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Yesterday I Met a Rich, Self-Made Hostage. Are You Becoming One?

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I was stunned when I heard it: “It’s our 30th anniversary, and I’m finally planning a full two weeks off work to celebrate.” This proud declaration from a man who owns a $30 million company is just sad. This is a man who lives in abject poverty, with no freedom and no clue he’s been doing it wrong for 30 years.

I see it all the time. Business owners whose personal lives are train wrecks, with no time to invest in their kids, spouse, or non-existent hobbies, and no time to even think about creating meaning in their own lives. They are hostages to their businesses with no end in sight for their incarceration.

People think this guy is a great business owner because he works all the time and has a lot of toys he doesn’t have time to use. I think he lives in abject poverty.

Riches vs. Wealth

Riches is just money. Wealth is freedom. Freedom is the ability to choose what to do with my time. Time is more valuable than money. It usually takes money to buy time, but unless the specific goal is to buy time, money can make us hostages.

Money does not bring freedom. Time brings freedom. This man has millions and has no freedom. He readily admits that if he is gone from his business for a few days things begin to go awry. He has built a $30 million business that depends on him personally being there every day! He is not a business owner; his business owns him. He lives in abject “time poverty”.

Intending to receive time, not just money

You get what you intend, not what you hope for. You can just hear this man starting his business. He intended to do two things:

  1. “I’m going to work really hard” and
  2. “I’m going to make me some money.”

He got exactly what he intended – hard work and some money. And he is trapped by the hard work. He did not go into business intending to get both time and money from his business, just money. He hoped that getting money would give him time and create freedom, but we don’t get what we hope (wish) for; we get what we intend to get.

A Day a Week, a Week a Month, a Month a Year

I built five businesses like he did and was trapped as a hostage every time. With Crankset Group I intended to do something different – I decided this next business was going to give me both money and time, and everything I did from the beginning was driven by forcing my business to produce both.

As a result, I now have every Monday and every Friday off, the last week of every month off, and a month in the summer – it adds up to 73% of the work week.

I use only a few weeks for vacation, and choose (freedom) to invest the rest helping others build businesses around the world, including for-profit businesses to solve poverty in central Africa.

Vacation? What Vacation?

A recent American Express OPEN survey found 66% of business owners haven’t taken time off in several years. And of those few who do take vacation, 68% of them check in daily to try to run things from their beach chair (we don’t call in at all during our month off).

It’s important to get away from your business. The famous Framingham Heart Study found those who took regular vacation are 32% less likely to die from heart disease and 20% less likely to die from anything else. Besides  being healthier, time away from the day to day grind will help you see the big picture and make you a better leader. And you’ll be more productive when you return.

The objective of your business should be to build your Ideal Lifestyle. If you’re proud that you finally get two weeks off, you need to reassess how you are running your business and your life, and refocus on wealth (time/freedom), not just riches (money).

Is this just for special people? No. I built five businesses and never got off the treadmill. The sixth time I simply decided/intended to do it differently, and – what a surprise – it turned out different.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

What are you intending to do with your business and your life?

Article as seen on Inc.com

Every Business Owner Should Have Freedom Days

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Do you?

The business owner’s game: “How do I make MORE money in LESS time?” Profit AND Freedom. The practitioner only gets Profit (at best). The business owner gets both Profit and Freedom Days. What are Freedom Days?

The Industrial Age gave us great toys, but stupid ideas about success. The Industrial Age assumption was that if you made money, you somehow would magically get time, too. “If I just had $10 million dollars, I would have a great lifestyle.” It never happens. Never.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

If you intend to make money and hope for time, you’ll only get money. I know a lot of very rich people who bought the Industrial Age assumption that money would buy them time, and they never have any.

What is a Business Owner?
I reserve the title “business owner” for those who intend to have both time and money, not just money. Money makes you rich, but only time and money together makes you wealthy. Freedom is the ability to choose, and it takes both time and money to create freedom (wealth). Without time, you don’t own the business, the business owns you.

If you have time, but no money, your choices are very limited. If you have money and no time, you’ll never have the life experiences you “hoped” money would buy you.

