07/30/2024
Unpopular opinion: Owning a business doing $500k/year revenue sucks.
Growing to $500k/yr of top line revenue sounds GREAT, until you've done it...
Assuming 25% margins, your take home (pre-tax) is $125k, not bad right?
Too bad it's a pair of golden handcuffs.
It's actually WORSE than having a traditional 9 to 5 job.
Because while you may enjoy certain freedoms with being self employed, at this stage of a company you've only created a more intense job for yourself.
First, there's no chance you're only working 40 hours a week. More like 60 (if you're lucky)
More likely than not, you're workload is 2x what your 9 to 5 counterpart is managing,
That $125k take home is now $62.5k take home per full time job you have.
Second, at $500k yearly revenue you can't afford to hire skilled talent, so you're trying to do everything yourself (unsustainable).
Third, even if you're a scrappy hirer you're constantly churning through B-team players who don't have batteries included,
Leaving you MORE drained than if you would have just done the work yourself.
So yeah, $500k may sound cool, but in my experience it sucks.
The only way out is through.
There are only 3 legitimate paths forward (choose wisely):
1. You can take your foot off the gas, cut expenses, and try to eek out more profit.
But what isn't growing is dying, so this isn't sustainable.
2. You can quit altogether and go get a "safe" 9 to 5 job...
[TRIGGER WARNING] you'll never create any wealth from a 9 to 5 - I don't care what Dave Ramsey says.
3. You can double down on what's working and scale out of entrepreneur purgatory.
If you're interested in learning how to do that, I recorded a simple video (albeit long winded) on how to scale from $500k to $5M a year with my friend Robert Matheny.
Not a sales pitch, so leave your wallet in your pocket.
Just externally processing all the things that used to drive me nuts as a biz owner.
Hope this helps 🫶🏼 (link in comments)
