When a ‘good life’ is not nearly enough.

I’ve consumed an extraordinary amount of content on the topic of entrepreneurship over the last three to four years, to the point where I now feel it’s been a vicarious apprenticeship of sorts, on becoming an internet entrepreneur; ultimately, my end game.

When you expose yourself to as many stories as I, in the space of small business and entrepreneurship, you start to identify some pretty common traits in the people behind the stories.

For example: Just like me, most people who eventually take the path to self employment were once filled with anxiety and fear at the thought of unshackling those golden handcuffs and losing the perceived security a pay check provides by stepping into the unknown to pursue this new life unknown.

Just like many of the aforementioned ‘eventual’ entrepreneurs, for me it’s almost a case of the timing of the leap chose me, rather than the other way around.

It’s not that I didn’t have sufficient time to plan my departure from my current role. I certainly had the option to find another job while I was there and even had the support of my current employer to do so. If I had started the job hunt when I got the news, I’m guessing I probably wouldn’t have spent a single day out of employment.

But something change in me not long ago that’s changes everything.

I came to the realization that it doesn’t matter what I do or how hard I work, while doing it for someone else I will never achieve the level of success I want in life.

I’m not simply talking about financial independence either; far from it. If you’re an intelligent, driven and seriously hard worker, there’s rarely a shortage of people wanting to pay you good money to help them build their dreams.

Financially, I could play it safe. I could follow the well trodden path of building a career, holding down ‘good’ jobs and climb the corporate ladder. It’s safe, comfortable and predictable. I’ll have a nice house. A nice car. A nest egg. A ‘good’ life. You can bet on it. Because, that’s how the game works.

But I want more than that. I want my life to be an adventure. I want to wake up in the morning thrilled at the prospect another day of the unexpected. At the end of my career I don’t want to be asking myself, what if? What sort of life could I have experienced, if only I… [finish this off yourself]

I want a great life.

I truly believe for me to achieve my full potential and have the greatest impact on the world possible, I can’t work for someone else.

What drives us all is very different. However, the importance of knowing what motivates you, what your personal end game is and what kind of life you want live, is universal.

Your goals should act as the compass needle. What you want people to say at your funeral, the compass itself.

Here are my goals for the next 10 years;

• I want to drop the kids off at school or pick them up more frequently. I want them to know I was there.
• We (my wife and I) want to be able to travel, short term or long term. That means money to do it, but also importantly the flexibility to go when we want to go knowing an income is still going to be there when we’re wherever we are (sipping mojitos on the beach in Hawaii hopefully).
• I want to be able to support the building of schools in developing countries.
• I want to somehow find a way to have an impact on the gender equality conversation and state of play. I have no idea what my role in that change is yet, but it’s a topic that now burns in me — my two little girls help redefine my priorities here and raise my awareness of the world they are coming into. Here it is; the older I get I’m wising up to the fact that women simply don’t find it as easy as men to get promoted, get paid what they’re worth and generally just get a fair go in most work places.
• We want to give the kids an uninterrupted shot at getting the education they need, to also serve their purpose in life.
• We want a holiday house.
• I want a feeling that I’m on the way to fulfilling my potential.

If I can achieve a significant portion of these goals, I can only imagine what I will have experienced in my life by that time and the fun we would have had.

And when the day comes my name is coupled with the word ‘was’, rather than ‘is’, I’m also pretty confident I’ll have influenced those people in my life to speak of me exactly how I would of liked after I’m gone.