Fasting and starting businesses from scratch

Happy Monday folks,

Hope you had a great weekend, because mine was half good and half bad.

Half good because the weather was nice and I was able to take it easy/spend some time outdoors.

Half bad because I did a fast.

Have you ever fasted (ie. not eaten any food) for a day or more?

If you haven’t, I highly suggest giving it a try. There are a few things I like to geek out on, and one of them is using food – or a lack thereof – for bio hacking stuff.

So a few years ago, after doing a lot of reading and research into the benefits of fasting, I decided to give it a try.

Since then, I’ve done a 2 or 3 day fast every 6 months or so. And if you haven’t done a 2+ day fast before, I recommend it for a few reasons.

First, it’s supposed to be good for your long term health. I’m not a doctor or scientist, so I’m not gonna go into detail, but there’s tons of info online about the benefits of fasting if you want to give it a Google.

Second, because it changes your attitude toward food and eating. Before fasting, I never really appreciated food all that much. But when you get to day 3 without having any, your mindset starts to shift a bit.

And you begin to appreciate food for what it is – fuel, nourishment, the gas we need in our tanks to keep going.

Third, because it’s good to struggle a little bit.

Think about it – hundreds of years ago, especially if you weren’t well off, you might only have a meal a day, or less. Humans used to have to hunt or gather just to eat everyday, and going hours or days without food was more normal.

Now we’re all spoiled, and that reality check can help once in a while.

Anyway, I’m not here to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I recommend it once or twice a year. And if you have any questions on my approach, let me know!

The other thing I’m thinking about today, for some reason, is starting a “regular businesses” versus “investor-backed companies” as a solopreneur.

Why?

Well, I’ve had some experience with both, and they’re both pretty different.

When I’m talking about starting a “regular business”, I mean a traditional product or service business that you can get going pretty easily.

Maybe it’s a retail store, or lawn mowing business, or digital marketing company, or in my case, a law firm.

These are typically businesses that have been around for a long time. There’s a “playbook”, there are other successful ones out there, and you can usually get it up and running on your own, or with a small amount of capital, or with a small team.

Starting a tech company is a bit different, unless you’re a coder yourself, in which case you can start building projects and testing them whenever you can.

You can also try to fundraise, or not.

I’ve done both in the last 5 years, after starting a law firm in 2017 (we now have a small office of 5 in Toronto) and tech company in 2020 (two developers and myself).

There’s been a lot of overlap between the two, yet also a lot of differences.

And honestly, I think it’s still too early to tell which I like more because I like each for different reasons.

I like standard businesses because they’re a bit more predictable, but I like tech because of the creativity and innovation that comes with it.

If I had to start all over, I don’t know which one I’d go with…

Ever think about things like that – regular versus tech businesses?

Anyway, that’s enough rambling for one solopreneur blog post.

Hope things are going well on your end, make sure to sign up to get my daily updates and ramblings here, and keep grinding.

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