Welcome to this post, “Why I Will Be An Entrepreneur For The Rest Of My Life”!
I’ve been starting businesses for as long as I can remember. It started with a lemonade stand when I was 10 or so. Within the next few years I moved on to car washing, lawn mowing, Christmas tree recycling, eBay selling, babysitting, tutoring, affiliate sites, freelancing, a custom t-shirt business, and this blog!
I feel like entrepreneurship is just in my blood. It’s who I’m meant to be. I’ve decided that I will be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life. Meaning that I never intend to work a traditional job again.
Yes…you read that right. As an 18-year-old I never intend to work a traditional job again. I worked at a grocery store for about 2 years and realized that path isn’t for me. I literally quit my job there to grow my businesses.
Yes I’m going to college right now to get a degree as a backup plan. I even plan to work as a financial advisor for a few years…but not for someone else. I want to run my own financial advising business on my own terms.
At this point you might be asking, “Why? What on Earth happened to this kid that he already doesn’t want to ever work a traditional job again?” Well…here’s why I will be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life.
*Note: The first part of this post is more focused on financial freedom. I talk more about entrepreneurship at the end, but in my mind the two go hand and hand. You need to understand my beliefs about financial freedom in order to understand my beliefs about entrepreneurship. I also believe that entrepreneurship is the fastest way to financial freedom.
Rejecting the Common Path
For starters, it will probably help if I explain why I’m rejecting the common path established by society. Do you know what I’m talking about? Tell me if this sounds familiar:
- Graduate high school
- Go to college
- Get a high-paying job (that you may or may not like)
- Start a family
- Buy a house
- Pay off debt
- Start saving for retirement in your late 20’s or 30’s
- Work for 40 years
- Retire at 65
- Live the life you always wanted to live
Now granted, I wrote this pretty condescending. For a lot of people, there’s nothing wrong with this path. But, this isn’t the path for me. Here’s the path I’m looking to go down:
- Live the life I want to live from day 1
- Start saving for retirement at 18
- Graduate high school
- Go to college while avoiding debt
- Invest in real estate before I’m 20
- Start a financial advising business after college
- Start a family
- Reach financial independence by 30
- Start other businesses that I’m passionate about
- Spend time with family, travel, and make a difference in other people’s lives
Start With The End In Mind
Did you notice how at the start of my plan I wrote, “Live the life I want to live from day 1”? That means I don’t want to wait until retirement to pursue the things I’m truly passionate about.
For me that means I want to explore my interests, travel the world, and start businesses now! I don’t want to wait until I’m retired at 65 to do these things.
There’s sort of a funny paradox with the traditional path I mentioned at the beginning. Most people want to go to college to get a high-paying job to live the life they want to live. But in the process of doing so, they incur a bunch of debt that forces them to stay at their jobs and disables them from living the life they want to live.
In my mind, people should start with the end in mind. Why subject yourself to working at a job you don’t enjoy for 40 years just to live the life you want to live when you’re 65? Why not start living the life you want to live now and skip the parts you don’t want.
Wealth in a Wheelchair
The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco heavily shaped my thinking when it came to this concept. One idea that he brings up is something known as wealth in a wheelchair. It has to do with what I was just talking about.
Most people spend the young, healthy years of their lives working toward retirement. However, once they reach retirement they have health problems and aren’t really able to live the life they want to live. Now they have all the money in the world but either aren’t able to spend it or have to spend it on health problems. This is known as wealth in a wheelchair.
DeMarco argues that people should start living the life they want to live now. You don’t want to waste the best years of your life when you’re young and healthy slaving away at a job.
After all, you could get hit by a car tomorrow. If you spent the first half of your life working toward a point where you could enjoy your life and died before then, everything would have been for nothing. Start living the life you want to live now!
Reaching Financial Freedom
In order to truly live the life you want to live, you need to reach a stage of financial freedom (or financial independence). We’ve talked a lot about this before (after all our blog’s name is Teen Financial Freedom), so I won’t dive too deep into this topic here. However, here’s a post about how to achieve financial independence and retire early.
I think there’s two keys to truly living the life you want to live when it comes to reaching financial independence:
- You need to reach financial independence as soon as possible. Once you do, you’re free to live the life you want to live.
- You can’t sacrifice your life in the meantime. Live the life you want to live now because you could be hit by a car tomorrow.
Limitations and Skepticism
At this point I’m sure some of you are a little skeptical. This may because you don’t believe you’re in a position to make this happen. Or this may be because you’re on the older side and think that it’s no longer possible for you to live the life you want to live. Let’s address each.
