, that was the obvious undertone of the post.
But it didn't stop there. It was also made very clear that none of this should concern you if you're employed. Because, apparently, as a standard wage slave, you're not really welcome in this conversation, sucker.
That was when my brain short-circuited. Everything went digitally black. I could no longer muster any sense of decency for this modern form of entrepreneurial arrogance. Why is it so important to put yourself in a separate class, as if every entrepreneur is the next Bill Gates? Did I mention that this particular post was written by a self-employed personal trainer?
So, naturally, I responded with sarcasm. I couldn't help myself. I explained that if he really wanted to optimize his time, then perhaps, in addition to outsourcing the vacuuming, he should also stop sleeping. That's eight potentially billable hours every night that he's simply throwing away. And those fifteen minutes he spends writing LinkedIn posts are obviously a terrible waste of time too.
And there I went again. I stepped back into my fifteen-year-old self, whose ego apparently needed a little stimulation. So I hit F5 for the first time: refresh. That was the beginning of the end of my evening, because from then on I checked every minute to see how many likes and comments there were. I had fallen for it again.
Fortunately, most people agreed with me, apart from a few. The people who disagreed with me were almost all carbon copies of the original poster. Profile pictures featuring three-piece suits from C&A were being thrown at me from all directions. One person even told me that he was simply a "different breed" from me. Different by design, apparently. This particular different breed was the CEO of a one-person company, by the way.
The Entrepreneurosphere
I've spent some time thinking about why this particular post got under my skin so much, and why it turned into an online feud. This really isn't like me. I can have a strong opinion about something, but usually reason takes over when my emotions start running high. Not this time.
Apparently, if you're an entrepreneur, you're part of an elite class that towers above everyone else. Do you work for someone else? Then apparently you don't need to think about any of this and you're not really part of the conversation. Are you a cleaner? Then you can do the chores I don't feel like doing and charge a quarter of my hourly rate for the privilege. And are you a less successful entrepreneur? Well, then you'd better listen carefully to the extremely valuable advice that we, the entrepreneurial elite, distribute every single day. If you're smart, you'll buy my dropshipping course and get into crypto today.
Just like the manosphere, apparently we have a category in my head that I call the entrepreneurosphere: a group consisting primarily of men who place enormous importance on determining status based on occupation, and who apparently see entrepreneurship as the ultimate elite class.
In the entrepreneurosphere, working hard is everything. If you're working fewer than fifty hours a week, you're not really part of the club. You can call these entrepreneurs at the weekend too, because free time is for wimps. And if they can create a stage for themselves, they'll happily step onto it in their C&A suit, deliver six sentences about how you can become as successful as they are in ten easy steps, and then have those six sentences edited six times so it looks like they're on stage every week.
The karaoke bar is probably getting a little tired of these guys saying they're going to sing a song, only to spend the next minute talking about some random piece of entrepreneurial nonsense. There is no imposter syndrome in this group. They're mostly just imposters.
My Fight
There are countless things in this world worth fighting for. Climate change, various conflicts, inequality. I have an opinion on all of them. Usually a reasonably nuanced one, and apparently none of them are quite enough of a personal cause for me to glue myself to a highway or go to the Malieveld to fight the riot police. We all have subjects we feel more strongly about than others. For a long time, I wondered whether I even had enough fighting spirit left in me for anything. Apparently, I do.
I have a deep-rooted hatred of the entrepreneurosphere. I want that arrogance gone from the world, and anyone showing symptoms is officially on notice. I hope you're digitally resilient enough to withstand my cynical remarks.
But perhaps this subject gets to me for another reason. Because behind all the chest-thumping, hourly rates, productivity hacks and endless pursuit of success, I think there is a much bigger problem. With the rise of social media and the way our society has developed, the pressure to never be satisfied has increased enormously. Young people grow up with the idea that they constantly need to work on themselves: their careers, their love lives, their appearance and their achievements. Botox and other cosmetic procedures are becoming increasingly normal, self-help books fill our bookstores, and social media constantly suggests that you should really be becoming a better version of yourself. You're never finished. You're never enough.
I've had to learn for myself that there is actually beauty in accepting and embracing the imperfections of life. The harder you try to chase satisfaction, the further away from it you can sometimes get.
And perhaps these kinds of entrepreneurosphere posts are a small but important pillar of that problem. They constantly tell you that you should work harder, earn more, become smarter, become more successful, and above all, never stand still.
I've had enough of that. So yes, apparently this is my fight. Enough of that crap.
If you find yourself in the entrepreneurosphere, or you're wondering whether you might actually be part of it, then I'd like to leave you with one final thought. Imagine that there are a hundred different talents in the world. You're probably above average at only a handful of them. Entrepreneurship might be one of those things. But that automatically means there are plenty of other things you're simply average at, or even downright bad at. And that's true for everyone. Every person has things they're exceptionally good at, but also plenty of things they're not.
The difference is that entrepreneurship happens to receive a relatively large amount of attention and status in our society. If you're good at it, that talent is more likely to be noticed and rewarded than many other talents. But that doesn't make other people's talents any less valuable. Maybe someone is fantastic at raising children, caring for others, making music, solving complex problems, maintaining friendships, or simply being happy with a simple life. There just isn't an hourly rate, revenue figure or LinkedIn post attached to those things.
We're all ordinary people, with a few things we're good at and a whole lot of things we're not. And there is beauty in that mediocrity too. Being an entrepreneur doesn't make you better than someone else, just as not being one doesn't make someone else lesser. Not even you.