Is the journey really the gift?
A field report from an entrepreneur who has yet to get to the destination.
Photo courtesy Patrick Fore, Unsplash.
You may have stumbled upon the story of the co-founder of Loom who for the past year—after selling his video messaging app to Atlassian for nearly a billion dollars—felt an emptiness of purpose with more money than he would ever know what to do with.
And if you haven't read that story, you've certainly read a story like that. Of the founder who persevered through years of turmoil to finally reach the financial mountaintop.
Of the risks she took.
Of his lowest moments.
Moments of self-doubt.
But ultimate triumph.
And looking back in the rear view mirror, retelling the journey, they will tell you it was all worth it indeed. That they miss the journey. The everyday thirst to reach the exit gave their daily life purpose.
The journey was the gift.
I've been thinking a lot about the untold stories. The majority of us who haven't yet made it big. Who have scraped and clawed for decades to fulfill a dream that may—in the end—never come to fruition.
Will we still think the journey was the gift? It's a question I've been asking my 45-year old self. I've been building things on the internet for 25 years.
I'm a web designer and developer. Have I struck lightning in a bottle yet? No. But I love what I do. Really.
I love the struggle. The cycle of staring at a problem and finding an ultimate solution. The arduous creative process of making something from nothing. The visceral satisfaction of releasing a creation into the wild. Observing others use it. Growing it. Maintaining it.
I haven't worked for someone else in nearly 20 years. Because I love too much to dream things up without answering to a superior. I love that freedom—the one that comes with the risk—that everyone who made it big had to start with to achieve what they did.
At the beginning of my journey, I started a consulting business that I helped run successfully for over ten years. A few years in, I began building a software product called DoneDone, and eight years ago, left the consulting world with one of my business partners to immerse myself completely into the product.
I did well those first ten—I earned a good living comparable to what I might've deserved as a cog in the wheel of a larger corporation.
For the past eight years though, I've paid myself barely an intern's salary to keep more cash in this software business to sustain the product. A product whose features kept getting better. Whose customers were delighted.
A product that was (and still is) loved by the hundreds of companies who pay for it. A product I built and designed largely by myself. A product I put my time, energy, learning, experimenting, successes and failures into.
I love the struggle. The cycle of staring a problem and finding a solution. The creative process of making something from nothing. The visceral satisfaction of releasing a creation into the wild. Observing others use it. Growing it. Maintaining it.
It's just that—for those eight years—we couldn't figure out how to do the very thing that most of us define as success.
We couldn't get the damned thing to make more money.
Our revenues were flat. Then they were declining in an ever saturated marketplace. So last September, we finally sold our software business.
As soon as the cash landed in my bank account, I used much of it to pay for the new windows we're having installed in the home my wife grew up in. We happen to be in the middle of gutting it so that my in-laws and my children can all live under the same roof. We're making ends meet but it's a struggle. The kind I don't love.
I did not sell the business for an amount of money I would never know what to do with. I sold it to pay for the windows.
I look back on those years of hard work with pride. I built a really good product. I built it the way I wanted to. Without answering to someone else. With the kind of freedom I require to find happiness in the work. It hardened my own philosophies on how to build software that would seem radical to some. There wasn't a drop more of joy I could squeeze out of the work.
But it was time to part ways. Not finding the quantifiable kind of success eventually eats away at you despite every other kind of success you gained from it.
I am now onto other projects. I want to keep doing things my way. I haven't given up on the idea that I, too, will have a story of fondness for a journey that led me to the summit. With a solo project I just launched called DnsDigest and another "lottery ticket" project in the works, I have a newfound energy for the work again.
But with two kids, a mortgage, and a shrinking bank account, the other doubting voice in my head says maybe this isn't worth it anymore. That it's time to get a "real" job. But the amount of money I'd have to make now to recoup what I could've earned had I taken a more conservative route is starting to feel insurmountable.
Will I be happy with the route I've chosen when all is said and done?
I've already lived through years of bliss doing what I love. That is something many wealthy people cannot say.
I'll just have to assume I'm in the middle of a success story that's not yet fully written.
Besides, if I'm to believe the stories of some of those who've made it to the other side, perhaps the thing I really want is the thing I already have in droves right now.
And until then I'll keep making sure those windows are spotless.