10. What Success Has Cost Our Marriage

And the reason why I think it's interesting to have a conversation about the benefits of entrepreneurship are that most people aren't actually enjoying them.

They're not actually getting to benefit from them.

So in the last Better Way to Build episode, I kind of highlighted what I felt like were some of the benefits that we've enjoyed.

But I want to hear from you about, you know, you're looking back at the last 17, 18 years of entrepreneurship for our family, really the last 10 years of entrepreneurship that have seen a lot of success.

and with it, its own unique challenges.

But what do you think are the biggest benefits of entrepreneurship that we have really, truly been able to enjoy?

Yeah, this is so fascinating to me because as a business coach, one of the angles that I'm taking in my messaging and my brand is helping people build their businesses, but also get back their time freedom.

So I'll say it in a bunch of different ways.

I help entrepreneurs create more money, more margin, and more meaning.

And that's usually the order in which people look for things in business.

They start business because they need to make more money because that's one of the benefits I'm sure you alluded to in the last episode of like, there's no cap to your income.

And then they typically realize, oh, I'm making money, but I'm burning out.

I would love to have more margin in my schedule, more time.

How can I do that? And then once they have time, they realize, I don't have a whole lot of purpose in what I'm doing.

I have a good business, but like, it doesn't fulfill me.

It doesn't feel like it's aligned with my personal mission.

And that's where the meaning piece comes in.

And so I try to help people do that, but it is, It's bonkers to me that I get pushback on, like, why are you talking about working so less? Like, are you lazy? Like, it's like the idea that real entrepreneurs are working around the clock.

And the reason why people think that is twofold.

If they live in America or they live in the West, that's kind of the culture we've grown up in, which is we – We are obsessed about working and obsessed with working.

And it's almost like a badge of honor how many hours we work.

And like all of our heroes brag about how much they work.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, soon to be ex-CEO of Apple, talks about and brags about how many hours he works, how early he wakes up, how late he goes to bed working.

Elon Musk says, I never sleep, like just work around the clock.

You know, I won't name more and more gurus in my space, but like the typical gurus, say you need to work all the time and work-life balance is a myth and you should ignore it largely, especially in your 20s, so you should just work, work, work, work to build the thing.