On one hand, there’s some realistic limitations to everything I just mentioned. I understand that not everyone is in a position to do what I’m talking about. Some people have to take on student debt to go to college, and other’s don’t make enough to invest. But, everyone can take one small step to improve their personal financial situation.
Or maybe you already made some mistakes and feel like your financial situation is too far gone. You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it. The best you can do is start today. Start working toward paying off debt, saving a percentage of your income, and living the life you want to live!
If you happen to be reading this as a young person, congrats! You’re in a much better position than most people reading this post. You have the chance to learn from other’s mistakes and avoid them for yourself. If you manage to do so, you’ll be rewarded big time in the future.
Why I Will Be An Entrepreneur For The Rest Of My Life
With all that said, I believe that the fastest way to achieve financial freedom is entrepreneurship. You now understand where I’m coming from when I explain why I will be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life.
To me, entrepreneurship has 3 main benefits:
- Financial Benefit
- Flexibility Benefit
- Fulfillment Benefit
Financial Benefit
Why exactly do I believe that entrepreneurship is the fastest way to achieve financial freedom? Because theoretically entrepreneurs have infinite income.
Think about investing for a minute. In order to make more money by investing in stocks, you either need to wait a long time for your money to compound, or you need to invest more money to begin with.
Because I’m trying to achieve financial freedom quickly, I can’t afford to wait a long time for my money to compound. Instead, I need to create a lot of money quickly. The best way to do that is entrepreneurship.
This concept is talked about more in The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco, however I’ll do my best to explain it here.
Income Tied To Time
When you work a traditional job, your income is set. You either work for an hourly rate or you work on an annual salary. Notice how both of these methods are tied to time. You can only work a set number of hours a week. There’s a limit to how much you can work, and therefore there’s a limit to how much you can get paid. Since time is limited, your income will be limited.
I can’t stand this. I hate busting my butt all day long at a minimum wage job to see that I’ve only made $100. Sure, $100/day is good money, but it won’t get you very far in life. If you want to make $100,000/yr working 5 days a week, you need to make an average of $400/day or $50/hr. I don’t know about you but I don’t know many jobs that a young person can get that make $50/hr.
Infinite Income
When you’re an entrepreneur, you don’t work for a set hourly rate or annual salary. You get paid for the value you create. The more value you create, the more you get paid. Theoretically you could scale your business (and the value your provide) to an infinite level. This means that your income could be infinite as well.
Check out How Much is 5 Figures to find out how much most entrepreneurs make when they’re first starting out!
Flexibility Benefit
The other thing I don’t like about traditional jobs is that they provide you with very little flexibility. You have to work whenever you get scheduled. There’s no picking and choosing the days you work. You also don’t get to decide the type of work that you’ll be doing.
Be in Control
What I love about entrepreneurship is being in control of what you’re working on. I currently am freelancing on Fiverr which I consider a business. Fiverr is run off of gigs which are essentially mini jobs. I get to choose which gigs I work on, and more important, which gigs I won’t do. Having this control over the type of work I’ll be doing and who I’ll do it for, is quite nice.
Flexibility
I also have a lot more flexibility in my schedule as an entrepreneur. Just yesterday I rearranged my entire schedule to spend time with family the whole day. Sometimes I get a little frustrated because I feel like I always move things around on my schedule to accommodate other people’s schedules. But, I’m blessed to be in a position to be able to do that.
Fulfillment Benefit
The final benefit is fulfillment. I personally don’t find traditional jobs very fulfilling. You work for someone else as you try to build something for them. It’s rare to be rewarded and appreciated in traditional jobs.
Rewarded For Hard Work
At my old job at the grocery store, I found myself constantly frustrated by people who would slack off and be lazy. It only pushed more work on to the rest of us. But, the slackers and the hard workers were paid the same amount!
In entrepreneurship, you are rewarded for your hard work. The harder you work, the more you get paid. It’s that simple and that’s what I love about it.
Pursue Passions
Finally, entrepreneurship allows you to pursue your passions. For example, I have a passion for business and finance and get to share that with others on this blog. While we try our best to run this blog like a business, it’s more so the other businesses that I have that give me the financial freedom to get to run this blog. Entrepreneurship is so powerful because you get to build a business around something that gets you fired up!
The Takeaway
That’s it! That’s why I will be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life! I hope you enjoyed this post and got some valuable information out of it. Remember the three main benefits of entrepreneurship: financial, flexibility, and fulfillment. Please share any comments, questions, or concerns down below! Otherwise, best of luck on your entrepreneurship journey!