Most conventional wisdom would consider a business that continues to produce more revenue every year “a good business”. But unless it also produces more time, it’s just a fancy hostage situation.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

Any Business Owner Can Do This
We’re seeing business owners all over the world changing their intentions and throwing out the Industrial Age assumption that money would buy them time. They are now very intentional about their business producing both, and they’re getting both.

When I started this, my sixth business, I was tired of not having time. This time I intended for Crankset Group to make me both time and money (wealth, not riches). In order to get both, I decided I needed to be ambitiously lazy, which means I would have to be willing to work really hard on the front end to get more time on the back end.

A Day a Week, A Week a Month, A Month a Year
I worked 6-7 days a week the first year, 5-6 the second year with a handful of Fridays and two weeks off, five days a week the third year with a lot of Fridays and a number of weeks off, and in the fourth year almost every Friday off and six weeks.

In the fifth year of the business I get what I intended – every Friday is a Freedom Day – I can choose what to do with it. The fourth week of every month is a Freedom Week and once a year we take a Freedom Month as well – a day a week, a week a month, and a month a year.

Bonus – I didn’t intend it, but I also get a couple Mondays a month and the 13th week of each quarter. Add it all up and it’s about 60% of the work days in a year.

Freedom to Go On Vacation, or Whatever
What do I do with that time? Somebody might use it all for vacation, but that would never work for me. I use a lot of it to do productive things outside my regular business – running a second business in Africa, writing more books, traveling and doing keynotes and workshops to build 3to5 Clubs around the world. Over half of the work year I can choose (freedom) to either travel and help other business owners with their business, or take that time off.

Get What You Intend
In my first five businesses all I got was money. That’s all I intended to get. In this business I intended for the first time to get both time and money – I now get both.

Freedom Days rock. You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

What do you intend to get out of your business? You’ll get that.

Yesterday I Met a Rich, Self-made Hostage

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Riches vs. Wealth – the big lie.

I was stunned when I heard it – “Next summer is our 30th anniversary, and I’m planning a full two-weeks off work to celebrate with my wife.” This proud declaration from a man who owns a $30 million a year company demonstrates what a sad life he has. This is a man who lives in abject poverty with no clue how to run a business.

I see it all the time. Business owners whose personal lives are train wrecks, with no time to invest in their kids, spouse, or non-existent hobbies, and no time to even think about creating meaning in their own lives. They are hostages to their businesses with no end in sight for their incarceration.

People think this guy is a great business owner because he works all the time and has a lot of toys he doesn’t have time to use. I think he lives in abject poverty.

Riches vs. Wealth
Riches is just money. Wealth is freedom. Freedom is the ABILITY TO CHOOSE what to do with my time. Time is more valuable than money. It usually takes money to buy time, but unless the specific goal is to buy time, money can make us hostages.

Money does not bring freedom. Time brings freedom. This man has millions and has no freedom. He readily admits that if he is gone from his business for a few days things begin to go awry. He has built a $30 million business that depends on him personally being there every day! He is a hostage to his business. He is not a business owner; his business owns him. He lives in abject “time poverty”.

Intending to receive time, not just money
You get what you intend, not what you hope for. You can just hear this man starting his business. He intended to do two things:
1) “I’m going to work REALLY hard” and
2) “I’m going to make me some money.”

He got exactly what he intended – hard work and some money. And he is trapped by the hard work. He did not go into business intending to get both time and money from his business, just money. He HOPED that getting money would give him time and create freedom, but we don’t get what we hope (wish) for, but what we intend to get.

A Day a Week, a Week a Month, a Month a Year
I built five businesses like he did and was trapped as a hostage every time. This time around I intended to do something different – I decided this next business was going to give me both money AND time, and everything I did from the beginning was driven by forcing my business to produce both.

As a result, I now have every Friday off, the last week of every month off, two weeks every three months, and the month of February. I also now get the unintended bonus of every other Monday off, and only work a half day on the other one. A three-day, to three-and-half day week, with 16-20 weeks off each year is something I’m getting used to. I use only a few weeks for vacation, and CHOOSE (freedom) to invest the rest in Africa and helping others build businesses around the world.

