Entrepreneurial Self Worth
As entrepreneurs, many of us have an emotional connection with our businesses — and rightly so. After all, if you are going to build a company from the ground up, it’s only human for us to be emotionally invested in the businesses that we run. Much like raising a child, building a profitable company takes time and effort. Only after years of blood, sweat and tears do we get to see our creation stand on their two feet.
Sometimes, though, we need to take a step back and look at our businesses with an objective eye. What is it that we want from our business and how can we achieve that? And if we fail to meet our business goals, what impact does that have on our emotional well-being?
To take a deeper dive into these questions, it’s important to define our objectives. Why are we engaging in business in the first place?
Is it to achieve freedom in our lives? Do we want to escape the rat race, so that we can spend more time with the family or pursue a passion for hiking or reading?
Maybe we are looking for financial independence. With a successful business, we can achieve the financial security we need to retire or put our kids through college.
And perhaps, we are looking to create something that will spread our values to the world and enrich the lives of people around us.
Or maybe we’re just in it for the money. And the truth is — that’s okay! Society has a tendency to look down on those who are in business only for the money, but I think most of us would agree that it’s better to be wealthy and happy than poor and miserable.
Wait just one second. Let me repeat the comparison again. Wealthy and happy versus poor and miserable.
As most modern discourse, this is a gross oversimplification and has latent, yet far-reaching implications.
When I say wealthy and happy, what do I mean by “wealthy”? What is the absolute minimum amount of money we need to be happy? And what will happen if we make more than that?
Is the wealth versus happiness graph linear? Does every dollar you make bring you the same amount of happiness? Of course not. Like every spectrum in existence, there exists a sweet spot, a happy medium that saves you all the stresses of having too little without the guilt of having too much. More wealth oftentimes brings stress, anxiety and, ironically, a lack of fulfillment. In other words, more wealth can make you miserable.
So, the comparison of wealthy and happy versus poor and miserable is not the right comparison to make. Wealth and happiness are not synonymous nor are a lack of wealth and misery.
Given that wealth and happiness are not linearly correlated, the more accurate comparison is wealthy versus poor. Having money can make you much happier than having no money at all. But it can also make you miserable if you don’t know what to do with it, if you fall into the traps of consumerism or materialism.
But is that really true? Are there successful wealthy people who are miserable? Of course there are. Just like there are miserable poor people. And, on the flip side, are there happy poor people? You bet.
But the human tendency is to somehow make the comparison between wealthy and happy versus poor and miserable.
“What does this have to do entrepreneurship?” I hear you ask. To get a better understanding of why I decided to write about this and why it’s relevant, I’ll give you a deeper look into my own journey this past week while working on my coffee business.
While developing the marketing strategy and running through numbers, I fell into the trap of “I just need x amount of customers for $y of revenue — and then I’ll be set!”. I had made the fatal mistake of equating wealth with happiness. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that once I hit a certain level of revenue I’d be happy.
But I questioned myself, “happy with what?” Sure an extra few hundred dollars a month would be nice. But beyond that, as far as my finances are concerned, my business could be bringing in no revenue at all and I’d be very comfortable.
So why was I so concerned about the revenue? Because that’s what society has taught me. That’s what I’ve been conditioned to believe. Between all the wild success stories and mindless scrolling through startup and builder Twitter, I lost sight of my objective. I lost my “why?”.
I had to take a step back and re-evaluate. I had to ask myself, “what do I want?” and “why am I doing this?”. The answer was simple: I enjoy building products. As Ryan Holiday points out in his brilliant post “How Does It Feel To Get Everything You Ever Wanted?”, the reward is not the revenue, the fame or the success. The reward is in the doing. The process of solving your customers’ pain points. The joy of putting your head down and building. Any revenue, attention or opportunities that come your way are just icing on the cake. A cake that you already have.
The fact you are reading this right now means you have a privilege that close to half the world doesn’t. You are on the internet. Aside from all the opportunity that comes with it, you have to remind yourself of how fortunate you really are. Once you start counting your blessings, it really puts into perspective how much wealth we already have.
So, if the reward is not in the revenue but in the product itself, what does that mean for my business? I should just be satisfied with my current level of revenue and not worry about how much more I can make or what’s next.
Well, not exactly.
There’s a happy medium between striving to make more and being satisfied with where we are right now.
The truth is, I’m not satisfied with where my coffee business is. I feel like there’s a lot of development and growth that needs to happen. But the key is that my personal happiness is not tied to the success of my business. The fact that I have the opportunity to build something to help people is already a win. It’s already a success.
So, where does that leave us? Where is the happy medium between striving for more and being satisfied with what we have?
The answer: self-awareness. Knowing our priorities, knowing our values. Determining what truly makes us happy and then making sure we don’t fall into the comparison trap of wealthy versus poor and instead focus on the comparison of wealthy versus happy.
Thank you for reading!
