well paid ≠ free

Hey, what’s up?

I’m listening to lofi beats, thinking about freedom.

I’ve got a buddy that makes less than $25,000 per year.

He has no corporate or entrepreneurial ambitions, and as far as I can tell, has never cared about money. He switches jobs whenever he wants, and organizes his schedule to maximize time with family and to pursue his hobbies.

If you didn’t know about his income and met him on the street, you’d sense that he’s carefree and winning the game of life.

Earlier in my career, I was “ahead” of him in most ways, but in reality, he was freer than me.

Most of my waking moments were swallowed by work. I had a 35m drive there and back (1hr 10m per day total), and at least 9-10 hours at work itself. That’s roughly 10.5 - 11 hours of my day. Some decent amount of time at home was spent prepping for the next day, or actively working out problems on my laptop.

The truth of it though, is even if I could go back in time I wouldn’t trade my earlier career days for what my friend had.

It was his version of freedom, not mine.

I want large uncapped income. I want to be in the arena solving problems, dealing with challenges that stretch me, and growing in competence.

The corp ladder offered this for a time. More money, new titles, another challenge... these are the dopamine hits that gamified employment and made it worth staying for. But for me, corporate employment has one major downside:

Capped upside.

No matter if you climb from individual contributor to CEO and partner, there’s a ceiling. My friend is okay with this ceiling. I’m not.

So, I started building side-hustles... print-on-demand being one of them. We’ll get more into that in another email.

Right now, I have some questions for you:

• What kind of freedom are you optimizing for?

• Are you okay with having a capped income ceiling?

• Do you enjoy your corporate job?

• Or are you looking for more?

Hit reply to this email and let me know.

-Michael