Do you?
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.