Ask IH: What's your "WHY"?

Because for the first 20 years of my life the world beat me down and told me I was a loser. Then I decided not to be. Now I'm on the path. Flip the script. Invert the narrative. Take control. 10 years deep into this journey I've realised the "harder" thing is actually easier, because it's so hard almost no one is willing to do it.

This is simple: I am unemployable.

Arriving at that answer though, took me a long time.

And not because I didn't know it, but because I didn't do it.

I have a wife and kids and left my last full time job in December of last year. I worked with good people, but I hated my job. I spent two years there and was never excited about anything I worked on. I tried to launch my own projects inside the company but I just never fit. I saw all kinds of people climb the ladder around me - I went nowhere.

A big part of this was my wife's urging to stay. Keep the insurance and the steady job. I was miserable and it wasn't until I (literally) had the same discussion with myself for months that I decided to change things. That discussion went something like this.

I have (big) responsibilities, but I am not living up to my full potential. I am not here on this planet to live someone else's dreams, I am here to make mine happen. I don't take orders well (never have) so why should I change my internal dna because someone else says I should? I should be able to cover my responsibilities and achieve my dreams at the same time just being myself and spending my days doing what I love to do.

Once I decided I had hit bottom with this realization, I started doing something about it. I worked on what I loved doing on any off hour that I had. And it took me a little over a year, but I did it.

Some people are ok with just having a job. Some people love having a job. I always just wanted to do what I wanted to do, without someone telling me what or how.

I wasn't until I knew this and was completely honest with myself about who I am that everything started to change.

Changing your mindset, for me, is the key. I think in terms of affecting and not just reacting. I set aside time for myself every day to do the things I want to do, distraction free.

When you have a clear focus and determination behind it, you can achieve anything.

I'd say I'm transitioning to a full-time income from the products I’ve created to be able to:

• Spend more time with friends and family;

• Travel more;

• Build a tech business on solid ground.

That's what led us to https://www.gethighlights.co/ 🦄

Damn this is a good one, upvoted!

I had one job before for an amazing design agency (great people, great work, amazing talent) but even with all that, I felt pretty terrible in that short period of time. I remembered shortly before quitting I was super tired mentally (more than some burnouts I have had) and thought that there's no way I am going through this again (or for my entire life!) and that being an entrepreneur is not "an option" is the only freaking option! I always wanted to be an entrepreneur anyways but that made everything clearer!

I am a control and improvement freak (I took some time to balance it to a healthy level but it was worth the lessons haha) so that's an amazing "why" to follow my own path to be the best version I can be!

I focus on Design based on conversion because it can have a great impact on someone's business that's helping them achieve their vision, maintain their dream, create more (and much better) jobs for talented people and so on (which actually impacts people's lives)...that's part of the "why" too. It's all about making as many things as I can in life a "win-win".

The short answer for my kind of personality type is"Progress equals happiness" ;)

PS: Curious on your "Why"... 😊

To quote Casey Neistat, "The regret I have for failing is less than the regret I would have for never trying."

To me, there's nothing scarier than leaving something on the table. I want to try, and fail, and fail again until I succeed. But I wouldn't be able to live knowing I didn't try something I always dreamed of.

And I always dreamed of starting my own businesses, creating products, solving problems. I do it because I can't NOT do it.

I like this question. It may even be one of the more important questions you should ask yourself before starting. I don't really know. I haven't "started" yet.

But, here are a few I came up with for me.

TL;DR: Freedom (including financial freedom) & Validation.

Freedom of Schedule

When me or my kid gets sick, I won't have an employer telling me to use my vacation hours. If something comes up, just take care of it.

Freedom of Location

Employers/managers still have trust issues regarding remote work? Work in the environment best suited to your productivity.

Freedom of Decision

Employers wont make decisions on your behalf to their own benefit. You make decisions based on what is best for you!

Freedom of Philosophy

You have many theories on how to make better sales. Employers can be entrenched in their own ways. You get to decide and test what works and what doesn't.

No Monetary Ceiling

You don't have to earn the owner $1 while he pays you only 1¢. Why not make the $1 for yourself?

Sense of Accomplishment & Validation

If you are on a team at an employer, your sense of accomplishment is: I built maybe 25% of this thing and earned the owner more cash. Not very satisfying, at-least, for me. Making something people find useful enough to pay for while also benefiting from. I call that validation.

