Hey all,
I’m convinced that most of us are building for someone else.
I was taught this lesson back in 1998, I listened, I understood but I didn’t really understand the significance of it.
The lesson…
I was working in one of my earlier roles as an apprentice aircraft engineer, the job was great, it was interesting and we had some good times.
During my time there I was described as an extrovert because I spent more time talking to people than focusing on my job. I think the big motivator which led to the extrovert title was that I was easily bored, after all, there are only so many times you can drill a hole and stick a rivet in it before it gets monotonous. And drilling holes and sticking rivets in is a big part of building aeroplanes.
I’d talk to anyone rather than drill hundreds of holes.
One day I was talking to these two ‘crazy old guys’, as I would describe them back then as a 19-year-old person who in typical teenager fashion thought anyone over 30 was old, and if you were over 30 and had grey hair you got the fully-fledged title of ‘crazy old guy'‘.
I will paraphrase and butcher what was said, but the message was this…
If you work with your hands you are limited to how much money you will earn, but if you make something - like a book - your hands won’t be the thing that limits you.
As a 19-year-old, I understood what they were trying to tell me.
But as a 19-year-old, I didn’t realise the significance of what they were telling me.
What happened next?
During my apprenticeship, I got pissed off. Like really pissed off.
I was mainly pissed off because I saw people getting more opportunities than me. Like opportunities to go to university and get engineering degrees. Whereas I was destined to qualify with the standard apprenticeship and be destined to a life of drilling holes and sticking rivets in those holes for the next 40+ years.
No matter what I did, or who I asked, the answer was always No.
There was a literal ceiling to my career and to my earnings.
I could see it, I could feel it, and it pissed me off.
So what did I do? Well, this is a long story for another time, but I went to business school, 2 evenings per week after work and started creating my own path. My own path which didn’t have the same ceiling as the ‘drilling holes and sticking rivets in them’ path.
Cool story bro, what about the two old guys?
The message from the two crazy old guys was still ingrained in my head, but I was on this new path.
A path of getting educated, and getting a decently paid job, with better working conditions, which wasn’t just drilling holes and sticking rivets in them.
I didn’t look back.
And, on reflection, it worked.
I’m very happy with where I am in life right now.
But…
Now I’m a little older, and I’m not pushing through life now as hard as I used to, well not as I was in my 20s and 30s.
Instead, I’m slowing down to smelling the roses, being more mindful and starting to observe things with the clarity of a guy in his 40s who is educated to PhD and MBA levels.
While I remember the message from those two crazy old guys, now I understand the significance of what they were saying.
A modern-day observation…
More recently I’ve seen several videos on YouTube, some by a chap called Noah Kagan. Noah goes to expensive areas, knocks on people’s doors and asks them what they do to be able to afford such nice houses. He’s done it to plane owners and fancy car owners too.
There is a common trend in their replies, they built and owned a business of some kind.
In full transparency, there is the odd one or two who got the fancy houses as an employee, but not many at all. And those that did were the senior people in huge companies, usually Tech or Finance.
But we can safely say, that all (with the exception of a few) got the fancy house by building something themselves.
It’s not all about the money…
Now I’m using Noah’s examples with the fancy houses, the private jets and the fancy cars. But it’s not about that, that’s not the angle I would have you think about.
It’s more than that, it’s about time.
The owner of the company I worked at after university used to come in at 10 and leave at 2, on the days he didn’t want to come in - he didn’t come in, and when they wanted to take a holiday he took it.
In addition to getting paid the highest salary in the company and paying himself the profits every year as a dividend, he also got the freedom to use his time how he wanted.
The business ran when he was there, and also when he wasn’t there.
I had to start at 9 and finish at 5, and ask for permission to take holidays.
And all of this happened at every company I worked at!
Another example, I remember asking one of my bosses, “can I come in a couple of hours late so I can see my child's school play?” - ‘No’, was the answer.
I remember working at McDonald’s, I spent 2 days working extra shifts, each day starting at 7 am til 11 pm to help them out. On the 3rd day, it was my birthday and my shift ended at 5 pm. As my shift ended my manager abruptly asked “where do you think you’re going?”. And even though I explained, they threatened to put me through the disciplinary system, for leaving on time, on my birthday.
You see, it’s not about money, it’s about time too.
Boats and old age…
Surely by now, you expect to hear a good old boat story, well here it is…
I get boat envy.
