In this reflective monologue, Michael Girdley shares personal anecdotes about how fellow entrepreneurs have pointed out his deteriorating appearance, revealing the hidden toll of burnout. He recounts conversations with two friends—one a serial entrepreneur who warned him he looked like "hell," and another a single‑company founder who appeared exhausted. These exchanges illustrate how entrepreneurs often mask stress behind a façade of success. Girdley argues that entrepreneurship is a lifestyle choice, not merely a career path, and that its pressures differ from a conventional W‑2 job. He emphasizes that the public image of thriving founders hides messy, high‑pressure realities, and calls for greater empathy among founders. The video concludes with a plea for viewers to recognize the true costs of the entrepreneurial path and to support one another.
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Oh, another CEO, whole co-owner type who does what I do in life and in business. He and I were in a call together and we've been friends and look, there's only so many people that are trying to go out and practice entrepreneurship the way I do, which is being involved in multiple businesses. And so if you run into somebody who's trying to do the same strategy as you, since we're so rare, you end up becoming friends with those people. And, um, I've been friends with this guy for a while and he and I were on a call for, kind of something totally unrelated to anything business-wise. Everybody else got off the Zoom call and he's been seeing my face, got off the call and he said, hey Michael, hang back for a second after everybody else dropped off. So he and I started chatting and he said the following from a place, frankly, of love, because it's going to come across terrible. But frankly, he said to me, he's like, man, you look like hell. Like, you don't look good. He said that. I think everybody's first reaction would be to be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, how dare you, like, talk that way?" But when you're friends with people, ideally they're the types of folks who you can hear something like that and understand what they're talking about is really coming from a place of love. And what he was saying was, "Man, you look like you've been through the wringer. You look like there's a lot of bad stuff, stressful, all that kind of stuff happening in your life." And he was saying all of that really from a place of love. In one regards, I was kind of sad that Well, stuff had been going rough enough for me that I didn't look good. Like, I didn't look healthy. My skin color wasn't great. Like, I was kind of sad that it had gotten that bad. On the other end of it, I was really just grateful that he had taken the time to just notice that that's going on. And we talked for a few minutes more. Like, I kind of shared some of the stuff that was going on and the stresses and stuff like that, personal and professional. And that was just part of the deal. Like, it was just touching. That he was a real friend that genuinely just cared how I was getting along. At the end of the conversation, he said something surprising, and he said, "Look, man, I feel where you're at. I've been going through hell the past couple of years." And frankly, you know, he didn't maybe look as bad as I did, or I just wasn't paying attention because I'm not as good of a friend as he is. But, you know, it was interesting to me that I had no idea that his life had been so stressful because of business and personal stuff and all that kind of stuff. And I was just kind of oblivious to it. Fast forward Maybe a year later, I saw another buddy, and I hadn't seen him probably in over a year. And he's an entrepreneur as well, but generally somebody that's just focused on one company at a time. But his one company, man, it's been going through some stuff. And, you know, when he and I caught up, like, I could see it in his face. I could see it in the whole everything going on. Like, he was just an exhausted, beaten man, just, just in a rough situation. The horrible stuff going on with him. First caveat, like, these are first world horrible problems, right? He still has a family that loves him. He still overall has his health. He still, you know, is solvent. Like, these are all made up problems compared to what some people in the world are going through. But still, like, they're stressful and they're tough because, you know, as you get into middle age, especially as a man, like, a lot of times you build up commitments and promises made to people and responsibilities between family, work, life, community. Like, all that stuff, like, it's pretty Yeah, it can weigh on you. And for my buddy, after our chat, I followed up with him and I said, hey, sent him a note, I empathize with what you're going through and it looks like hell, and I don't know how I could be helpful, but I want you to know I'm pulling for you. He said something in response that was pretty interesting, which was he wrote back, you know, we're entrepreneurs, this is what we signed up for. And I was like, man, that's kind of beautiful and also totally true. In the end, that's the real lesson from this video. It is very easy to to look in the news, to see people driving fancy cars, to see people that look like they have it all together, to hear on social media all the huge successes. Reality is business is the opposite. Behind the scenes, it is messy. There's a lot of pressure on you as a person. There's a lot of pressure on everybody involved to produce. It's a choice that people who become entrepreneurs, they've made that choice. When I have people ask me, hey, should I be an entrepreneur? Should I do this? I tell them, look at it not as a career choice. Being an entrepreneur, being a holdco owner, being involved in multiple businesses, whatever you're doing from an entrepreneurship standpoint where your own capital is at risk, you are making a lifestyle choice. There's nothing wrong with that lifestyle choice, just like there's nothing wrong with getting a W-2 job. Like, you want to go work someplace, great. But in the end, I think people should just look at this journey and what they're signing up for as really choosing what kind of life they want to live. And secondarily, when you understand how that lifestyle choice works, it creates really a mandate for each and every one of us to have a lot of empathy for everybody going through it, because it's got its ups and downs, its stresses, its good times and bad. And, uh, that's the one thing that is totally universal about this game and something that we as entrepreneurs I think really need to look out for each other and have empathy for one another. That's what I think in this video. Thanks for being here. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
