The goal isn't the goal

For me, the road to success as an entrepreneur was more interesting than reaching a particular financial goal. In October 2010, I talked about a conversation over lunch that got me thinking back to the sale of my own company.

The road to success as an entrepreneur was the fun part

I had been through a period when my shares appeared to be worth a huge amount. Even so, I felt empty and struggled to work out what to put my energy into next.

I compared it to winning at Monopoly. Winning could feel great, but the feeling didn’t last, and starting a new game with a massive head start didn’t seem as exciting.

What would I build afterwards?

Over lunch, we also talked about another entrepreneur’s experience after a sale. His story reminded me that money alone didn’t tell me what my next meaningful project should be.

I wasn’t saying money had no value. I liked the opportunities it gave me, but the joy of creating something and watching a business grow mattered more to me.

My goal was also the work itself

My advice was to remember to enjoy the projects along the way. This is my personal experience and reflection from 2010, not an explanation of how everyone experiences success. Also read Skab din egen succes about finding your own way and creating a kind of success that makes sense to you.

Also read about thinking long term in your work.

A friend with more ideas than focus

I’ve spent today with my good friend Craig. He’s a crazy American who keeps starting new companies. Every idea is better than the last, but he finds it hard to concentrate and focus. Once a project is underway, he moves on to the next one.

He never quite gets things over the finish line. But he has a decent house and enjoys himself. He’s actually a happy man. We have lunch and hang out about once a week, and today he brought someone else I’d met once before: Harvey.

As I tell the story, I get distracted by a Ferrari and the traffic around me. I joke that the beautiful car doesn’t quite fit the point I’m making. I can barely concentrate on telling the story.

Pizza and a possible investment

I describe Harvey as the man behind Cash for Gold. My explanation of the concept is that the company runs TV commercials, people send in their old gold, and they get a cheque back. I put it bluntly and say they get a shit price for it, but many are happy to get money for something they had lying around. That’s my assessment of the business in the video.

I say that within a few years, the company had reached around 300 million dollars in revenue, and that Harvey had received around 100 million dollars in cash from a partial sale a few months earlier. I’m not entirely sure of all the dates and conversions as I tell it. These are the figures I mention in the conversation, not accounts I’ve checked.

We’re meeting because he’s considering investing in something Craig is working on. As usual, Craig has a good idea, but the question is whether he can focus. Harvey knows Craig likes me and wants my opinion. I get free pizza, and we have a fun conversation.

I answer with a crude image: If you want to make Craig focus, you need to put his balls in a vice and give it a turn every time he starts talking about something else.

I think it ends with Harvey not really believing he can keep Craig under control. I don’t think he can either. Craig is an entrepreneur and doesn’t want to work for someone who calls every five minutes to find out what’s happening. That’s my impression of the two men and their different ways of working.

120 million in my online bank account and a feeling of emptiness

After the conversation, Harvey and I talk about how things are going. He’s made a lot of money, and it makes me think back to the sale of Jubii.

In the video, I remember the sale as being around 100 million euros. It was in shares, and much of the value later fell away. But for a while, the value shown in my online bank account made me feel I was worth around 120 million kroner.

That should have been fantastic. But it was actually one of the saddest and most depressing periods of my life. I was fucking depressed. In a way, I’d won the game of Monopoly, and now I didn’t know what to do with myself.

What happens when you’ve won at Monopoly?

You probably know the feeling of winning at Monopoly. There’s a brief euphoria when you can celebrate and taunt your friends a little. It’s great fun, and you shouldn’t dismiss it.

But you can’t live on that feeling for months. For most people, it doesn’t take long before they ask: What now?

Imagine starting a new game, but you get to keep all the money from the old one while everyone else starts from scratch. Then it isn’t quite as much fun.

That’s more or less how it felt to me. I didn’t want to build a global empire or start something just because it was supposed to be worth billions. It didn’t interest me. I couldn’t find my bearings at all.

He had money, but he was bored

So I asked Harvey how he felt now that, according to his account, he’d received all that money and still had interests in the company and other things. Was he happy?

He told me he was deeply unhappy, bored and frustrated. He didn’t know what to do the next day. The one thing he could think of was going to the local gym and pumping iron for a couple of hours.

He also told me about a new nail project that used stickers instead of polish. In his experience, it hadn’t become the success he’d hoped for. That’s why he wanted to do something with Craig, who was fun to be around. But focus was still the problem.

The money is nice, but the work is the fun part

The whole story leads to my point to you as an entrepreneur: Remember that the journey towards wealth is the fun part. I’m not trying to say having money doesn’t matter. It’s certainly more fun being rich than poor, and it brings opportunities.

There’s pleasure in buying a new flat-screen TV or a lovely car too. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that or talk it down.

But for me, that pleasure is only a small part of the enjoyment of wrestling with projects, building a business and watching things grow. In the video, I put it bluntly and say it’s one per cent of the joy of the work itself.

So the goal isn’t the goal. The journey is the goal.

Best wishes, Martin

Historical project reference from 2010: Amino’s page on exchange rates.