Dave Chong Entering Entrepreneurship: Risk & Reality
The Price of Entry: You Are Not an Employee Anymore
When I tell people I am an entrepreneur, they see the flexibility. They see the systems I have now. They see the AI tools running 24/7. They think, “I want that freedom.”
They don’t see the price I paid for the ticket.
In 2010, when I started my birdnest trading business, I wasn’t “free.” I was a hostage to my own cash flow. I was processing raw birdnests, dealing with export logistics to China, managing quality control, and handling sales.
I remember one specific shipment. It was stuck at customs. My capital was tied up in those boxes. If they didn’t clear, I didn’t get paid. If I didn’t get paid, my suppliers didn’t get paid.
I didn’t sleep for three days.
An employee goes home at 5 PM and forgets about work. If the shipment is stuck, it’s “the boss’s problem.” But when you are the boss, you are the safety net. There is no one above you to fix it.
This is the price of entry.
Most people enter entrepreneurship with an employee mindset. They want “fairness.” They want “hours.” They want to know when the workday ends.
If that is you, stop now. You will not survive.
The market does not care about your work-life balance. The market does not care if you possess “mental health days.” The market only cares about value. And in the early days, creating value from nothing requires a level of force that resembles madness.
You are attempting to violate the laws of physics: creating something from nothing. The universe resists this. Competitors resist this. Even your own incompetence resists this.
To overcome that gravity, you cannot be “balanced.” You must be obsessed.
The “Elon Standard”: Why Obsession is the Only Strategy
We hear stories about Elon Musk sleeping on the Tesla factory floor during “production hell.” We hear about the 120-hour weeks.
Critics look at this and say, “That is toxic.” “That is unsustainable.” “That is not healthy.”
They are right. It is unhealthy. It is unsustainable in the long run.
But let me tell you what else is true: It is necessary.
In 2014, when I joined IQI, I wasn’t just “trying out real estate.” I needed it to work. I had just come from the birdnest business, I knew what business pressure felt like, and I decided to apply that same pressure to sales.
I didn’t work 9 to 5. I worked 7 AM to midnight. I didn’t just wait for leads. I hunted them.
I remember the early days of building EliteOne. It was late 2014. I was recruiting agents, training them, and closing my own deals simultaneously. I was the marketing department, the HR department, and the sales department.
If I had clocked out at 6 PM, EliteOne would not exist today.
My team saw me answering messages at 1 AM. They saw me in the office before they arrived and after they left. Because I set that pace, they matched it.
We did RM 175 million in sales in our first year. That wasn’t luck. That wasn’t “working smart.” That was brute force intensity.
This is the “Elon Standard.” It is the non-negotiable requirement for escape velocity.
If you are a leader and you want “balance” in the first 12 months, your team will have “apathy.” You cannot outsource the intensity. It must come from you. You are the nuclear reactor at the center of the ship. If you cool down, the engine stops.
The Mathematics of Momentum (Why Balance Kills Startups)
“I want work-life balance.”
This statement is the number one killer of early-stage startups.
Let’s look at the math. You are competing against people like me. You are competing against people who are obsessed.
If you work 40 hours a week (standard “balance”), and I work 80 hours a week, I am not just doing 2x your work. I am doing 4x your work.
Why? Because of Momentum and the Weekend Gap.
The Weekend Gap
If you work Monday to Friday and take the weekend off, you stop the flywheel. On Monday morning, you spend 4 hours remembering where you left off. You spend another 4 hours getting back into “flow.” You have lost a day just restarting the engine.
When I was building EliteOne, weekends were not “off days.” Weekends were “catch-up days.” Weekends were “strategy days.” While my competitors were at the beach, I was refining our sales scripts. While they were watching movies, I was designing the commission structure that would attract the best talent.
By Monday morning, I didn’t need to restart. I was already moving at 100 mph. They were standing still.
Fighting Entropy
A startup is like pushing a boulder up a hill. The moment you stop pushing, it doesn’t stay still. It rolls back down. “Balance” assumes the boulder will stay there while you take a break. It won’t. Problems fester. Leads go cold. Enthusiasm wanes.