A recent American Express OPEN survey found 66% of business owners haven’t taken time off in several years. And of those few who do take vacation, 68% of them check in daily to try to run things from their beach chair (we didn’t call once from New Zealand for 3 1/2 wks last February).

The famous Framingham Heart Study found those who took regular vacation are 32% less likely to die from heart disease and 20% less likely to die from anything else.

The objective of your business should be to build your Ideal Lifestyle. If you’re proud that you finally get two weeks off, you need to reassess how you are running your business and your life, and refocus on WEALTH (time/freedom), not just RICHES (money).

Is this just for special people? No. I built five businesses and never got off the treadmill. The sixth time I simply decided/intended to do it differently, and, what a surprise, it turned out different.

You get what you intend, not what you hope for.

What are you intending to do with your business and your life?

Is Industrial Age Thinking Crippling Your Business?

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Retirement is a bankrupt Industrial Age idea.

The Industrial Age of 1780-1960-ish was the greatest advance in physical lifestyle benefits in history, and likely the worst thing that ever happened to our real lifestyle.

As a business owner, your view of business has been radically tainted by this very short period of time in history, and the sooner you stop using it as a reference for your business, the better off you and your business will be.

The Industrial Age gave us a lot of bad legacies, and a couple of the worst are:

  1. Retirement
  2. Separation of Work and Play

We’ll deal with Work and Play in a later post.

Retirement. What a dumb idea. In 1889, Bismarck invented it to give German laborer’s hope that there was a carrot at the end of the stick. He set retirement at age 70 when the average life expectancy was 42.5, and for those who made it to 20, they could hope to live all the way to 60. In 1913 the U.S. institutionalized it at age 65, three years after the average age of death in the U.S. Hmmm… great – thanks.

This was actually only the natural evolution of an Age that asked us to give the best 8-12 hours of our day, the best six days of our week, and the best 40 years of our lives to do something that was many times not fulfilling and did not allow you to think, be creative, or express your humanity. But if you worked hard, you could enjoy what’s left of your day, your week, and your life – AFTER we got the best of what you had to offer.

The Industrial Age worker bought it hook line and sinker, and as a result we have a whole nation of people who dream about “retirement”, which implies at least two things:

  1. Work is not fulfilling – it’s just a means to a future end a long way off.
  2. Significance and fulfillment is something you get AFTER you’ve worked really hard for decades.

Fortunately the alphabet generation (Gen X and Y) don’t have the baggage of having grown up in the Industrial Age, and are leading a peaceful revolt against the whole idea. They expect work to be fulfilling, meaningful, significant, and enjoyable RIGHT NOW. Not when they retire. It’s mystifying to their parents because it looks like they’re not willing to “settle down and get a job”. (pssst – Mom/Dad – they never will).

We need to learn how to stop waiting on decades of toil to eventually get us to something meaningful. I would suggest that you replace “Retirement” with “Ideal Lifestyle”. Retirement happens at 65-ish, but your Ideal Lifestyle is in your own hands to create any time you want. And as a business owner, I believe you can get there in 3to5Years from the printing of your business card.

If you’ve been in business for 20 years and aren’t at your Ideal Lifestyle, you might want to look at the model in your head for what your intending to get out of all this. Likely you just took your employee mindset with you from the Industrial Age and that giant corporation you used to work for, and repeated that same system that will (maybe) allow you to retire someday

He who makes the rules wins. Stop accepting the rules handed down to you by the Industrial Age and USE YOUR BUSINESS TO GET TO YOUR IDEAL LIFESTYLE – now. Life shouldn’t be meaningful tomorrow, because tomorrow never comes.

Take a look at my book at and other posts here to see how to get off this treadmill. You’ll enjoy life a lot more if you do.

Be the Best in YOUR World by Making the Rules

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What are you good at?

I went to Home Depot last week to return the toilet guts I had bought nine months earlier that had stopped working. Turns out they knew what they were selling didn’t work locally but that didn’t stop them. It’s really hard to be the best nationally and locally. As a local business owner, you’ve got an unfair advantage.

