It’s hard to believe it has been more than five months since my last post. I have sat down multiple times over this time period with the intent to write an update post. For numerous reasons, I just couldn’t seem to make it happen. To be honest, the timing just didn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to force it. Today — the timing finally feels right — so here goes. The intent of today’s post is to provide readers with a quick update on where I have been, what I have been up to, and why I think I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up.
A Quick Update
Since my Burn the Boats Post in March, A LOT has happened. The Henry household has been busy traveling and spending quality time together. Mrs. Henry and I launched our new business and have been working to grow it organically over the last few months. During this time period, I have been able to really slow down and re-evaluate my life, consider what is truly important, and ask myself difficult questions in an attempt to determine what makes me truly happy. Below is a brief update in each of these areas.
Experiencing Slow Travel:
Over the last five months or so, the Henry household has traveled more than we have in years past. Our increase in travel can partially be attributed to us traveling less in 2020 and early 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, our increase in travel can also be attributed to greater flexibility with our time afforded to us primarily by no longer being tied down by my MegaCorp job.
Normally, our ability to take vacations would be constrained by multiple factors. First, Mrs. Henry and I would need to consider the amount of available leave time we each had with our employers in conjunction with future plans that would require leave time. I would then have to consider the impact leave time would have on my team and my schedule when I returned due to never-ending deadlines and objectives. There was always something behind or important upcoming due to chronic understaffing and unrealistic expectations of myself and my team. When it came to vacationing, it honestly didn’t necessarily matter if I “had the time” because any day I did not work just meant more work on the front-end or back-end. In retrospect, it was a lose-lose situation, and I see that more than ever now. School schedules, camp schedules, and overlapping work schedules were just a few of the additional considerations we would typically take into account. I am probably leaving something out here, but you get the point. There were a lot of factors to consider, and the demand of my MegaCorp job played a huge role in our travel and vacation planning.
The last five months have proven to be MUCH different. With the exception of Mrs. Henry’s work schedule (which offers more flexibility than my Megacorp job ever did) and the kids’ schedules, the factors above had little to no impact. I was no longer beholden to a rigid schedule, impossible demands, and a never-ending barrage of deadlines. As a result, neither was the Henry household. Since I was spending my time on launching and growing the new business, my time was flexible, which meant our time was flexible. As a result, we were able to take multiple trips — several of which lasted for close to 10 days each. We took several trips to our happy place, the beach, and several more to other destinations we had been wanting to visit. In short — we were able to spend much more time together as a family traveling, experiencing new things, and simply spending time together making memories which has been great for the family and great for the soul.
Summer Time!:
In addition to being able to travel more, we have been able to spend much more time together as a family when home. Like most families with children, summer time means no school and no school means the kids are home. In past summers, “summer break” was synonymous with “summer camp”. Since Mrs. Henry and I both had busy work schedules, the kids were often in summer camp for 8 – 10 hours a day. This summer was much different. The improved flexibility with our time allowed the kids to participate in day camps and other interest-led activities that would not have been previously possible. As a result, they were able to have new experiences, meet new people, and learn new skills. All of this was made possible by our flexible schedules and improved ownership over our time. I believe this will be a summer that the children and Mrs. Henry and I look back on with fondness despite some of the continued restrictions with COVID-19.
Launching a New Business:
You will recall from my previous post, Mrs. Henry and I made the decision that I would commit 100% of my time to launching and growing our new business allowing me to pursue my dream of entrepreneurship. Throughout April and May, Mrs. Henry and I worked together to get our new business officially off the ground. We launched in late May which was 60 days after I left my MegaCorp job. We have been working to grow the business in the months since, which is where I have been spending a lot of my free time not consumed by travel, family, and fun. It has been challenging for sure, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
A Period of Self-Discovery
In addition to traveling, spending more time with family, and launching a new business, I have also been spending time trying to consciously slow down and re-evaluate my life both professionally and personally. Walking away from a career of 10+ years will definitely evoke a lot of different emotions and cause you to reassess your life choices. It would take much more than one post to try and cover my thoughts in this area over the last five or so months. I don’t have all the answers at this point, but I definitely think the time I have spent asking myself difficult questions have helped me to gain a better appreciation for what I truly value and what I want out of life both professionally and personally. Today, I did want to hit on a couple of realizations that I have had over the last few months.
The Fast-Forward Phenomenon:
“Money’s greatest intrinsic value — and this can’t be overstated — is its ability to give you control over your time. To obtain, bit by bit, a level of independence and autonomy that comes from unspent assets that give you greater control over what you can do and when you can do it.”
