What's the Point of Starting a Business?
What's the Point of Starting a Business?
Why you're doing this
When your coworkers start talking about their lame-ass fantasy football brackets, do you have to resist the urge to punch a hole through your computer monitor?
Do you get annoyed when friends and family gossip about celebrities you’ve never even heard of and wonder why anyone would squander their limited time on this planet thinking about people they don’t even know?
If you’re truly “built different”, you have to find a way to live life on your own terms. The people you interact with are draining your ambition, intelligence, and work ethic. They’re robbing you of your humanity and taking you further away from the idealized vision of yourself that you can barely glimpse in your mind’s eye during the rare moments when you look up from the dull haze that is your life.
This isn’t narcissism or egocentrism.
It’s a recognition of reality.
We live in a sick culture in a world that’s actively trying to make everyone sicker. Physically, mentally, and spiritually; we’re moving away from the idealized self and more towards becoming automatized cogs in a machine that’s sweeping away everything that makes life worth living.
The first step is the most profound
Not a whole lot happens in the world when you launch your first website. You don’t have any content or links. You certainly don’t have any traffic. It’s just one more domain name coming into existence. A nonevent in the endless chaos of the internet.
But the change within yourself is monumental.
You’re in a state of transition. You have a physical presence in the normie world of 5% pay raises, resumes, and “office politics”. Your mind, on the other hand, is living in the world of SEO, email lists, and exponential growth.
Believe it or not, this very moment is when your life changes the most. Many people think the “life-changing moment” is when they quit their job. Others think it’s when they earn “life-changing money” by selling their site for “generational wealth”.
The reality is that liminal moments - like the one you’re in after you launch your first website but haven’t yet quit your job - generate the most profound insights and emotions that you’ll ever feel in your entire life.
Think about other liminal moments. Imagine the time when you handed in your last test during finals week of your last semester in college. You’re “done” but still physically there. As you walk back to the parking lot you see the building where you had your first freshman class and out of nowhere it seems full of meaning. Maybe you eat at the food court one last time and listen in to the younger students talking about registering for their next semester and you realize that you’ll never experience that feeling ever again.
When the boxes are packed but the movers haven’t shown up yet, and you’re thinking back on memories from when you lived in the old house, even though you haven’t left it yet.
When you break up with one girl and go through a period of self-improvement before finding the next one.
Most people think that peak experiences in life define them: graduations, promotions, weddings, business sales, etc. In reality it’s the transitional moments that reveal who you really are.
The period in your life when you’re grinding away at WiFi money on nights and weekends while still stuck working your 9-to-5 is when you’ll experience the most personal growth. It’s when you’ll experience most of your epiphanies about life that will later just become “the way you are”, but in the moment seem like earth-shattering revelations.
Many of you are beginners who are in this phase right now. You’re grinding, as you should be. But while you’re typing up your 15th article of the month, take a moment to pause and appreciate the change you’re making in your life. Your perception of “the way things are” is undergoing a massive shift and the change is permanent. Because whether you realize it or not, you can never fully go back.
Sure, you can quit your website and physically go back to your job. Beware, because if you do, there’s always going to be a question nagging at the back of your brain that you can’t numb or extinguish no matter how hard you try: “what if?”.