Welcome to the entrepreneurial world. Small businesses are awesome. They’re almost like real businesses — in the way that the light bulb powered Easy Bake Oven is a kitchen appliance. They have much of the soul crushing disorganization of big corporations, but with none of the resources. Your boss is gushing with enthusiasm. It will be tough, but things are looking up. There’s going to be a big account coming in, and you’re all teetering on the precipice of the money filled abyss. A veritable Scrooge McDuck style pool. It won’t be like last time. This time it’s really gonna happen. You’re getting in on the ground floor, and the only question will be how many hand trucks you’ll need to carry your loot. It may take some sacrifices, but it’ll be worth it.

It won’t be worth it. Your boss, at best, has no idea what they’re talking about, or may just be a despicable liar. Sacrifice nothing — it’ll help stave off your resentment of the company as the realities start to dawn on you. I could be wrong, though. There are plenty of successful small businesses.

Not yours, though. Businesspeople are unimaginative, and your boss has probably walked blindly into a glutted or moribund industry. You have an extremely poor shot at being successful — unless you have a killer app.

You don’t have a killer app. Most likely, your product isn’t original or even necessary, and you’ve got competitors who are doing it better than you do. But you’re smart. You probably noticed the problems right away, and are formulating ways to improve things. You’re really going to turn things around! It’ll be great! You can fix it!

You can’t fix it. Small companies are run entirely on the primitive reflexes of the “visionaries” behind them. They don’t abide the problems, they embody them. Even if you can drum up enough excitement about your “new” idea to implement it, your superiors don’t really understand it, and will ultimately pervert it into the same degree of crapness as their other stuff. If it’s visual, it’ll end up looking like everything else. If it’s functional, it will be changed arbitrarily until it looks like a teleporter accident. It will become a savage mockery of all you believe in, and you will wake up in a cold sweat years later dreaming about it.