– Morgan Housel from The Psychology of Money
I am sure I picked up the idea of the “fast-forward phenomenon” from somewhere, but I am unsure where. Regardless, I have realized over the last few months that I was previously experiencing this phenomenon without necessarily knowing or acknowledging it. Let me explain because as a HENRY, I know you can relate.
Phase 1: Looking Forward to Weekends:
Do you ever find yourself looking forward to Friday afternoon because it means the weekend is finally here? Do you then find yourself dreading Monday morning because it signals the farthest point from the next weekend? If so, you are experiencing a bit of the fast-forward phenomenon. I suspect many people will answer in the affirmative to both of these. In fact, I would argue this is fairly common to a lot of people and not unique to HENRYs.
Phase 2: Wishing the Week Away:
Do you ever find yourself dreading Sunday afternoon because it signals the weekend coming to an end? Do you begin to have anxiety or elevated stress simply because the work-week is approaching? Do you find yourself wishing the time away Monday – Friday so that you can get to Friday afternoon and the weekend? If you can relate here, you are really starting to experience the true power of the fast-forward phenomenon. I again suspect many people including HENRYs will also answer in the affirmative to these questions as well. You are essentially living life one weekend to the next because you no longer find consistent joy and/or satisfaction in your work. It is simply a means to an end. This is not a great spot to be. Unfortunately, it CAN get worse.
Phase 3: Living Vacation to Vacation:
As a HENRY, your above average income often equates to greater responsibility, greater accountability, greater consequences, more hours, and less work-life balance. What you do is not easy. The line between your personal life and your work life is continually blurred and in some cases disappears all together. Ask yourself these questions.
- Do you ever find yourself looking forward to your next scheduled vacation because it means you will have at least SOME small reprieve from your work?
- Do you ever find yourself dreading the last day(s) of your vacation because it signals the END of “your version of a weekend”?
- Do you ever begin to have anxiety or elevated stress simply because your vacation is ending and you KNOW your next vacation is in the distant future?
I can relate to all of these because this was me in my MegaCorp job. I also know many HENRYs can relate. You no longer look forward to weekends because you will still be working (actively or passively) or you have to get to all the to-do items you couldn’t do during the week completed. You once lived your life wishing part of your week away so you could fast-forward to the weekend. This was bad enough, but you now find yourself wishing entire months away so you can fast-forward to the next vacation.
Eliminating the Fast-Forward Phenomenon:
The last few months have helped me to realize that (1) this WAS me (2) this is NOT living and (3) there IS an alternative. I have come to conclude that no amount of professional accolades or money is worth living life wishing your life away. Life is too finite to live in fast-forward mode. The last few months have been a stark contrast to years prior. I feel that I am no longer living weekend to weekend or vacation to vacation. I am no longer approaching life subjecting myself to the fast-forward phenomenon. I am enjoying each and every day — including Mondays — more so now than I ever have. I am able to better appreciate each day as a moment in MY life that I will never get back. I am better able to live in the moment. The impact has been nothing short of profound.
Note: If you haven’t read Morgan Housel’s book The Psychology of Money yet, I highly recommend you do so. You can also check out my review here for more information on the book.
The Engine of Life:
I have written previously about the concept of self-directed learning. Essentially, it is the process by which a person takes charge of their own learning process. You diagnose your learning needs, identify/define/formulate your learning goals, identify/select your learning strategies, and evaluate your learning performance and outcomes. Why do I bring this up again? Because I have quickly come to learn that launching and growing a small business is the epitome of the self-directed learning process. In preparation for this post, I was looking back over my “Master To-Do List” that I started the day after I published my March post. Below are just a few of the to-do items on my list at that particular point in time:
- Legal – Research and attain all needed business registrations, licenses, etc. necessary to conduct business in person and online.
- Finance – Establish checking, savings, and credit accounts. Determine start-up funding needs and fund business with personal savings.
- Accounting – Determine and implement methodology for book-keeping to include software, record-keeping mechanisms, etc.
- Insurance – Determine insurance requirements and needs. Contact brokers to price, compare, and attain needed insurance.
- Inventory Management – Determine suppliers, define/implement inventory management system, determine inventory needs for launch, create inventory, etc.
- Marketing – Create branding and marketing strategy, launch social media profiles, create/develop logo, create/develop marketing materials and signage, etc.
- Website Design – Select e-commerce platform, register domain, build/test/launch website, web-analytics, etc.