This one has to be the crown jewel for me. ☝️

I finally fell into a great job and I will remain at it for as long as I can. But just like the world... reality is: no one is safe, everyone is expendable. But I am tired of working for the corporate world, tired of dealing with a supervisor, tired of just having to go sit somewhere for 8 hours just to appease my company because they have disallowed "remote work" -- though it's selective.

So... I'm just trying to have a security blanket with web apps and SaaS. I see the interviews on here .. and I'm like, "Wow, if I could just earn $1000/mo.... "

There is this feeling I want. I want to be able to go to work, at my day job, because I want to be there, not because I have to be there. When I can accomplish that, I will know I have found the success I was looking for.. and that is my true 'why'.

I want to destroy the lone inventor myth.

When people think of the light bulb, they imagine that only Thomas Edison worked on it. When people think of the iPhone, they think that only Steve Jobs created it.

In reality armies of engineers, designers, and other people worked to create those products and many others. It's grossly unfair that history forgets these people.

Hopefully others feel the same way as I do: https://theymadethat.com

Family and freedom.

I love my job and work remotely. That's not the issue.

I spent the first 38 years playing by the rules: get good grades, go to college, get a career, wait to retire, die.

I think I can do better. You guys have shown me I can.

$100k in student loans. Half of my $70k salary engineering job goes to paying those bills. The only way to financial security and getting out of debt in the near future is increased income. Asked for raises, got no raises, decided to take my future into my own hands and get paid what I'm worth.

Good question...

I think there are a few;

• To create something from nothing

• To truly feel "the harder you work the better it will be" Something that doesn't feel true in many 9-5 jobs

• An overwhelming feeling of success on the small things

• Higher "ceiling" than a typical job, the sky is the limit!

I have two main reasons.

I like the freedom aspect. Although I have dogs now so I'm a bit more tied down for many years it was possible to just be like "Gosh it's cold here" then pack up and move to Florida for a few months. Or spend 3 months on a road trip in an RV.

I like the creativity and the chance to work on what I want. Try whatever takes my fancy and see if I can make it work.

Because it's fun!

I love the process of finding people who want something, making it for them, and giving it to them. Sure, you can do that in a big company, but for my side projects I get to do that without needing approval, project proposals, buy in from other people, etc. In a company it's naturally a more filtered, shared, and communal process. That's great, but I find it more fun doing everything yourself 😄

You also get that direct interaction with customers which makes a huge difference. There's much more a sense that the work you do has an impact on your future. Like some work I did a couple months back led to a 30–40% increase in revenue. Being able to identify and impact impact sales in that way is so satisfying and really forces you to confront whether your ideas are good or not (and most of mine are bad!)

I feel that I do good work but I like when others to tell me I do with their dollar or affirmations. That sounds petty but I think we're all a little petty 🤷‍♂️

I'm also a tinkerer at heart and I don't get to do enough of that when working for someone else.

I love creating and learning and I want to be able to be generous with my time and money. Entrepreneurship is a combination of helping people, creative problem solving, and creating wealth.

1. Why start a business? So I can have more free time to dance full-time and create my artwork. I'm finally in pursuit of the life I've wanted to live my whole life. No point in stopping now that the path is clear.

2. Why work for myself? Because I can build my brand as big or small as I want. There is no back and forth, and trying to win someone over with strategy - just execution. And there's a peace to that.

3. Why create something from the ground up? Because it's mine. It's my vision. It's my creation. It's mine.

For me the freedom is simply unmatched. As people who can work on our laptops, anywhere in the world, being able to do that whenever you want is really great. The freedom to wake up when you want, work as long or little as you want, work on things you're interested is worth more than any money or fame I think.

Could you have some huge startup, get rich and famous? Sure, and maybe some people legitimately enjoy that, but you get any impression that you're not that type of person, I can definitely recommend trying your own thing. I find it more rewarding too personally, you get full control, the product(s) are very much "yours", and even if you make less money, it feels like you actually earned it.

I've gone full-time trying to start a business twice, and both times it's been a similar story.

Both times I felt undervalued, underchallenged and over-constrained in my job. Both times I've looked forward and seen what if need to do to move forward within the company and thought "that's going to take a huge amount of energy - why not just channel that energy into a project which I will own and will accelerate my learning 10x?"

