Don't Start a Business for the Money—Do It for This Instead

Based on this new blog post, I've identified key themes around doing business for freedom rather than money, the real value of autonomy, and passion-driven entrepreneurship. For the Blog Post: Excerpt: Don't start a business for money—do it for freedom. Learn why autonomy and passion matter more than profit for long-term entrepreneurial success. Meta Description: Stop chasing money and start building freedom. Learn why the best entrepreneurs are motivated by autonomy, not profit. For the Video: Video Description: Why you shouldn't start a business for money. Discover the real reason successful entrepreneurs build companies: freedom and autonomy. Reformatted Captions: It's currently 3:31pm on a Tuesday. It's not a remarkable day, but I've just spent the better part of the past week, working day and night, literally staying up till about two or 3 a.m., almost every single night. on a project that I have no idea if anyone's ever going to see. I don't know if it's going to ever generate any money for me but I did it because I loved it. And I did it because I can. There's nobody that can tell me that I have to put my time somewhere else, that the things I'm working on don't make sense to them. It's my prerogative to do whatever I want. That's the real benefit. The joy of starting a business, working for yourself, finding a way to build a life that doesn't have other people telling you what to do. A lot of people want to start a business because they think it's going to get them rich. And you can make a ton of money from a business or a side hustle. It's definitely possible. But if that's your only goal, if that's the only motivation you have, you're probably not going to make it far enough to actually see that money. Or you're going to be incredibly disappointed because you know what happens with a lot of businesses They become profitable or successful and they make about the same you would have made if you had stayed in a regular career. They might make a little bit more year over year, but think about the sacrifices you're going to make. Think about the year you went without income to get the business off the ground. Think about all of the other perks that do come with being employed. There's a lot of ways you can make money, but there's very few ways you can have the type of freedom that I have I had a friend call me up last week and he said, that idea you have, first step entrepreneur, the program you're building for people sounds amazing, but have you ever thought about making it into a game? Maybe you can offer it to high schools or colleges or anywhere else. And other people could learn what it takes to become an entrepreneur. So it should be a game. And because I'm a little OCD, because I don't know how to control myself, I hung up the phone and I started coding it that day. It's a little bit of a problem I have. One of the things you will see if you have a chance to play the game yourself is that an entrepreneur needs to stay focused. They need to avoid distractions, but the reality is the distractions are why some of us get into it. And it's the fuel that keeps us going You know, I can't go back to a regular job. I can't go somewhere where when I have an inspiration, I'm going to be told that I got to get back on to payroll. I got to deal with the customers. I got to do something else. I need freedom. I'm a creative person. I'm an independent person And I genuinely think for anybody that's out there, if you're thinking of starting a business, it's the freedom. Do it for that. Do it because you gen genuinely love to make things or to help people. Or there's a problem that you just can't escape. It won't get out of your head. Those are the reasons to start the business. The money will come The money will come big or or small. It depends on what you do when you actually run your business, but it can't be the end state. The money is always going to be something that you can replicate in other ways. But freedom is forever. You know, if you watch any other videos, if you know anything about my story I have basically been a founder of my entire life. In my 20s, it was social networks. In my 30s, it was a multi-million dollar SAS company.. And I can tell you that every time the business was booming, I was making more money than anyone else I knew. I'm not saying that I was making go buy a private island kind of money, but I was doing incrediblyibly well But as I've said in other videos, I've had friends that joined Pepsi or Coke or some other large organization and have worked their way up over the past 20 years, getting stock options, getting promotions. And financially, we're not that different. If anything, they are sometimes in a better place because they've taken the steady money they had and they've budgeted. They've put it into rental properties or proper investmentments where I've had boom years and bus years Right now I'm in the middle of a b year. I sold a business a year ago and since then, I've been trying to start something new. And it took me basically a year to even figure out what that something new was, which means I didn't earn anything. money. Yeah, I had an exit. Yeah, I have a nest egg. But that's the life of someone that is going to be an entrepreneur, maybe your life. There's going to be ups and downs. You need to learn how to manage your money in different ways. And the thing that's going to get you through all of that is the passion, the fun, the weirdness, and the quirks of doing interesting things. This time, it was a game. Yeah. I like to take the ideas I have and make them come to life. And I like to do them in surprising ways. So I sat down and I tried to use any new technology I could. I tried to resharpen the the skills that I have for software development. And I build this. What you're looking at right now is what I'm calling the entrepreneur simulator. It's just an opportunity for me to codify the same lessons that I talked about in every single one of these videos into a little simulation. It's not perfect. It's not really going to give you all of the experiences because chances are you're going to have to do it on your break in your evenings before you head into work because you don't't have the freedom to play it all day long like I do, but that can change Anybody can have the type of freedom you desire if you just find a way to rethink the way that your life operates. It's not always going to be having more money, but there's always a way to make money. There's always a way to take the ideas or the skills you have, maybe even the job you're doing right now and turn it into something that you can do with a little bit more freedom. But I also want to make sure that everyone understands what freedom really means. Freedom isn't necessarily just playing games or building games every day, all day. I literally worked 16 hours a day every one of those days. I was free to do what I wanted but because it's just me, because I have freedom and nobody else supporting me, nobody else working for me or with me and nobody that I'm working for, everything was on me, but I did it because I loved it. You know, that's the other primary reason you should think about turning your skills into a business is if you have a passion to do things. You know, it can be a problem. Building businesses is my hobby. So at the end of a day of working, making videos, making, making apps, building programs, if I have free time, if the kids are in bed, if my wife has gone to sleep early you know what I do? I start working again. And I don't do it because of any pressure. There's nobody cracking the whip on me. It's not to make more money. It's because building things is what I love. And when you recognize that in yourself that you have a passion for something, maybe it's skating, maybe it's making music or games or anything. If the thing that you want to do more than anything else is just to do that thing again, well, then that's probably the center of the business you should create. Because when you have that when you have the desire to do the thing all the time, when doing it doesn't feel like work, it will feel like freedom. You might work harder, longer hours, more days than you ever did at the job you're curly at, but you'll still be more free because you'll be doing what you love. You'll be doing it because you want to do it. And when something comes up, when you need a day off, when you need to experiment with a new idea, you can just do it. That's why you should start a business. That's why I I honestly think everybody should consider starting a business. Maybe it's naive. Maybe it's because I've been this way my entire life but I can't imagine just living a life where I didn't have an autonomy over my own ideas and my own time. If that's something that's of interest to you, as I said, try the game. You'll get a sense of whether or not you have what it takes. And even more importantly, look into my program I'm really trying to start a community of people that want to experience entrepreneurship, want to build some of the skills, and ultimately launch their own business. And I'm looking for the first cool whorde of people that want to be part of something together, who want to go through it, who want to push themselves just a little bit before they have an idea, before they have a business to get started. that's my dream is to help make other entrepreneurs, other people that have freedom partially so that I have people to hang out with during the day when I don't feel like working, but also because I know that having that kind of freedom getting someone to the point where they have it themselves is probably the biggest gift you can ever give someone. So hopefully that's you. Until then, I'm going to do some more work on my game, going to play around. And I hope that you stick around, watch this video next, and learn what it takes to be an entrepreneur, learn how to be exceptional, learn how to think a little bit differently so that you two can have this kind of freedom on a Tuesday