Reel in Freedom: Leveraging Entrepreneurship to Create Time for What Matters Most
I went fishing with my father today, a Friday. He is in his late 60s and I hope I have the chance to do that dozens if not hundreds of times in the decades to come. There is also the chance that this was the last time. None of us know when our time is up and when we no longer have the chance to do the things we want with the people that matter most to us.
Entrepreneurship is about generating wealth without a direct connection to your time. Building things that run without you and continue generating cash flow without you being there is what creates the time flexibility we are all seeking.
The leap that we all must make is from being self-employed to truly sitting in the seat of the entrepreneur. I am in no way knocking being self-employed. The plumber that bids their own jobs and does them on their schedule is truly in control of their professional life. The same for the digital marketing consultant. They bid the contracts they want and work on their schedules to deliver for their clients. Self-employment is where many of us break free of the life spent working for someone else and can be a valuable step on the journey. But what it does not offer is the opportunity to disconnect your labor from your income.
So how do we go about making that jump from self-employed to entrepreneur? The answer is found in the term “leverage”. Leverage is something that you apply to your business to allow you to expand your results. Many of us, particularly those in the financial world, think of our leverage as borrowing capital to increase growth rate. Financial leverage is certainly one type, but there are actually four: labor, financial, code and network.
Labor
Labor leverage is the act of hiring employees, contractors or vendors to do more than you can do on your own. Most of us have experience with this, but often making the jump to entrepreneurship requires hiring your own replacement or replacements. What are the things you do for your business, and can you hire someone to replace yourself in those roles or move from executing to oversight?
Financial
Can you use someone else’s money to grow faster? Business loans and lines of credit, personal loans and lines of credit and government financing programs are all examples of applying financial leverage to your business.
Code
Increasingly we are in a world where the ability to program and digitize elements of business is crucial. Do you have a customer service phone number or artificial intelligence chat bot? One of those is expensive and difficult to scale, the other infinitely scalable at low cost. What about other elements of your business? Where do you have humans doing jobs that could be done by code or at least made more efficient by code?
Network
This type of leverage most often involves sales and the generation of new business leads. Can you develop a network or digital brand that allows you to bring your ideas to your target customers without the use of paid advertising? Increasingly, customers and other businesses are relying on social proof before buying. What are my friends and peers saying about this restaurant, gym or Software as a Service (SaaS) tool?
Building your digital audience and providing value to those people allows you to present your company or product outside a traditional sales channel. Can you spend time developing a brand on one or more social platforms to drive revenue for your business?
No matter the type of leverage you choose to pursue, your goal should be to have a business or multiple businesses that do not rely on your time. They may still rely on your guidance or your personal brand to succeed at the level they should, but those can be applied infrequently and with far less time. Give yourself the freedom to go fishing on a Friday with someone who matters.
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DISCLOSURE: Jarrod Musick is an officer of Destiny Capital and Entrepreneur Aligned, a DBA of Destiny Capital. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for your investment, business, or personal financial decisions. We recommend consulting with your wealth advisor, CPA/tax advisor and/or attorney, as applicable to your situation, prior to implementing any new tax, legal, or investment strategy. Advisory services provided by Destiny Capital Corporation, a Registered Investment Adviser.
ABOUT JARROD
Jarrod was born into financial planning and solving financial problems. With his financial advisor father Steve telling stories about finance around the dinner table from an early age, the idea that everyone has a different financial situation was always there. After an early professional career spent in nonprofit and government, Jarrod came back to his roots helping people plan and invest in 2011. Since then, he has worked with individual clients, led internal teams and ultimately became partner and the CEO of Destiny Capital in 2017. With a passion for helping entrepreneurs change the world, Jarrod ultimately oversaw the creation of Entrepreneur Aligned in 2020. With both Destiny Capital and Entrepreneur Aligned, Jarrod leads teams that help people live lives of abundance where money is simply a tool to let everyone be a positive force for the world around them. When he isn’t working with the talented teams for EA and DC you can find him chasing his twins, wily trout or a podium spot at an OCR race.