You can have balance later. You can have balance when you have cash flow, a management team, and systems (like the DJC System). Today, I can take a holiday because the system pushes the boulder.
But in the early days? You are the system. If you stop, everything dies.
War Stories: When the System Breaks
People see my current life—Group VP, successful tech companies, systems running smoothly—and they think I’m naturally organized. They don’t see the chaos of the trenches.
There was a time in the early days of Mykey Global (my short-term rental business). We had just taken on a massive number of units. We were scaling too fast. Suddenly, the cleaning crew quit. Overnight.
We had guests checking in the next day. 30 units needed to be turned over.
A “balanced” boss would have called a staffing agency and waited. A “balanced” boss would have complained about “labour shortages.”
I didn’t have that luxury.
I bought cleaning supplies. I called my core team. And we cleaned toilets. I remember scrubbing a bathroom floor at 11 PM, thinking, “I am an engineer. I am a top sales leader. Why am I cleaning a toilet?”
Because the system broke. And when the system breaks, you are the backup generator.
We cleaned all 30 units. The guests checked in. No one knew the crisis that happened the night before.
That willingness to do the “low status” work is what separates founders from “managers.” Your team needs to know that you will do whatever it takes. That you are not above the work.
If I hadn’t scrubbed those floors, Mykey Global might have failed right there. Bad reviews would have piled up. Owners would have pulled their units. Game over.
You have to carry the weight until the system is strong enough to carry it for you.
The Compounding Effect of “All-In”
There is a magic that happens when you go “All-In.”
When you are obsessed, your brain never turns off. You solve problems in the shower. You solve problems while driving. You dream about the business.
This continuous processing power creates a compounding effect.
In 2023, when I started DJC AI, I saw the potential of Large Language Models. I didn’t just “dabble” in it for an hour a day. I immersed myself. I learned everything about prompting, about APIs, about automation architectures.
I built the first version of our AI agents in a weekend sprint where I barely left my desk.
If I had done that “one hour a day,” it would have taken me six months. By then, the market would have moved on. Because I compressed that effort into a short, intense burst, we launched IQPilot ahead of the curve.
This is the secret: Intensity compresses time.
You can do in a year what others do in ten. But you have to pay the price.
Heroics vs. Systems
I talk a lot about systems. “Systems beat talent.” But here is the paradox: You need Heroics to build the System.
You cannot systematize what you do not understand. You have to do the work manually, painfully, and intensely first. You have to be the hero who saves the day (like cleaning the toilets). Then you write the SOP. Then you hire the cleaner. Then you build the software.
But the Heroics come first. The obsession comes first. The “Elon Standard” is the foundation upon which the “Dave Chong System” is built.
Conclusion: Make Your Choice
I am not saying you should never sleep. I am not saying you should destroy your health permanently.
I am saying there are seasons.
The “Early Days” is a season of war. It is a season of planting during a storm.
If you are unwilling to pay the price of admission—which is total intensity—then do not buy the ticket. There is no shame in being an employee. There is no shame in a steady job.
But if you claim the title of Founder, if you claim to be a Builder, then act like it.
Be the hardest worker in the room. Set the standard. Make it non-negotiable.
That is how you win.
Conclusion: Choose Your Hard
I am not saying this life is for everyone. In fact, I am telling you—it is probably not for you.
If you value your weekends more than your vision, do not start a company. If you value “logging off” more than “breaking through,” do not lead a team.
There is no shame in having a job. There is no shame in wanting a balanced life.
But do not lie to yourself. Do not say you want to be a top 1% achiever and then act like the 99%.
The “Elon Standard”—that relentless, unreasonable, borderline-insane work ethic—is the price of admission to the arena of high performance.
I chose my hard. I chose the sleepless nights in 2010. I chose the 7-day weeks in 2014. I chose the toilet-scrubbing crisis in 2016.
And because I paid that price, I now get to choose my systems. I get to choose my projects. I get to write these guides for you.
Make your choice. But if you choose to build, do not come to me complaining about the hours. Be the generator. Be the intensity.
That is non-negotiable.