I was more frustrated with myself than with Home Depot because I’d replaced the guts to four different toilets in our house every 12-18 months for the last 15 years without thinking about the five year warranty. I talked to the manager and asked why the innards were failing so often and he replied, “The water is really hard in Highlands Ranch and makes the plastic parts brittle.”

I asked why, if they knew all this time that the parts don’t work in Highlands Ranch, that they were still selling them. He replied “The buying decisions are all made in our headquarters in Atlanta.” We then went back to the plumbing parts department and he asked the plumbing expert if he knew if they had anything that resisted the hard water problems here (the store is in Highlands Ranch), and his short answer was “No”.

Apparently it’s widely and long held knowledge among local Home Depot staff that the parts they sell don’t work in our town, but since the buying decisions are made in Atlanta, it doesn’t dawn on them to look for a local solution, or at least post a sign that says “these are great parts but not here.”

A locally owned store has an unfair advantage over big box stores. While the manager of the big box may live locally and care deeply, he or she can’t often customize their offering to meet the unique needs of a local community.

Big box stores win when you play by their rules, so don’t do that. What are you good at that they can’t begin to replicate? Walmart may have low prices but have you ever tried to find someone to help you find the right tool or ask about which bicycle to buy? If you offer great and knowledgeable service, it’s a rule they can’t play by – it would cost too much for their low price rule. They can’t play by your rule – you win.

What are you really good at that the big box stores can’t touch? While they do some things well, what are the things that they just can’t do? Low prices usually mean lower service. Centralized national buying usually means parts that are good for everyone and not great for your particular town. I know a lot of local owners who are killing it by simply refusing to play by the big box store’s rules.

He who makes the rules wins.

Make some rules they can’t touch. You don’t have to be the best in the world to compete with the big box stores. Being local puts you in the best position to be the best in YOUR world, and when somebody wants a toilet part, that’s the only world that matters.

UPDATE – June 30, 2011 – ELEVEN MONTHS LATER.

In July of last year, Home Depot gave me the guts to the toilet. Those guts failed this week – eleven months later. The kit has a five-year warranty.

I took the failed kit back to Home Depot, explained to the manager that I had been given this free by the previous manager, so I didn’t have a receipt. He wouldn’t replace the failed kit without a receipt and told me to contact the manufacturer.

Since I have to buy a new kit, I’ll be doing so from a locally owned plumbing supply store, and will go out of my way to avoid Home Depot in the coming years for all other purchases.

I’m pretty sure a local business owner would have had a different response. Don’t you?

I’m also pretty sure I’ll be telling this customer service story worldwide in my keynotes and workshops for years to come. It’s a great example of why you should buy locally.

Why Good Business Owners Live Disoriented

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There is such a strong pull in our western business culture to ‘have it all figured out.’ But there is a simple, counter-intuitive yet powerful principle that successful business owners know which keeps both them and their businesses growing:

Adults don’t learn unless we’re disoriented.

Think about it. A kindergartner is learning all the time, but adults have it all figured out. Why? Because everything is new all the time to a five year old. They are regularly amazed by how the world works. But adults have it all figured out, even when we don’t. We can’t let anyone know we don’t know something.

Successful business owners aren’t afraid to not know something and the best of them simply “live disoriented”. If we know that we don’t know everything and that life is SUPPOSED to be full of change, healthy instability and new experiences, we are much better prepared to grab hold of the new things that will keep us and our business fresh and growing.

Most business owners are strongly fastened to what they’ve always done, so when something new comes along that would actually push them forward they don’t see it because they aren’t disoriented enough to see the opportunity – they already “know” what works.

When I was in my 30s and had been in business a few years I figured I knew at least 50% of what it meant to be a good business owner. A number of businesses later I was much more certain that I knew less than 25% of what it took to make it work.

Business owners who live disoriented understand that the more they learn, the less they know. Learning just opens up door after door that all provide opportunities for us to continue to grow, adapt, change, and succeed.

When was the last time you were disoriented? Unless you’re disoriented from what you are certain is “true”, you’re not likely to take on any new tools to help you be even more successful.

Bob Parsons (Parsons Technology and GoDaddy) says: “Get out and stay out of your comfort zone.”

