101: Four “pretty dang profound” realizations for solopreneurs
Business has felt a bit heavy in the past few months – not in terms of an excessive worklaod, but on the mental and emotional side.
But I’ve had a few realizations that have brought me relief and made solopreneurship feel less heavy.
I hope these realizations are helpful to you, too.
Mentioned in the episode:
The original Instagram post that inspired this episode.
The research article on the gap between income earned through a regular job vs starting a business
Episode 046 with Stacie on truths about entrepreneurship
Everyone's Talkin' Money podcast with Curtis May: 5 Principles of Personal Finance to Become Financially Free (Dec 16, 2022)
Everyone's Talkin' Money podcast with Eric Brotman: Build Your Path To Financial Freedom & Retirement at Any Age with Eric Brotman (Mar 2, 2021)
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Grab a screenshot of the episode and share/say Hei on Instagram
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Four business realizations that have brought me so much relief in the past couple of weeks:
1. I don’t “have to” make this business work
I don’t think I anticipated how hard it would be to grow this type of business, since the only point of reference I had was my photography business. Which I also thought grew slow, but hindsight 20/20 has shown me that I actually did really well with it!
Jess Eley kindly pointed out in her group program(s) multiple times that there are other ways to make money than our businesses, and that if we’re too attached to making the business work (in exactly the way we want) it makes the energy around it and approach to it harder. And while I originally had kept a “this is an experiment” attitude to this business, somewhere along the way I got sucked into holding onto it just a little too tightly.
And the longer it has taken to get this business going, the more it has felt like I really, really have to make it work – since I’ve put so much time into it.
A couple of weeks ago, I listed out the boxes I’d like my work to check – thank you Stacie Mitchell for giving me the “dream job list” idea during our collab episode on entrepreneurship truths.
I want to do work that allows me to…
✔︎ problem-solve
✔︎ collaborate with people
✔︎ be creative
✔︎ put something cool out in the world
… and there are so many different businesses, jobs, and free-time activities that would allow for all of the above.
In episode 99, Danbee Shin also brought up the idea that our businesses shouldn’t have to tick all of our boxes.
2. Entrepreneurship is not be the best way to build wealth
Being a business owner can in theory enable you to make more money than at your regular job – but in reality, it’s actually more common that small business owners are making less money than they did at their regular jobs when analyzed over a 10-year period.
This, combined with the fact that most businesses don’t make it past 10 years… Well, that’s a bit unsettling.
Taking a regular job might help me grow wealth faster – and free my brain up from the stresses of trying to make a business work a.s.a.p. It could actually feel *quite amazing* to have a job where I wouldn’t be the one responsible for bringing in the work that then pays me.
(For now) I can see myself taking a decently-paid job for the next decade or two while developing something fun on the side.
3. I don’t have to become “financially independent” by age x
I’ve gained a lot of valuable information from personal finance podcasts. On the flipside, many of the hosts or guests have been huge advocates of becoming financially independent early in life.
Two guests on Everyone’s Talkin’ Money podcast got me thinking about my financial future a bit differently:
1) Curtis May talked about how it’s important to invest in yourself, in your expertise and in your skills. He also suggested it’s important to invest in things that grow your cash flow – not just retirement accounts and other investments where you passively wait for the value to grow.
2) Eric Brotman said that becoming financially independent early is a spectacular goal – but being idle early is not. He talked about how it’s a good idea to keep doing things after you’ve hit retirement age or reached a point where your investments are good enough – cause then you can move on to doing work that enriches your life.
These thoughts opened my mind up to the idea that there might be ways to still be making money past retirement that doesn’t have to do with just relying on assets that are earning interest or increasing in value.
And that made me realize that as long as I am able to, I’d love to never fully retire. I don’t want to ever stop being creative, learning new things, helping people, or putting things out in the world. For sure it’ll look different, but I want to stay involved in interesting things beyond an arbitrary retirement age.
And if I do cool things in a decade or two, or maybe even once I’m past the age of retirement, I won’t be dependent on just saved-up assets. I feel kinda excited about the idea that my best years are yet to come 😍
4. Some things I want to put out in the world require experience I don’t yet have
When I spend so much time and energy trying to grow a business, I don’t have the bandwidth to work on the things that I actually want to get better at – or even just start doing. Like write a book ✍️
Something’s got to give.
So what’s next?
Maybe taking a regular job for the next decade or two, or even just the next few years, could create the environment or the circumstances that would allow me to do *more* of the things I want to do, not less.
Now that I don’t feel that taking a regular job or moving on from this business would be a terrible thing, it’s also taken the pressure off of this business and what it “has to look like”, which makes it more enjoyable to do things for it. Things may look a bit different around here, and I’m feeling open to seeing what else I might do that would work out better for me, if not this.
I hope that these four thoughts were as “dang profound” for you as they were for some of the people who commented on the original IG post on this topic.
If you have any thoughts on this, it would be really cool if you emailed me or clicked your way over to the IG post about these realizations and shared your thoughts.