For entrepreneurs, freedom too often means having a choice in what kind of cage you will
find yourself once you double down on your business.
I ran into a meme on Twitter last week where people were joking about having quit their
9-5 job to work 24/7 instead.
It often feels that we have to endure a lot of restrictions and hardships on our path
to freedom.
Or at least that's what I told myself over the last decade.
I had a very distinct understanding of what freedom meant to me.
My friend Dagobert Renouf commented on that meme too and he pointed out that there is
a difference between freedom and autonomy.
I want to dive into this very important distinction for founders today.
The Bootstrapped Founder Podcast is made possible by our sponsor this week, Acquire.com.
More on that later.
Let's talk about freedom.
Freedom and autonomy are often mixed up, especially by entrepreneurs.
We sometimes think of these as synonyms.
But just because you start a business doesn't mean you're free.
You might not have a boss who can order you around and that might feel like freedom after
many years of having a boss.
But if you want to make money and grow the business into something meaningful, new constraints
arise.
And these constraints limit freedom.
To many of us who want to escape employment and being under the yoke of somebody else,
freedom means doing what we want to do.
We long to build something for ourselves and not just create value for others and then
be compensated for giving them our time.
But starting a business brings its own rules that we have to enforce.
Because to sustain your quest for freedom, you have to keep things running smoothly or
as smoothly as you can.
Like making sure your software company's servers are up and your customer support is responsive.
Those are constraints.
If you can't guarantee this, your business will fail eventually, which is horrible.
And that guarantee is the opposite of freedom.
It's an all-encompassing threat to your freedom.
And many founders deplete a lot of their mental health reserves quite significantly just dealing
with things like downtime or enraged customers.
The only freedom that I have seen, the only actual real freedom in the entrepreneurial
world is this kind of post-multi-million dollar exit mindset of this post-economic decision
making.
When you stop thinking about paying the mortgage and you start thinking about how you invest
your wealth while it can already sustain you indefinitely.
That is when you have removed a major constraint and when you can feel kind of free.
It still comes with a lot of other limitations.
Ask anybody who's had this kind of exit and they start talking about different problems.
What we call champagne problems.
Well, they are still problems for people.
And it doesn't matter where on that kind of hierarchy you are in terms of the wealth you've
built, you always run into issues.
But the perceived freedom that you have to do whatever you want, it increases obviously
the more resources you have available.
But that happy moment of the exit, well, that's in the future for most of us.
Right now we're chasing freedom.
So let's talk about right now.
And I think we should get rid of both the word and the idea of freedom being a reasonable
thing to strive for while you're on that journey.
Instead, let's embrace autonomy.
I think that's a much better concept for a much more pragmatic approach because it can
actually be applied and understood more clinically than freedom.
This term is wishy washy kind of dream state, right?
Being an entrepreneur does let you build the business you want, but once it's up and running,
your freedom is pretty much gone.
Instead, you have gained autonomy.
You set your own rules and you decide what your business will do and what it won't do.
No more decrees and memos from the boss.
That person is now you, right?
You can write yourself a memo, but it's really not the same.
On my podcast, I was talking to Channing Allen last time and I discussed this, this whole
topic and how it impacted the IndieHackers.com business.
We talked about choosing the constraints that shape your business and for the IndieHackers
founders that meant pausing their wildly popular podcast because it's a resource drain.
It was a tough choice, but it was a choice they made intentionally and willingly, an
autonomous choice.
True autonomy means being able to say no to work, to customers, to features, to products
and even events.
Maybe even running a podcast like the IndieHackers founders did.
But when you're starting on your business journey, you don't have this luxury of employing
your autonomy like this because on your path to product market fit, you often have to say
yes just to see if it works.
Building a new business is a unique effort every single time for every person attempting
it.
With many choices, many possibilities, no two businesses are alike and you have to try
things to see if it might work for you and your unique combination of circumstances.
At the same time, building similar business, two different founders could have wildly different
results for the same experiment.
You have to try.
And here's another limitation that's kind of related to this, particularly for us notoriously
under-capitalized bootstrappers.
We have to make really tough decisions about who our product serves and who it doesn't.
You can't please everyone at the same time and you shouldn't even try.
A well-defined niche or a clear vertical, whatever you might want to call it, is a must for a
business built around specialized products for people with special problems.
And again, your freedom to do whatever you want, obviously limited here.
Niche product, niche people, niche strategies, everything is limited.
But committing to this and picking a set of constraints you can and want to live with,
that's the trick here.
That's the autonomous choice.
And when you get started, you have no one to tell you what to do, which is great, right?
For most of us, this means we have and ultimately want to do everything in our businesses.
Hence the meme with entrepreneurship eating 24 hours of our days.
It's not wrong.
It certainly feels real to me.
I've been going through this several times in my life.
But running your own business really just might take more time than a full-time job, particularly
in the beginning.
And while it takes away some freedoms, like your free time, it gives you control over
important choices that affect your wealth and legacy.
And that's the trade we make.
And by we, I mean a particular kind of people.
Because autonomy or the promise of autonomy attracts problem solvers who want to create
something lasting.
And not just to make money for somebody else or even themselves, the law of entrepreneurship
is more than just this million dollar exit.
Don't get me wrong, we all want to get there.
We all want to have that exit and kind of level up into post economic states of mind.
But the journey there matters as much for us as this destination.
Because we get to set our own goals and we work towards them at our own pace using our
own methods.
That is a freedom of choice.
And that is an autonomous act.
