This week we lost a member of our MSP Marketing Edge programme.
I always ask why someone's leaving so we can use the feedback to improve. And I was very sad to hear this member's answer.
To paraphrase: "business is bad and I'm trying to sell it. I've taken a full-time job".
This wasn't someone in their first couple of years of business ownership. Sometimes people start a business and quickly discover the business owner's lifestyle isn't for them. Nothing wrong with that.
No, this was someone who has been at it for several years, but has not been able to make a decent living from owning an MSP.
Of course there are lots of specific details about his business and situation which will remain between me and him. But let's look at the bigger picture here. Let me ask you a question.
How would you feel if you had to get a job instead of running your business?
I know how I would feel.
Ill, sick, distressed. I'd be so unhappy.
I've run my own businesses since 2005. I've enjoyed the freedom and control business ownership provides, for 17 years.
To put another way, despite a reasonably OK corporate media career from 1996 to 2005, I am now totally unemployable! I would be someone's most horrendous, PITA, nightmare employee 🤣
Are you the same???
I can't ever imagine having a job again. If reincarnation is a thing, I'll skip employment in the next life and just go straight to business ownership.
Here's the real reason why. It's about control over my time.
I'm listening to an insanely great book at the moment called The Psychology of Money. It talks about how real happiness comes not from having money, but using money to gain control over your time. Some snippets:
- Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time
- Control over doing what you want, when you want to, with the people you want to, is the broadest lifestyle variable that makes people happy
- The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, ‘I can do whatever I want today'
To me, you simply cannot achieve that control over your time when someone else is your boss. Only when YOU are your boss.
Being a business owner is both the best thing and worst thing in the world. It's the hardest, most tiring, and most emotionally impactful work you will ever do.
But it's also the most freeing work you'll ever do because you have the highest levels of control.
Another question for you. It's Thursday today. Can you decide, right now, to take tomorrow off and go do something fun instead of worky things?
If not, then you're not quite there yet. But keep going. You're probably closer to that than you think
It's not about having the biggest MSP or the most profitable. It's about building a business that gives you ENOUGH:
- Enough money to live a good life
- Enough time to do what you want to do
- Enough of a challenge to keep you satisfied
What do you need to do to get from where you are now, to where you need to be?