Let’s all commit to being five years old again – get disoriented and stay that way. You’ll learn a lot more, be a lot more successful, and make a bigger splash in the world around you.

Business Owners Should Always Be Normal, But Never Average

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I think businesses should grow up. I don’t mean “it would be nice if it happened.” I mean we should all, every one of us, expect our businesses to grow up and start giving back to us and to the world around us. We should assume that at some point in the first few years our business would move from survival right through success to significance.

There are many artificial constructs in life that mark various stages of maturity, but the only artificial event we’ve been given in business that tells us we’ve arrived is “selling the business”. The problem is almost no one actually wants to grow a business just to sell it anymore than we want to raise children with the express purpose of never seeing them again.

So we spend decades changing the diapers in our business and continue spending as much time, emotion, and money on our business as we did the day it was born. Why would we so eagerly anticipate the maturity of our children and never expect the same for our business?

If you want a mature business you can enjoy for decades and that makes money while you’re on vacation you might need a new view of business to get there. For years your business has trained you to focus on making money (and other unproductive distractions), and unfortunately when you look at other businesses you see that most of them are focused on making money, too. But these “average” businesses all set a bad example for us.

The point? It’s not normal to have a business that never grows up. It’s clearly average; everybody’s doing it, but it is definitely not normal. I intend for my business to have the minimum basics of maturity (run and make money without me while I’m on vacation and not be a mess when I get back) on February 18, 2011, at 10am, which is four years after I started the business. I believe that’s normal and that any business can get to this minimum level of maturity in 3to5Years from the printing of a business card.

Are you building a business that will depend on you for decades, or give back to you and the world around you for years to come? We get what we intend, not what we hope for. Don’t intend to work hard and just hope your business will grow up. It doesn’t work that way. Intend for your business to grow up so you won’t have to work so hard the rest of your life. Intend to move your business from survival right through success to significance.

Intentionality is everything.

Successful business owners respond quite differently.

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He who makes the rules wins.

On the way from the Charleston airport to speak at a conference last Thursday evening. I engaged our cabbie in conversation, which of course always gets around to food. I asked what seafood he liked since he lived on the coast, and his first response was “I don’t eat shrimp.”

I found his response in the negative to be interesting so I pursued it. He told me his cousin worked on a shrimp boat in the early 60’s and had drowned, and that he had never been able to get over it. So now he doesn’t eat shrimp because it reminds him of his cousin drowning over 40 years ago.

I empathize with his loss but I don’t understand letting that circumstance rule his entire life even in one small aspect like eating shrimp. I lost a cousin at the age of 41 from a massive heart attack as he went out the door for a run, but I would never think to stop running or exercising because of my loss.

The moral of this story?

Circumstances don’t make me who I am. How I respond to them does.

I met a woman once who was a quadriplegic from birth who always introduces herself by saying, “I have the gift of cerebral palsy.” As someone who has every right to claim true victim status, she is a bright light in a world full of self-made victims.

How are you responding to the circumstances in your business? If you decide you’re not a victim and respond accordingly you’ll enjoy life and business a whole lot more.

Wealth vs. Riches – Which one defines business success?

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There is a significant difference between Wealth and Riches, and which one you choose will likely define whether your business is successful or not.

I was at a friend’s house in Maryland who lives on the water. We were sitting on his deck looking out over the water and I noticed that his neighbor had a nice 30’ sloop docked at his house. I mentioned it to my friend and without pausing he said, “Yeah, it’s a nice one, but I never see it go out.” I asked him to explain and he said, “Every spring he pulls it out of the water to knock the shellfish off and paint it, but I don’t remember the last time I actually saw him take it out. If it’s out, it’s certainly never out enough for anyone around here to notice.”

This guy was rich, but he definitely wasn’t wealthy. Riches equals money, but Wealth equals “the ability to choose what to do with my time.” Riches just accumulates money and stuff, but Wealth creates freedom. Too often business owners don’t make this distinction and buy off on the notion that piling up the money is the definition of success. This is leftover thinking from the 1980s and 90s that was expressed in the bumper sticker “He who dies with the most toys wins.” We got a chance to try it during the 1990s and 2000s, and it came up short.

