Business Growth VS Time Freedom. How to choose?

[TreyAllDay]

Hello All,

I feel like I am having a bit of an identity crisis (not really lol). However I'm having a tough time choosing the sort of business life I want to live. I'm being faced with opportunities to grow my business with a large time investment OR live passively. I am curious to hear how some have evaluated their own choices with time investments into their businesses, or have advice.

I run a SAAS service used by other businesses. When I thought of starting a business, and read what MJ said about passivity, I honestly thought about being able to travel, earn money while sleeping, go to movies during the day, play videogames. And to be honest, that's kind of how it was for 6 months. However, it's grown without even much effort to the point that I'm back to working 10 hour days doing administrative crap, traveling to meetings, leasing an office, entertaining possible offers for VC financing, government grants to hire more developers, etc.

I know these are good problems - but I live low means, profiting 10-15k a month when I only need $1k to live. Half of me listens to guys like grant cardone saying "you have to reinvest, the 'poor' freedom is a lie and you're being selfish for not growing,etc" and really want to grow. But I'm also wondering if this is a scripted doctrine? The last year I've made more money than ever, but it went by in a flash because I was working non-stop, just like I did in my previous career. I know guys like @eliquid mentioned running multiple extremely profitable businesses without the headache of employing people and running huge operations.

Anyway! I am curious how some other people operate or what your advice might be.

 

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[eliquid]

Hello All,

I feel like I am having a bit of an identity crisis (not really lol). However I'm having a tough time choosing the sort of business life I want to live. I'm being faced with opportunities to grow my business with a large time investment OR live passively. I am curious to hear how some have evaluated their own choices with time investments into their businesses, or have advice.

I run a SAAS service used by other businesses. When I thought of starting a business, and read what MJ said about passivity, I honestly thought about being able to travel, earn money while sleeping, go to movies during the day, play videogames. And to be honest, that's kind of how it was for 6 months. However, it's grown without even much effort to the point that I'm back to working 10 hour days doing administrative crap, traveling to meetings, leasing an office, entertaining possible offers for VC financing, government grants to hire more developers, etc.

I know these are good problems - but I live low means, profiting 10-15k a month when I only need $1k to live. Half of me listens to guys like grant cardone saying "you have to reinvest, the 'poor' freedom is a lie and you're being selfish for not growing,etc" and really want to grow. But I'm also wondering if this is a scripted doctrine? The last year I've made more money than ever, but it went by in a flash because I was working non-stop, just like I did in my previous career. I know guys like @eliquid mentioned running multiple extremely profitable businesses without the headache of employing people and running huge operations.

Anyway! I am curious how some other people operate or what your advice might be.

One thing that wont change is, it will all go downhill at some point if you do nothing.

Meaning, if you are truly passive then at some point the customers will churn and the money train will come to a slow & agonizing stop.

However, it doesn't have to. You could jump back to 10 hours days when you see it slipping... or work 2-3 hour days to prevent the slip at a bare min now.

But I will tell you this, it can all vanish one day if you get too comfortable.

 

[eliquid]

I'll add something else.

This is just my thoughts and how I would do things if I could live on $1k a month. I don't know if you were stretching this number for demonstration, but that's damn cheap in my book.

If I wanted to live passively and it only took $1k a month to do that, but I made $10-$12k profit a month, then I have made enough to last me all year pretty much.

I'd probably work the whole year at that rate ( full on ), and then take the next 12 years off and living off the savings since you can make in 1 month what it takes for you to live all year. In doing that, I'm signalling I want to live passively, so I would spend the next 12 years getting into businesses that can run without me.

That might mean, first starting off with getting this current business to run without me.. Or selling it which would add to my passive lifestyle overall.

Id run with that. You only get 1 life.

You could die in 3 years from a car wreck, or maybe get seriously disabled. Would you regret not living life the way you wanted ( if that's traveling and living passive? ).

In the end, only you can answer those questions though.

Other people would say something like you only get 1 shot when opportunity is knocking ( like it is for your SaaS ). However, I think you could run with the opportunity and still free yourself up.

Maybe you need to hire in a partner at this point - if your growing enough to have an office, devs, and working 10 hours a day... or if you want to live passively.. it sounds like someone else needs to step in some to help you potentially.