I see these amazing sailboats. Some in the local marina cost upwards of €500,000, some over a cool €1m. Some of the lower-end ones probably cost about €4,000 - €15,000.
And you know which boats get sailed the most? The cheaper ones.
And the simple reason goes back to time.
People have to generate money to pay for the boat, and if they are exchanging their time for money - well, they don’t have enough free time to sail it.
So these expensive boats stay in the marina all year round. The owners? Well, they probably dream of having the free time to sail them.
Finally to the point…
And this leads us to the point of this newsletter.
It brings us back to those two crazy old guys.
And it brings us back to the observations and understanding I have developed.
Life is a balance between ‘earning money’ and ‘free time’. (OK there is more to life than that, but for the context of today’s point)
And if freedom is ‘the absence of constraint in choice or action’, then the balance between ‘earning money’ and ‘free time’ enables choice and therefore facilitates freedom.
Say it more clearly…
So, while you are earning money by selling your time, you remove big chunks of time away from yourself.
During the time you sell, you are no longer free.
You might get 5 weeks off per year, but you have to ask for permission when you can take them.
You can go and see your child's school play, provided your boss lets you.
You can go sail your boat, only on the weekend.
And your earnings, well they have an upper limit too, which is…
Upper Limit = <hourly rate someone will pay you> x 40
And this is where I settled on this thought…
The people who have broken away from these limitations (time and money) do so by building something.
And the shocker is: it doesn’t need to be something grandioso. You don’t need to build the next Facebook, or the next global company.
You just need to build something, and it can be small.
For example: last week I came across a single sticker that sold for $5 on Etsy, it had 2,500 reviews. That’s $12,500.
And she was selling multiple stickers.
It isn’t grand, it isn’t fancy, but it is a thing, it is her thing.
She can sell these stickers 24 hours, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.
Her ‘upper limit’ isn’t the 40 hours per week she works, instead it is the size of the market. It is the amount of people who can see her stickers and want to buy them.
Her initial limit is, how many stickers can she print and post in a 40-hour week.
But, as it becomes more popular she could build a system/process to print and post them, maybe even employ someone to do that for her.
But she is now no longer bound by her 40 hours per week.
If done correctly, and is scaled correctly, then she can have both the income and the freedom.
And it starts with building something.
It starts with building something that you can own, scale and develop.
The alternative?
And if you don’t build your own thing - then accept you are simply helping someone build their thing.
You are helping others build their freedom.
Fin.
So yes, I admit, I might have joined the ranks of the ‘crazy old guys’ making it three crazy old guys out there now. Assuming they haven’t died by now, and if they have died, then I carry their torch with me.
What am I building I hear you ask?
I’m not saying I’m doing anything great, but I’m trying to ‘drink the Kool-aid’, so right now I’m building a bunch of stuff…
I’ve got an app which I think is pretty cool, and that’s about 90% done (I’d like to launch this side of Christmas). I have my Fintech idea which is proving a pain in the arse to build (data access issues). I have 2 courses I want to get out there, one for personal growth (20% done, and I am convinced will be of value to people) and another for business strategy (aimed at SMEs). And of course, I have 44 issues of my newsletter - it’s something and I just need to figure out what to do with it, maybe the start of a book? (working title: “Ramblings of a crazy old middle-aged guy”). IDK.
Thoughts so far?
Yes, it’s difficult to build things.
Yes, it’s full of times of self-doubt.
I don’t really know how to market them.
Yes, it’s a high chance of failure in each one of them.
Yes, I’ll probably get a job at some point.
And yeah, I still believe I can only scale my time to 40 hours per week and I think that I need to break that cycle to get my time/freedom back.
Have a great weekend.
John.
Your opening to this post made me smile, John. For this reason. When I was still at school we had to select somewhere for work experience. One of my options was British Aerospace. Now as someone as a youngster who was fascinated by aeroplanes and navy, who would pass up the option to go work for 2 weeks on the Harrier assembly lines. No brainer.
After the first week I couldn’t believe how boring it was. So like you I was given a cut piece of titanium which needed six holes drilled in it, this was part of the flap track. I then had to take a brass eyelet, dunk it in liquid nitrogen and tap it into the hole. After the first couple of days I asked one of the guys what the next stages would entail, to which the reply was along the lines of “this is it, every day.” I couldn’t believe these lot had been doing this every day for years. And that was the end of my plane manufacturing dreams!