Too often we intend that our business should throw off money, so at best, that’s all it does. But business should give us three things; two resources and a benefit.

Resource One: Money

You can do a lot of things with money, but getting money by itself is not a good goal. Ask anyone who has made a lot of it – Making money is not an empowering vision. Do you have an empowering vision that is bigger than making money? If not, you will likely never make a lot of it. The blue flame coming out your backside will come from having a vision for something that grips you, and money will just be a way to get there.

Resource Two: Time

Most business owners never ask their business for time, just money. So they get what they ask for – some money (usually not a lot). I expect my business to throw off both time and money, and relentlessly work to get the business to the point where it creates both assets for me. Without time, money is meaningless – it’s just a boat that never goes out.

The Benefit: Significance

The most important, least asked question in business is “Why?”. Most business owners have no idea why they are in business, so it’s no surprise they don’t know where their business is taking them. What is it that you could do with your business to create significance for you, your family, your employees, and in the world around you? The bigger that vision is, the more likely you are to succeed in your business. Significance, or creating meaning should be the reason you are in business. If you have a Big Why, you will be much more motivated to design your business in a way that it throws off both a lot of money and a lot of time. When you have both, you are Wealthy and can now choose how you will create significance in the world around you.

There are a lot of rich people in the world who don’t have freedom and haven’t done what they could have to create significance in the world around them. There are a lot more struggling business owners who just focused on making money and never made much of it because they never got a Big Why for being in business.

Go for “Wealth” – time, money and significance. We get what we intend, not what we hope for. Stop hoping your business will get there – random hope is a terrible business strategy. Instead, intend to build a business around your Big Why, and intend for it to throw off time and money so you can create significance. It’s not “He who dies with most toys wins”, but “He who lives with the best Lifetime Goals wins.”

Wouldn’t you rather leave a legacy than a pile of cash and a boat that never goes out?

The Business Success Train – Get On It.

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If you were trying to get an old steam engine going to move the train, would you put the coal in the caboose or in the engine’s firebox? Does it make any sense at all to put the coal in the caboose instead? It’s not the way a train works and it’s not how business works, yet in business we do it all the time and all it does is weigh us down.

The Business Train of Success looks like this:

And it’s really simple to run it. Stop putting your faith in your feelings and make a habit out of putting your faith in the facts. It’s amazing how much better your business will run, and how much more likely you are to make good decisions.

When we put our faith in our feelings we either make fear-based decisions or hope-based decisions.

FEAR–BASED DECISIONS

Fear-based decisions are rooted in how things have gone in the past and maybe how things “are”, but don’t take into account anything to do with how things could be if I decided to make a change. If you tend to make fear-based decisions you are saying two things:

  1. The pain I know is better than the pain I have yet to experience. I’ll just live with it. (A big reason why most small businesses never grow to maturity).
  2. I am committed to making decisions based on where I am, rather than on where I want to be.

Stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself, “What would I be doing right now if I wasn’t afraid?” Make decisions based on where you want to be, not where you are. Otherwise you will never get where you want to go, you’ll only just wish you could have…

HOPE–BASED DECISIONS

Hope-based decisions ignore the past, the present and even the future facts that should be informing your decisions. Hope here really means, “I wish” and, “Wouldn’t it be nice if..” People who are hope-based ignore the facts as well and go full steam ahead without any idea where they are going or how they will get there. They are always “excited” about the future but have no factual reason to be – “it will just work out” if we keep going. If you make hope-based decisions, you are really saying two things:

  1. I will ignore the facts at all costs because reality always gets in the way of my dreams. Or – the pain I have yet to experience has to be better than my present pain – I’ll just keep running headlong into the abyss.
  2. I’m am committed to making decisions based on where want to be with no regard for where I am or the facts on how I can actually get there.

Both the naively optimistic (hope-based) and stiflingly pessimistic (fear-based) view of the world will keep us from being successful. Instead put your faith in the facts, stoke the engine of success, and get moving on a clear track to growing a mature business.

FACT–BASED DECISIONS

The more faith you put in the facts and not your feelings, the faster you will get there!