My impression based on this thread and previous experience is that people become entrepreneurs for a similar reason most of the time. And that's because their perception of their own ability - rightly or wrongly - is higher than that of society's perception of them.

I think this is why you tend to get an unusually high proportion of 1st generation immigrants starting successful businesses, seemingly against the odds. And it's why the same theme of "I'm unemployable so I started a business" is so prevalent.

All of these are great answers. I see myself in many of the responses; particularly as it relates to control: not of other people but of your own time, your own destiny, to shape the kinds of tools & products you want to work on etc. Yes, the money and flexibility that it brings is important too and I think everyone wants it to some degree or another. But the idea of being able to work independently without being told what to do is particularly appealing to a lot of us and it's why, as easy as it is to be swayed by the VC model, I think it's more appealing to build a "company of one" as Paul Jarvis talks about. Or at least a company of few.

Just remember though: this shit is hard. And it takes time.

I started a network of content sites around MySpace profiles (yes, this was eons ago in "internet time") in 2006 that I ran full time for 2 years. Made a ton of money up front when I was 22 and then it dried up and I couldn't pivot to something else in enough time and had to go searching for another job. That was 10 years ago. I've been trying to get back ever since.

That's not meant to discourage anyone but rather to steel you for the journey ahead. It's a lifetime of study, IMO. And it doesn't happen overnight.

In other words: keep plugging away. Even if you don't get there on your 1st (or 10th) product, eventually you'll get there.

I find myself working as a maker / bootstrapper mainly due to my young age, my creativity when it comes to getting ideas for new products, the fact that I tend to have a lot of time for myself and that I am definitely not too skilled to be working for other people yet, so I'm trying to improve and get a lot of experience.

And in addition to that, why not, how rewarding it feels to finally launch your own product and to start getting some revenue, even if very few or less than the initial investment.

I've built enough value for the other people's products, I figure it might be time to use my experience to build some things that I'm excited about.

Because I believe the only solution to poverty is making work accessible and sustainable. To make work accessible and sustainable, the best vehicle is a profitable business.

Great question!

For me, this is my dream:

• Work when I feel like it, in whatever project I feel like it (motivated to), from wherever I want (remote or otherwise). Basically freedom.

• Create amazing products that passionate me and people love, and be able to live out of it.

• Generate a passive income so at some point I don't really have the need to work, but rather do it out of pure joy/motivation :D

This is an experience I want to have in life, coming up with a product idea, figuring out how to make it work, launching it, rinse and repeat. I knew it was going to happen, so now im doing it

Why: I am completely unemployable.

Not because of lack of skills, I hope 😆 but because I've never been employed before - just contracted/freelanced/built small software products - and as soon as I try to give up some of the freedom I have, anxiety strikes in to tell me that's a no-go for me. I tried looking for a full-time (remote!) job last fall, as financially it makes more sense in my case, but this feeling always strikes a few interviews in.

The IH route is the one that gives priority to not having any plans, the ability to wake up one day and go for a walk without having to ask or tell anyone, the ability to work when I'm more inclined to do so (and this varies by day) and deciding my own destiny rather than having someone else decide for me.

Still trying hard to make the ends meet and hit the right buttons, but I'm here for the long run 🙂

To be honest, I'm not an entrepreneur for the sake of being an entrepreneur. I do like the autonomy and flexible schedule, but if I wasn't solving a problem for my customers I wouldn't do this. That's what really drives me.

Sometimes I think it would be easier if someone just paid me a salary to create my app and handle the marketing, sales and customer development. Of course that wouldn't work for a lot of good reasons. I realize marketing is part of creation, and I ultimately welcome the challenge.

All humankind have (sometimes deeply) the desire to create stuff that can do amazing things!

I like my full-time job, but working on a sideproject has this "effect" on me, having the feeling that you can forge your own path, at your own pace.

Was this inspired by Simon Sinek? I like it.

Why? Because I'm driven to be a better version of myself.

In this order:

• People in the industry need what I'm building to save them time and money

• Learning new skills/furthering my full-time software day job

• Hopefully make some money.

I feel super passionate about bringing something useful to the market. Everything else is a side bonus.