And some people are scared by this.
I understand that.
They would rather have very clear structures to operate in their executors, they prefer
executing processes over establishing them because that's what a founder does, right?
Find the process and then implement it.
Some people just like the implementation part.
Perfectly fine choice, if you ask me.
Just not one with too much autonomy.
But it's not impossible to have both, though.
And this is kind of something I want to share with you if you are in a stage where you're
not a full time entrepreneur yet.
Where you work in a job and you have these entrepreneurship ideas and you want to build
something and you wonder "should I quit?
Should I do this now?" and go full time in it.
Well I think full time entrepreneurship can be demanding and frankly, be too much for
some people at least where they are in their lives right now.
Just financially and socially and personally.
It is a lot.
It might be better to try to find autonomy in a career while exploring side projects
without the pressure of needing immediate income.
Because the constraint of having to get to revenue in a few months is massively impactful
on your mental health in a very detrimental way.
Take the slower but less explosive side project path if you want to pace yourself.
And that's the point of a side project, right?
You can see if it works out.
It's Daniel Vassallo's small bets approach.
Do little things, see where they go and then once one of them works better than the others,
focus on that.
And you will find that eventually you might come to a point where it is a promising thing
to maybe do as your main thing.
That is wonderful.
Just start with it as a side project so you don't have to force yourself into this state
of mind where every potential problem in the business could ruin your life.
Don't necessarily want that.
Don't want to invite that massive anxiety into your life.
I've had that before.
I would not want you to have it.
If you want to go through this and deal with it yourself, perfectly fine.
But that's playing hard mode, right?
Side projects, slowly growing, see where it goes and then just double down on it.
That's a much smarter choice.
So we look for autonomy in the right places, the right kind of autonomy in the right places
before we dive into entrepreneurship full time.
And I think this is my final point here, particularly applies to the advice that we take.
Choosing who to listen to as a founder, as an entrepreneur is extremely tricky.
There's tons of advice out there and it's very important to pick the right voices to guide
you because everything has been said in every single way that is possible.
Everything has been said in one way and then it's exact opposite and it's true for both
who said it.
And I think that's part of a big part, I guess, of your power as a founder is your decision
to make autonomous choices along with setting your own goals and paths.
That's kind of what this whole conversation is about.
So let me share with you what I do.
I personally tune into those people who are where I hope to be one day.
Super easy.
I focus on people living the life that I dream of, which means I often skip advice from others,
even though they might be hugely successful.
And that might be a controversial thing.
I talked about bootstrapping earlier, right?
There are many other ways of funding your founder journey and I admire venture capital
funded founders who are running big companies who've built them from nothing into like multi
million, even billion dollar businesses.
But that's not the life for me.
So I don't follow the advice.
I don't read the blogs they read or I don't listen to the same podcasts that they enjoy.
Instead, I look up to those who have similar limits and constraints on their lives as the
limits and constraints that I want for myself over the next five to 10 years.
I look at people like Jay Close or Amanda Goetz, both of which have been on the show.
They're wonderful.
They're my people.
And by listening to them, I learn about an indie founder compatible freedom, a level of
freedom, and just how powerful autonomy is for creators.
Yet still at the same time, I get to see people who still take breaks, prioritize their families
and tune out work when they don't feel it.
That is important to me.
I'm surrounding myself with the people I want to be like, and I don't listen to the people
who live a life that is not the life I want to lead.
Now this is the kind of freedom I want to see in my own life in the future.
The empty calendar, the sure let's take a walk right now.
Why not kind of lifestyle at any point.
And I've seen people work just a few days a week on projects that grow massively over
time, starting out as side projects and then getting bigger and bigger while they do other
things, where they consult, where they freelance.
So I've been taking advice from people like that.
And if I had listened to others, who knows, I might not be where I am today.
And that's it for today.
I want to briefly thank my sponsor, the quiet calm.
Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product over many years
started as a side project, slowly grew.
At some point you committed to it.
Then you found customers and everything was really gathering steam and speed and you got
to MRR quickly.
You live the SaaS dream.
As you stop growing at some point and you don't know why you just don't feel it anymore.
You can't focus on it.
You don't know what to do.
You just feel stuck.
Question is, what should you do?
The common story that we all would like to see is that you just reignited the fire, right?
You got going, you put all in, you kind of neglect your mental health and I don't think
you should do, but a lot of founders think you should at this point.
And you just put everything in there.
You make more money.
You've been a couple months down the road, you've just made three X, four X, five X the
money you did before.
You tripled your revenue, whatever.
You have this hyper successful business.
That's the dream.
Not my dream, but somebody's dream.
The reality is not as simple as this and it's hard.
The situation is different, but always challenging for every founder who comes to this point.
And too many times the story here ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until
the business that was so valuable to you just becomes less and less valuable over time or
completely worthless at the end.
So if you find yourself here or you think your story is headed down this road, I would consider
today a third option that is selling your business on acquire.com because your business
right now has value.
You might not know what to do.
Somebody else might and they will give you money so they can try.
So capitalize on the value of your time and the value of your business today.
That's a pretty smart move.
Acquire.com is free to list.
They've helped hundreds of founders already.
So go to try.acquire.com/arvid and just see for yourself if this is the right option for
you today.
For you, your business, your situation.
You don't have to do anything, but it's always good to be prepared.
Thank you for listening to the Bootstrapped Founder today.
You can find me on Twitter @arvidkahl and you can find my books on my Twitter across
that too.
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Have a wonderful day and bye bye.