The air is just different owning business equity rather than earning a fixed income with a salary. Can you smell it?
I left Goldman in 2004 and have been downwardly mobile, career-wise, ever since.
I’ve also never been happier.
I’ve written before that one of the keys to feeling and being wealthy is do something that you love and that you would do regardless of the compensation.
Now, I can’t prove the following statements, but I believe them to be true:
Working for yourself, in a business you founded, makes it much more likely that you’ll do something you love.
Working for someone else, for a salary, makes it much more likely that you’ll be asked to come in on Saturdays to work on the TPS reports. And, um, Yeeeeahhh, that’d be great.
It’s weird to say this, but it’s true: Doing the TPS reports for your own business doesn’t feel that bad. Even on Saturdays, it’s kinda fun.
Doing the TPS reports on a Saturday for someone else, however, encourages the kind of anomic existentialism that puts you in deep communion with the overwhelming sadness of the universe.
In life, there’s no getting away from the TPS reports on Saturdays, there’s only a choice about how it will feel. One of my main arguments for starting your own business is that it feels different.
And now for some less important, but still relevant, arguments in favor of entrepreneurship.
Taxes
The tax code was written by and for business owners,[1] not by or for salaried employees. So if you’re ever curious why taxes for salaried employees seem unfair, whereas businesses seem to pay less in taxes, that’s why.
Retirement
Did you know you can save about 3 times more per year in tax-advantaged retirement accounts if you’re a business owner than you can as a white-collar employee earning a salary, with a 401K plan? It’s true. But don’t just trust me, look it up on The Google. The Google never lies.
More importantly, many successful business people want to control the timing and conditions of their own retirement, on their own terms.
When you do someone else’s TPS reports, the company gets to ‘retire’ you when they choose. When you do your own, you choose.
Not everyone wants to work forever, but for those people who do, business ownership gives you the control and options.
Please see previous post on Entrepreneurship Part I – The difference between equity and fixed income
And Entrepreneurship Part II – Lessons from finance
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