Why I Started a Business
Duh, Rider, we know why you started a business: to make money.
Well, as a famous character once said, “You’re not wrong.”
But, the reality is when the trials and pains of birthing a business come knocking, “making money” won’t even get you out the door. You need to be prepared mentally, and you need to know why you’re doing this Herculean task. Shallow platitudes won’t keep you pressing forward while everyone and everything is pushing back like a freight train.
See the lone person in the photo? That is a successful entrepreneur. Now at the fruition of all his efforts, he’s enjoying a view most can only dream of and, in fact, wouldn’t believe is possible to experience. He’s looking out into the face of the world and seeing for the first time what freedom really means. The voices telling him it’s a fool’s endeavor and that he is being selfish have been silenced. Those who cut him off at the knees cannot even glimpse his face now. And the forces compelling him to take his most precious commodity and trade it for money, no longer hold any sway.
The pain of the journey complete, all he hears, and all he knows is: “I am free.”
Everything we buy, every societal trapping, every piece of age-old financial advice is part of a system designed to do only one thing: keep us enslaved. Don’t believe me? Ever consider — heaven forbid — that you might walk out the door tomorrow only to have your life ended later that day? We all have a set amount of time we are given, and yet every single day we dutifully donate bucket loads of our time in exchange for money. I’ll spare you the Morpheus meme, but think about this for a moment:
Given my age, weight, and habits, I have roughly 26 years left of my life. That translates to (basically) a total remaining number of hours in my life of 227,760 hours. Now, I have to sleep (taking seven hours a day as the norm), so that lowers the total further to 161,330 hours. Already reduced by almost half, my time is the target product in a massive liquidation sale running day-in and day-out.
I’ll give you an example. If I had a mortgage with a meager $110,000 left on it (dream on), I would need to work nearly two years (almost 3800 hours total) to pay it off if I had no other expenses or needs… throw in some medical bills, weekly groceries, power, water, Internet, clothing, shoes, the latest and greatest doohickey, and woo-hoo, my time is: going, going, gone! Every purchase means more “indentured time” for me. The system owns my time, and sadly at the end of my life when my time matters most — when there isn’t a sum of money imaginable that I wouldn’t pay to spend one more minute with my wife, my children, and my family — I’ll have no more to spare.
I refuse to continue exchanging my time for money. I refuse to entertain a gasping end. I refuse to live this way a moment longer, and all opposing forces — corporeal or otherwise — be damned. I will scale every wall, knock down every mountain, and arm-wrestle every locomotive needed to remove the system’s control over my time.
This is why I started a business.
Owning a business — the right business —delivers a Chuck-Norris-style, fatal roundhouse kick to the system’s head, and as you step over its lifeless corpse you finally understand: I don’t have to trade my time for money. Imagine being able to travel the world, play Mad-Libs with your kids, go jogging with your spouse, throw a massive shindig for your parents on their 50th wedding anniversary, or get seven hours of restful sleep all while you make money. Friends, this is what real freedom looks like. And though we’ve been programmed by the education system, by our families (well-meaning), and by financial dogmas to die on the hill in the system’s defense, we don’t have to. Freedom is possible, but the path is not for the faint of heart.
You see, when the wolf comes to the door at 4 am demanding the dues, you can’t scream and run.
When the freight train approaches, you’ve got to step onto the track and utter a Neo-like, “No.”
When Sisyphus steps up, you’ve got to tell him, “Thanks, I’ve got this.”
And when family, well-meaning or otherwise, says, “Get back in line!” you’ve got to say, “I must follow my own line.”
Entrepreneurship gives you freedom, but you’ve got to know why you’re pursuing it in the first place. Your reason has to be etched in stone on a rock high above the forces of erosion, but ready in a moment’s notice to swoop down and do battle with the internal forces of doubt, un-reason, difficulty, and bad advice. Freedom — and your time — is out there waiting to be taken back from the system.
Why did I start a business? It’s simple.
I was born with a precise, allotted amount of time. I choose not to trade it anymore for money in an external, unfeeling system bent on re-purposing it from me. The system didn’t grant me the time, nor did it number my days, but for some unknown reason, it feels entitled to all of it.
I have something for you, System. Come and take it if you can!
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