The New Year is a great time to set goals and think about what you want to achieve over the course of the year. Many people are looking to make changes in their life and this might include making a change professionally. Some of you might also be thinking that maybe you might try going off on your own and starting a business. If this is a thought that has crossed your mind, then I am writing this article for you. I am going to give you an incredibly valuable piece of advice and it just might be the thing that convinces you to give entrepreneurship a try!

First, let me tell you what I am NOT talking about and that is the Silicon Valley example of entrepreneurship which promotes a very specific type of business startup in which founders come up with something, build an MVP (minimum viable product), get traction (signups, eyeballs, etc….basically some market adoption), raise capital, scale growth, and look for a successful exit (selling the business for mega-bucks).

This is, by far, the rarest and, in my opinion, the riskiest form of entrepreneurship that can be undertaken. Sure there are lots of media examples of success…..Facebook, Google, Nest, Zappos, etc. but these represent less than 0.00001% of all businesses ever started. They just get the lion’s share of media hype and brand recognition.

I am here to let you in on the most valuable piece of startup advice I think anyone can share. If you really understand and embrace what I am going to share with you, freedom is closer than you think and totally obtainable. So, here it is……

Your costs are fixed, it isn’t that much money, and you basically are already running your own business (you just have one customer).

Allow me to unpack.

Your costs are fixed.

For the vast majority of households, your monthly expenses (post-tax) range from $3,000 to $15,000/month. This is your all in, total cost to maintain your current standard of living. It includes everything from housing, vacations, vehicles, groceries, dining out, health insurance, savings, etc. This is a standard of living that you are used to and if you are generally a happy person, then this level of spending supports your happiness. If fact, if you are not obsessing about your need to make more money hourly/daily/weekly then I am going to conclude that you are generally OK with your income/expenses. You may not admit this out loud but your actions are proving the point.

If you are not convinced that this is true, then let me make the point in a slightly different way. If you look at the range of values present, $3,000-$15,000/monthly, we can agree that this range is within an order of magnitude…..meaning that we aren’t talking about a wide range of value such as the difference between 10,000 and 100,000 (adding just one zero). Mathematically, these values are quite close to each other and on the lower range of potential values (Michael Jordan, the retired basketball player made about $12,000,000/month last year or about 1,000 times you or I make per month). So, this means that for almost everyone who will ever read this article, your expenses are all about the same and they aren’t very much.

This is why I say that your costs are fixed and it isn’t that much money.

Why is this important and how does it apply to entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is just another type of work (Silicon Valley would have you think otherwise). It is a different job but it is still a job at the end of the day. You do it so that you can get income. You get income so that you can FILL IN THE BLANK…….pay bills, provide for your family, buy a new toy, take a vacation, etc. Entrepreneurship is also like other jobs and you still have a boss. But that boss isn’t a “boss” boss, it is the customer. Take this thought and combine it with the definition of a business. A business is nothing more than the seller of something transacting with a buyer of something in which said transaction results in the seller making income (profit). The combination of these two points is that entrepreneurship is a job that creates income by meeting your boss’s (customer’s) needs.

This is something most of you already do on a daily basis. Think about it this way, imagine if you replaced your job title with your name and “, Inc.” at the end. In my case, “Recruiter” would be replaced by “Austin Meyermann, Inc.” Then look at your timesheet and replace the word “timesheet” with “Invoice”. Lastly, replace the word “paycheck” with “Sales Income”. Now you are You, Inc. and you sell 40+ hrs per week of your time for $XXXX of income. You are already in business, you just have one customer.

If you want your job to be entrepreneurship, you just need more customers.

Oh, and you need to stop giving away your income to your employer.

This last point is important and worth thinking about. When you work for someone, they pay you a wage (even if you earn commission, it is still basically a wage) and they take the profit. Going back to the definition of business, this is where the analogy of “your job = your business” breaks down. You are selling your time to a buyer (your employer) but you do not get the income. To be an entrepreneur you have to generate and keep the income. For example, think about how a tradesperson, such as a plumber, is paid. They show up at your house and charge you $100/hr. If they are an employee, the plumber may get $30/hr. The employer takes the difference, which is the income, or $70/hr. If the plumber works for themselves, they still charge $100/hr but they get to keep the $70/hr of income. Yes, I recognize that self-employed people have to also cover the overhead of the business, etc. but it does not change the point that they get to keep the income that their work generates.

This isn’t the whole story….

This isn’t the whole story with respect to what it takes to start and operate a successful business. There are new skills that you would have to learn, smart risks that you would have to take, and there is a learning curve. But, can’t the same be said for the chances you took during your career or for the first job you had after college/military/high school? No one says that you have to step into the void, quit your job and give it a go…you can start something that you build over time, working nights and weekends, and if you take this approach, the risk is very low. Millions of people have done this and this is the path of most successful entrepreneurs.

This brings us to the WHY.

Everyone has their own reasons for starting a business. Maybe it is fame and glory, maybe it is to make a little extra cash, or maybe it is why I started my businesses… I started my businesses to buy time. The cash my businesses make is used to pay for the goods and services that my family needs. My businesses show up every day for work and never take a day off. Because my businesses are so punctual, I can afford to spend my time doing things that I want to do. For me, this means working out, adventuring, doing things with my wife and kids, being creative, reading, and whole mess of other things that a job would get in the way of.

Take a second to think of something that you love to do. Let’s say it is reading. Now think of all the books, blogs, etc. that you would love to read if you had the time. Imagine if you had the means to only do what you wanted to do, in this case read. It may occur to you that even if you put all of your time into this, you still couldn’t read everything. Now take a second to realize that is just one thing….what about travel or any of other million different things that bring joy and value to a person’s life. You don’t have enough time. You don’t have enough time. You don’t have enough time.

I hope that you take this point to heart.

What are you putting your time into and does it pay a wonderful dividend of creating free time in the future?

If not, what a terrible tax to pay for living!

2020 is a great year to reflect on how you got to where you are and for you to create a plan to get to where you want to go. Your past has provided an education for what you should and should not do. Value and use this education to make smart decisions about how you will use your time in the future. Good luck and I hope you take a shot at doing it your way!

Written by: Austin Meyermann, Founder and President of Hunter Crown, LLC

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