As I see it, there are just two different ways to live your life and develop your career.
- Be a cog in a machine
- Build your own machine
All through my life I just assumed that I would go work at a single company for 40+ years, save 8% each year, get a pension, and retire at 65 to do what I enjoy. This was “normal” and it seemed to be the American Dream. Even though I got good grades in school and was “street smart”, I can’t help but look back at my younger self and yell, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”
I went through college with the assumption that working at a good company was the best option financially, professionally, and personally. A steady paycheck and benefits would be all I ever needed. Boy was I wrong.
All Part of Someone Else’s Plan
When someone else employs you and you don’t enjoy the work deep down, you are settling to be a cog in a machine. When you get laid off, you see how dispensable you are to the company.
Even if you stand out and become a linchpin for the organization, you end up just becoming a bigger, more complex cog. The more efficient and productive you become, the more the machine benefits, not you. It could be a pain to find a replacement for you, but even if it took more than one person the company would easily do it.
Half Man, Half Machine
If you set your own rules for living and working, you create the machine. When you put your life’s energy into projects and performance of your own business, you reap the benefits, not the executives on private jets that you never meet.
Instead of just being a single piece of a massive machine, you build the machine from scratch.
You might have a gift for web design (blueprints) and the passion for random knick knacks (fuel), so you develop a website (engine) and sell stacking Russian dolls (widgets). Whatever you see that is an opportunity a business, you can capitalize on it. Your machine becomes a business and your career.
Who is the Boss of Your Life?
Most people that try to talk others into being an entrepreneur start with perks such as “never wake up to an alarm”, “work from home”, or “be your own boss”. Sure, sleeping in is great and never leaving the house may sound like the good life, but the real truth is the last one. When you work for someone else it is like letting the company steer the boat of your life. You can quickly lose control of where you are headed and wander out at sea for forty years.
You get forced into working on projects you aren’t interested in. You have to stay late to cover for lazy or incompetent coworkers. When performance reviews finally come each year you get the same measly raises that everyone else gets. Promotions are limited because you haven’t been at the company for the suggest number of years.
Enough is Enough
Whose to say how much money you can make each year? There are a lot of ways to make money and selling your time in a direct trade of 40 hours a week for a paycheck is one of the worst systems there is.
Look outside the box of the bi-weekly paychecks, the coffee funds, and the retirement parties with cake.
How can you start to earn side income?
Can you turn that into a career?
Can you escape your corporate grind before you’re stuck for good?
Don’t be so scared of the word entrepreneur. You probably didn’t know of the word when you ran your first lemonade stand, but remember how liberated you felt with the cup filled with quarters and dollar bills? You earned that money.
Do you feel the same way about the paycheck you get from your day job? Does it seem like you earned the money or that you just put in your time.
Do me a favor and think about how you can earn just one dollar outside of your regular job. Take something you already know how to do or are passionate about and think about how you can monetize it.
Check out Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to Be Rich or MJ Demarco’s Millionaire Fastlane for inspiration.
The first dollar you earn on the side is the first major milestone towards building your own business machine. Doesn’t that sound way better than a life based on someone else’s terms?
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
GREAT POST CALEB!
This article really hit home for me. I currently work 8-5 Mon-Fri and I feel like I’m serving time while years of my life are shaved away. I’m giving my time to a company that I don’t even feel I’m a part of. I hate the fact that I am carrying out someone’s plan and not my own. I’ve had the thought of building my own machine but now it’s all about creating a plan and executing it. Hopefully I can get out of the system before I am stuck forever!
Thanks Aaron! I am in the same situation right now and am working hard to build a machine too. I think even working to make just the first $100 can be a HUGE step to escaping the grind.
What kind of plans do you have in mind?
Caleb,
I plan on becoming an internet entrepreneur. Right now I have been doing a lot of reading and trying to make small steps to get there. I really want to educate myself though. Eventually I want to be able to generate my own income so I don’t have to rely on a paycheck from a corporation who cares little about me.
Research is definitely key to figuring out exactly what you want to do. I would recommend that you not be afraid to go out and give things a try though. Start a site, start making income (even if it is pennies a day at first), and figure out what works. You can learn so much more from doing.
I always enjoy these articles because I’m currently in a corporate job I dislike. But I would argue that there’s a third way to the dichotomy of being a cog or creating your own machine. I freelance for an education nonprofit whose mission I believe in deeply. While it is trading time (and hard work) for money, it is also knowing that my work will hopefully have an impact, however small, on a larger issue that I believe needs fixing. And that’s a great feeling, one that doesn’t make me feel like a cog at all.
Thanks for the thoughts!
Thanks Brooke. I agree with you that there is a third choice.
If by working at a job you don’t like you are able to help other people in another way it is worth it.
Wow, just stumbled across this site while doing a little research for my next article. I am very impressed with the decisions you’ve made Caleb and anyone else who’s taken the steps to freedom. I didn’t walk away from it until I was 55. The sad thing is that I wanted to walk my whole working life. Never felt like I fit in any job either Aaron. Glad I ran across your site, I’ll stay close. The best to everyone and don’t wait as long as I did.