Oct 14

Oct 14 Hurdles to Our Dreams

I’m sure you all are wondering where I have been the last couple months. It’s been another growth period for my commercial cleaning business. Whenever we go through a growth stage, I need 100% of my efforts put into the business. In my absence from the blog, we hired our first manager! He has been with us for just over a month now, and we are still in the training process. It takes a while to teach and delegate. I remember reading “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss. He suggests delegation to help streamline your life, so that you can focus your life on the things that you enjoy. It all seemed so simple after reading his book a few years back. That was before I became a business owner.

I realize that it can take months for someone to learn what you know to a level that you feel safe letting them run with the responsibility. I also have the issue of feeling like “they aren't going to do it right”. If our business is ever going to grow to the point where I have a 4-hour work week, I need to continue to strengthen my training, delegation and trusting skills. Hooray for us, we have a manager!!!!

Also, during my absence from the blog, I was thinking about two people that I know from my professional life that have expressed to me their desire to start their own business. They see what I’m doing and have thought that maybe they could do the same. Even though both earn significantly more money than I did when I left my corporate job, they will probably never be able to make the switch from their corporate jobs to business ownership/self-employment. From what I can tell from their financial situations, their spending isn’t allowing for them to have any level of freedom in their employment choices. There are many people who dream, but who can never take the leap because of their financial consumption habits. Weather it’s in business ownership or the path to Financial Independence (FI) you will never be able to take that leap without being intentional with your money.

Here are some hurdles to our dreams that we must navigate:

The Hedonic Treadmill: “also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.” (Source: Wikipedia) Basically, we think that something will make us happy, say a fancy new car, but then after a few months, we adapt back to our regular level of happiness. Or we think that driving a beater car will make us sad, but after a few months, we adapt back to our normal level of happiness. This can work for us in good and bad ways. Negatively, we could catch ourselves always thinking that we will be happier if we keep purchasing the next new thing. However, as we all know, this never leads to happiness.
Debt: we tend to think we can pay things off in the future. However, that future never comes. It’s hard to start a business or move across the country for new opportunities if you have tons of debt. Debt traps us and defeats us mentally.
Normalization: The lifestyle creep catches up to us. We get used to staying in nice hotels when we are in our 40’s and would never stay in a hostel like we did in our 20s. Watch for the lifestyle creep. Before you know it, you will be spending your wealth on things that you don’t value and don’t really bring you happiness. This is tied to the Hedonic Treadmill.
Fear of Change: It is uniformly the main factor that keeps us all from achieving our dreams. The fear of change is usually stronger than our hope for a better future.

It takes deep introspection at times, to make a dramatic change in your life. Especially one that requires risk. If you are thinking of starting your own business, her are a few suggestions to help make the transition easier:

Remember the Positives of Hedonic Adaptation: Start now to remove expensive habits, objects etc. in your life. You will adapt and be ready to run your life with more purpose and direction when aiming for business success.
Pay Off Your Debt: Starting a new business with personal consumer debt just adds to the stress and fear. Make a goal to have your personal consumer debt paid off before taking the leap.
A 6-12 Month Emergency Fund: Have your expenses covered for 6-12 months before taking a leap and quitting your current job for an opportunity at a better future. This helps soften the fear and allows you to make more clear decisions in those critical first 12 months of a new business.

Running a business, especially a business with employees, is stressful. There are a lot of financial responsibilities once you bring on staff. Even if you are running an owner operator business, the stress comes from all responsibilities falling on your shoulders. The last thing you’ll want to be worrying about is if you can pay your rent that month. Build a nest egg, as well as build habits of intentionality with your money so that you have one less thing to worry about on your path to chasing your dreams.