I can see it in their eyes as they walk up. It’s clear what they want me to do before our coffee & chat is over. Entrepreneurs come to me believing now that they’ve broken away from their boss and 9 to 5 job, everything would be better, their business idea would catch on and money would start to flow in. And now that nothing has turned out like they had hoped, they want a business consultant to deliver the words that will make them feel more comfortable with their situation. But I can’t do that—and wouldn’t if I could.

This is what I say. They have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. The motivation of an entrepreneur, at the core, isn’t comfort but the opposite—dreaming dreams they couldn’t possibly accomplish, financially committing to things that offer the same thrill as jumping over a cliff, problem-solving as an minute-by-minute function, feeling the heat as it crawls up and through the shirt collar, failing, and then getting back up eagerly for the next challenge. And all of it is about as comfortable as a submarine fire—but it also feels like being their most alive.

This is not to say things won’t get better. Progress is good. I like progress. I like helping companies grow and ideas take shape. But if you find yourself hoping for success so that the uncomfortable fight for survival goes away, you may need a conversation of a different kind, perhaps with the person in the mirror. Is this really what you want to do?

Comfort is an entrepreneur’s greatest threat. Being uncomfortable is something to embrace.

I was at a bar with my employees buying rounds of beer and feeling confident I was contributing to our morale when two of them took me aside. “If you don’t stop treating us so poorly,” they agreed, “we’re going to leave the company.”

It wasn’t long after at a holiday party that the husband of one of my managers, as kindly as he could, turned to me and said, “You gotta be nicer to my wife.”

Like eyes that slowly adjust to the dark of a movie theater, things began rather gradually coming into view—and the truth was everywhere: my employees were miserable working for me, and I had missed every cue.

Of course, I didn’t like it at the time, but those brave souls saved my company. They also saved my life. The changes I had to make in order to have happier employees had to start with changes made to me. Who was I, I asked, and were my financial goals worth the pain I was causing? The only way I could treat others how I would never want to be treated was if I was dramatically off course in life. So blinded with ambition, it wasn’t simply that I didn’t care, I couldn’t even see how badly I was hurting them; the pain in their eyes, the dark tension in every room I walked into, the eagerness they had to get out of my presence.

Today, after many years of change both in operation and my heart, ShootDotEdit is thriving and reports are of happy employees, many of whom have been with me for 13 years with plans to stay. Me—I’m happier too, thrilled, actually, at the feeling of being about somebody else besides myself. What a relief. But it took courage—not mine. It was the courage of others to stand up to the boss and call him out. I would have never thought to say it then, but I am so grateful for those horrible, hot-under-the-collar moments of truth.

Who am I becoming, and, Who am I hurting, are infinitely more valuable question to ask oneself than How much am I making.

You may not believe this, but even as someone who butters his bread with where the digital age has taken us, I find myself feeling slightly excited about Apple’s opt-in mandate, where online marketers are now subject to the people’s will as to whether their data can be used and acted upon. Like advertising’s heyday of the 60’s-80s, marketers will have to create brilliant ideas with a broad appeal now that they can’t simply give you pablum based on data that said you were interested in their product category. Like Avis ads said back in the day, we’ll have to Try Harder.

I know some people will be aghast at that. Some digital empires may crumble. A few more teens will have to go to state colleges and forego their Ivy League dreams. But the idea that advertising will soon cease to be mostly a clickbait war, where people are simply data-rich pawns, and will now have to be appealed to as actual human beings who laugh, cry, and kiss their kids, makes me hopeful.

Connection, person to person, is making a comeback. It didn’t seem possible. It was all one-way traffic for, say the last 20 years. But it’s a new day. It makes me want to walk up to a stranger, or a barista, and say, “How are you?” and wait for the answer like I never have before.

Don’t look now, I think we humans have just snatched back a little of our humanity. It may be something we all should try to take advantage of; to push the issue of connection just a little bit more.

Shall we do a test run for free?