Starting a business isn’t about making more. It’s about working less.
It’s about making just enough to survive and then clawing back days of the week to spend however you want to.
It’s about reducing the number of hours of your life that you have to spend doing something you don’t want to do.
It’s about freedom.
You can either find a way to get paid for something you truly love doing, and feel freedom in the fact that you're not being forced to do something you don’t want to do in order to survive.
Or
You can find a way to make so much money from such little work-time per week/month/year, etc., that you feel the trade-off is worth it. Doing something you don’t love seems a lot more tolerable when you can make a week's wage in 1 day and spend the rest of the week doing whatever you want.
I have found the former to be more fulfilling and achievable personally.
But I believe that both are valid.
That’s why this course is not solely based around making a living doing what you love. I understand that a lot of people would be content with being their own boss, working less, while earning more operating a business that they actually own, even if they don’t totally love it.
A majority of my examples do lean towards doing things you love, but that doesn’t mean the same principles and methods can’t apply to something that you don’t love.
Whether you love the business or not, the same things still need to happen for it to be successful. Loving it just makes it a little easier at the start, and on the hard weeks and months along the way.
There is a flip side to this though.
Being someone that has built successful businesses around my passion, I often think I could make a lot more money if they weren’t based around something I love. I struggle to make the best decision financially sometimes and instead make decisions based on emotion and sentiment.
If I wasn’t so passionate about what I do, I may never have gotten my businesses to the point they're at today.
But if I wasn’t so passionate about what I do, I might be able to treat my businesses a bit more objectively in order to achieve more with them.
If the goal was simply to make as much money as possible, I believe I could make a lot more.
But the goal has always been to make as much money as possible without disrespecting the culture and community, ensuring I always give more than I take and that I am consciously adding to the future growth of the sport that I am so passionate about.
While these constraints are noble and virtuous, I can't help but think how successful I might be if I put my business brain to work in an industry I was not as passionate about. How far could I take things if my business was yard maintenance and the objective was to simply get as many clients as possible and do a great job on their yard? Of course, there would still be constraints around quality and delivering value, but I do see it as an industry with more direct and objective metrics.
I explain these nuances in detail to provide a peek behind the curtain. This line of thought may seem over the top for someone just starting out, but eventually, these issues will face every entrepreneur. It's helpful to start knowing whether you are trying to make as much as possible in a day's work, or if your version of freedom is just scraping by doing something you absolutely love, or somewhere in between.