The Lifestyle Trap

One of the biggest obstacles people face when trying to start a new business is having a great lifestyle.

At least for A-type personalities like me. I’m driven and competitive. I always want to improve, learn and get better. Every day I read, try to learn something, or get better at relationships. I take care of myself and try to lead a better life every day.

That means that I’m also highly competitive in my career. Career-wise, there are 3 ways of keeping score:

Money — “I’m worth $X.”
Status — “That guy runs ABC at Google. So impressive!”
Responsibilities — “I manage 5 people, and a $500,000 marketing budget.”
While I see my personal improvement as something positive, I think the ‘career scores’ suck. They are negative, and provide the wrong incentives.

Ever since I started my career, I’ve been moving forward. Slowly, always up. Every company I started has been better than the previous one. Every job I had has been an improvement from the previous one.

A few years ago, starting a business was easy for me. My other alternative was an OK job somewhere. Now, I run the marketing team at a fast-growing eCommerce startup. I had a few job offers, and contracts. My savings account is slowly growing.

Life is good. But I’m not 100% happy. Every day I wake up, desperate to work on my own thing. But is hard. I would need to drop everything, stop making money and take a step back score-wise.

While I’m writing this, I realize that my identity is tied to my job, and my net worth (and that I’m an idiot). This revolves around some of my deepest insecurities. I’m highly driven and competitive. I want to be better than my self, but also better than the rest.

I’m used to go up, and now I don’t want to go down. What happens if I lose my current lifestyle? What will people say? Will I be able to do the stuff I do right now?

People say leaving a job at Google (or wherever) and starting a business is easy. You have all those savings you can rely on. But you are fighting against something bigger and tougher than money itself: you.

That’s the lifestyle trap.

The only way to turn this around is to be self-aware, recognize what’s going on and plan how to fulfill your dreams. Then, make yourself accountable. That will force you to get you ass up and start working on what you care the most.

Thanks for reading! I genuinely 😍 ️feedback and great conversation, so feel free to tweet me, or comment below.