Seeking Problems: The Entrepreneur’s Journey
I used to dream of retiring at 30, and while I can’t say I’m “retired” I have, through systems, automation, and staffing, been able to create a situation where I can manage my business and generate a healthy income while working less than 15 hours a week.
Of course, it took years of searching to get there, and also involved me having to start the business while working a full-time job and of course adopt the “hustle culture” into my life. There are so many books and courses about “escaping” your job, and gaining “freedom” by starting your own business, and being able to do whatever you want with your time.
Well, after achieving what felt like a pretty big milestone and my own version of the “four-hour workweek”, I realized that freedom doesn’t mean having tons of free time. That gets old, really quick.
So I did what entrepreneurs do, I went back to the drawing board, and set goals.
“I want to have a $10 million net worth in 10 years”.
I definitely had to come to terms with the fact that if that was my next “end goal”, I better get back to work.
After about 3 months of feeling pretty directionless, with my business growing, but little satisfaction, I realized something. The dangling carrot does not taste nearly as good as the chase feels.
Operating a business is not nearly as fun as starting one.
So immediately, I met with my wife and one of my mentors and we discussed if it would be the right time to start a 2nd location of our Music Academy.
And by the way, I’ve had a ton of other ideas, from Youtube channel, to marketing agency, online courses…but there’s something about creating a business that impacts the local community, where you get to create something that changes the landscape around you and see it make a difference. I couldn’t just do what I saw other people doing that looked “cool”…I had to do what I’m designed for. And even though my original goal was to be a touring musician, combining my love of music, ability for teaching, and passion for business was a winning combination for me.
It’s less scalable than something like starting an e-commerce business, or a personal brand, for example, and there are a lot of moving parts, having to hire another 20+ people and deal with scheduling issues, setting up new systems and basically starting marketing from the ground up, and thinking of ways to constantly over-deliver for clients. There’s also the fact that we just started our first location 1.5 years ago, and somehow grew it from 30 to 500 students in the midst of a pandemic.
But as soon as we started talking about location #2, it lit a fire under me, the same way I felt when I was trying to “escape” my job.
And I realized that as I sat doing website edits at 11 PM, registering new clients at 7 AM, setting up new phone systems, I was more excited than I had been in months. This is what I love doing. I’m not a builder in the “traditional” sense…but I love building systems that make business work. I love giving clients over-the-top service that they rave about. Of course, it’s not that easy, but when you are fueled by passion, it feels that way. I’m feeling that feeling of getting lost in the work again and realizing, I don’t want to escape this, I want more of this.
I want to experience the next level of scale, I want to build bigger business systems, and rather than try to avoid problems…I want to seek them out, and embrace them. “If you don’t have problems, you don’t have a business.” This has become one of my favorite quotes. And while I spent the first 30 years of my life trying to avoid, trying to escape problems, I think I’m going to spend the next 50 seeking them out.