- Point-of-Sale Logistics – Determine in-person events, registration requirements, event needs, POS payments, etc.
As someone with limited or no experience in many of the areas above, I have been challenged to get outside my comfort zone and figure it out. Researching, developing, implementing, learning, iterating, and trying again would accurately describe the last five or six months.
In addition to developing new skillsets and continuously learning, I have had the opportunity to meet people that I would not have otherwise crossed paths with previously. I have had shared experiences with Mrs. Henry and our children through the business that we would not have otherwise had. All of these have been a net-positive in my life and have resulted in me leading a richer life over the last few months than I believe I otherwise would have. As a result of this experience, I have re-discovered something about myself and life. Learning, growth, and experiences are the engine of life, and entrepreneurship is an excellent catalyst for all of these.
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?:
I was listening to a podcast recently, and I heard an interesting question/thought experiment:
Why is it that we as adults often ask children what they want to be when they grow up?
On the surface, the question seems straight forward and so to do the possible answers.
- We want to know what that specific child wants to do with their future.
- We want to see what children today aspire to be and compare to ourselves as a child.
- We want to reminisce about what it was like to be a child where anything was possible.
This podcast presented the question in a different light. WHAT IF we ask this question because we as adults are still trying to figure out what WE want to be when WE grow up. Think about it! We spend our childhood dreaming about what we want to be when we grow up. At this stage in life, our interests are driven primarily by our passions. You can be a doctor, astronaut, author, actor, professional athlete, entrepreneur or farmer. You are only limited by your imagination. Anything is possible!
Eventually we grow up and we are no longer a child. We become an adult and in doing so we must do “adult things” including often putting our dreams on hold. Our imagination is no longer the only limiting factor. In fact, there can be any number of limiting factors. The result? We eventually find ourselves in a job absent of passion and purpose. It is in this stage in life that we begin to again dream about what we want to do when we grow up. Instead of being a child dreaming about adulthood we are now an adult dreaming about retirement. Retirement now represents the stage in life when we can once again return to our passions. We can again return to our purpose. Anything seems possible. This brings us back to the premise of the podcast and the question. We ask children what they want to be when they grow up because we are still searching for the answer ourselves.
Growing Up:
“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs
If you were to ask you as a child what you wanted to be when you grew up, what would you have said? Is that what you became or did you take a different path in life?
If I were to now ask you as an adult what you want to do when you retire, how would you answer?
If I were to ask you as a HENRY in the pursuit of FIRE what you want to do when you are financially independent and no longer have to trade your time for money, how would you answer?
I have asked myself these questions and many more over the last five or so months, and my answers have evolved and become clearer now that I have had the opportunity to reflect.
As a child, it may sound strange but I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My father was an entrepreneur and small business owner so I was exposed to the entrepreneurship world from a young age. As a result, I grew up seeing entrepreneurship as a way to influence the world and shape the future – even if it was only in a small way. By becoming an entrepreneur, I felt anything was possible because the future was mine to create.
As an adult (prior to discovering the FI movement) in the pursuit of retirement, I wanted to retire and THEN become an entrepreneur because I wanted to have flexibility with my time so that I could balance a “retirement” lifestyle with my passion to continue to learn, create, and contribute to the world through business. The dream hadn’t changed, but the timeline had shifted. Retirement had become the destination and the key to pursuing my passion.
Then EVERYTHING changed. As a HENRY in the pursuit of FIRE, I determined that I wanted to achieve financial independence so that I could quit my job to THEN become an entrepreneur. FI was the tool to allow me to pursue my dream on a more accelerated timeline. Becoming FI became the destination and the key to pursuing my passion earlier in life.
The last five months of reflection have helped me to realize that I have in fact known the answer to the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” all along, and it has never changed. I want to be an entrepreneur when I grow up. I am now beginning to see the question I should really be asking myself is, “When will I grow up?”.
Conclusion:
As I have said before, discovering financial independence is like Neo discovering the matrix. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. There is an alternate path in life if you choose, and it can have a profound impact. I decided to pursue this alternate path years ago and the journey continues to evolve. This time period of reflection has challenged me to further question my pursuit of financial independence as a destination rather than an evolving journey. I am continuing to realize that the true value of pursuing financial independence may lie in the options created along the way rather than the destination itself. Achieving financial independence may be the ultimate destination, but Coast FI may be where the true power lies. As I move forward, I am no longer asking myself what I want to do when I retire. I am asking myself what I would want to do if I could never retire. For me, the answer continues to be the same. I want to be an entrepreneur when I grow up and it is time to grow up.
How about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?