Five Ways Being an Entrepreneur Taught Me to Be an Author

This article originally appeared in diyMFA.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

It was six months into the COVID pandemic that I made one of the biggest career decisions of my life. I had spent over 20 years in the tech industry, mostly as a founder, or early employee, at Silicon Valley tech startups. I had just decided to shut down my latest venture and was feeling burned out. 

So I decided to make the most of that setback by pursuing something radically different that I had always wanted to do: write a novel.

Two years later, my debut novel, Bit Flip, is finally being published. It has been a long journey that felt daunting at first. But what I discovered along the way is that my time as a tech entrepreneur actually prepared me quite well for being a novelist. 

Although it felt like a 180-degree pivot at the time, I’ve come to recognize the striking similarities of the two occupations. Both are, essentially, typing words (or code) into a computer to create a product. Both are forms of entertainment. And both have discouragingly low probabilities of success.

Beyond those vocational similarities, I realized there were many lessons I learned as an entrepreneur that, somewhat unexpectedly, prepared me to be an author. I offer these learnings here because I believe they represent a unique perspective and perhaps different advice than most authors receive. 

Authors are taught to focus on their craft, that great writing will get discovered. Most don’t think of embarking on a career as an author like starting a business, but, in many ways, that’s exactly what it is. In short, they approach their writing careers like MFAs, not MBAs.

With that preamble, here are the 5 things I learned and practiced as an entrepreneur that directly translated to becoming an author.