Parallel Lives
The other day I was in on my way to a training session in Midtown Manhattan. Being a hot summer day I was wearing shorts and flip-flops. Even with a sea of tourists, I stood apart from all the businessmen and women wearing suits and ties running frantically from one place to another. As I waited at the intersection for a light change, I overheard a conversation between a younger mid-20s woman and an older mid-40s woman. Both women were dressed in typical business attire and seemed to be in finance or some consulting business. The younger one looked stressed and was explaining the results of an earlier client meeting. The older one was listening carefully with laser-beam focus.
I grasped the situation immediately. A situation that is all too common on the busy, skyscraper-lined streets of New York or perhaps any other developed, large city. But then it hit me: I will never be in such a situation. Unless I’m going or coming from a wedding (or funeral), chances are you will never find me dressed in a suit in the middle of New York. Why? Because the way I structure my life is very different than the way those two women structured theirs. We live in parallel universes.
Two Roads
There are two ways to live your life. The first is the way that perhaps 90% of the world does it. It’s a way of least resistance, a way of risk avoidance, a way heavily ingrained in our society. Your life would be rather predictable, stable and secure.
The second way is different. You would carve your own path in the world, disregarding various pressures: peer, societal and parental while striving to figure out your place in the world. Adjectives such as boring, constant or mindless would never describe your life.
While it’s possible to have both, you need to decide early on which suits you more. Do you want to take a shot at making something big, yet be OK with failing many times first? Do you value stability over risk? Do you need to have constant income coming in to feel secure, or will you be OK with a high earning month followed by a zero earning month?
The Common Trail
You would go to a decent high school, but realize early on that in order to be successful, you would need a reputable university diploma on your wall. You would grow up studying hard for the SATs and hoping to get into a top school.
Shortly after, you would either go to a highly acclaimed private university, maybe an Ivy League, or even a decent public one. You might get a scholarship, but chances are you would apply and get a college loan to fund the studies. Depending on whether you’re more arts or science inclined, you would major in something typical like computer science, electrical engineering, architecture or medicine. Maybe you would major in social studies, psychology or medicine. You would do well in school, earning a solid B or perhaps even an A.
After graduating, your odds of having good offers will be a function of the health of the economy, the college you went to, and how well you did there. Assuming all of that is good, you would interview at various firms and receive a few offers for entry level jobs. The income would be enough to merely subsist because your measly disposable income would go towards paying down the college loans, the overpriced city apartment, and various other expenses.
As a young recruit, you will be expected to work long hours for the initial few years to complete projects quickly and impress your boss. Your schedule would consist of waking up, going to work, a quick break for lunch, then going home just in time for sitcom reruns, and passing out from exhaustion in front of the TV. Rinse and repeat. Each week would be a race to Friday.
Your company will give you benefits such as medical, dental and retirement plans. If they like you, they might even help you by matching your own contributions to your retirement fund. Of course access to that money will be available after you’re well past your prime.
If you work hard enough, you will have the ability to climb the corporate ladder. How well you do that will depend on how well you do your core job, AND how well you handle politics. If you’re a nice guy or girl, then forget it–you will have to be ruthless to get ahead.
Eventually you will one day wake up and realize how all your dreams of making it big disappeared into bottomless pit that is your company’s bureaucracy. Unfortunately at that point it will be too late. You will be saddled with various debt: your car, your house, perhaps even your tuition. By then you will be firmly entrenched as a family man, toiling hard to bring food to the table and repay various debts: car, house, perhaps tuition, and saving for your kids’ education.
As you get older, you will be passed on for the younger, more willing employees just getting out of college, much like yourself 20-30 years ago. You will be passed up for promotions, and even feel alienated from the younger, more energetic, go-getter culture. Then the company would begin to outsource some of their duties. It would be too late to switch careers because you will be old, and everyone knows it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Your income would stagnate or even suffer a pay cut, while the prices would continue to rise. Then you would wonder where you went wrong when all you did is followed the American dream recipe that the society wrote for you.
Off The Beaten Path
You would go to a decent high school, studying hard. Instead of going out all the time, you spend days and nights teaching yourself a skill like programming or business and observing online businesses that are making money. If you get good at coding, you might start toying with a few web or mobile applications, if not, you might hire that geek in your comp sci class that always knows the answer to help you launch the site. You launch your first business, and although the idea was sound, the business fails to take off. But you’ve tasted the drug of financial independence and feel success is just around the corner. At this point you know you’d rather work for yourself twenty-four hours than even an hour for someone else.
So, you go back to the drawing board confident that you will succeed sooner or later. You’re willing to fail ninety-nine times if it means success on the hundredth. Your second and third business ideas generate a bit of traction, and you make a little bit of money but still fail to reach critical mass. The businesses eventually die. You quit college, figuring you can always go back later. You work odd jobs, while continuing your own work in spare time. Toiling at it nights and weekends while your friends are out partying and enjoying life. Some days you get depressed, questioning your motives and doubting yourself.
Finally by the seventh attempt, your clever business idea is signing up more users than you can support. You start making money from advertising or a membership service. You’re confident this is going to be gold, so you quit your job and work on the business full time. You make enough money, and pay off your (small) college debt and other debts, but ultimately lack of experience and business strategy spells the end of your first successful business. While the business failed, you consider it a learning experience to keep going. You learned how to plan, build, scale and ultimately market a profitable business, and more importantly what not to do. With these few failed business, your knowledge surpasses an MBA graduate while being completely debt-free.
You start working on another business with a carefully planned business model, vowing not to repeat the previous mistakes. Your life is uncomfortable and dynamic at the same time: some days you don’t know where your next month’s rent will come from, other days things seem to be firing on all cylinders. Above all you have a deep conviction that there will be another breakthrough and consider every failure a step closer to success.
In a few years, you discover a great idea completely by chance. An idea that would make your life easier, so you decide to implement it and put it on the Net. It’s a hit. It quickly reaches critical mass quickly bringing tons of revenue. It becomes your new cash cow. You expand the business, while at the same time begin to open other similar businesses. They all succeed more or less. You hire people to do development, testing, marketing, sales and support. Thus, leaving you to focus on strategy and the big picture, and also giving you more time to spend with friends and family.
Since it’s an online business you realize your dream of working overseas, opting to move to a new country every six months while learning new language and culture. You spend New Years in Rio, go to Paris for the spring, and spend the summer in Fiji toting your laptop and staying connected. Next year you move to third-world country in South East Asia or South America enjoying low cost of living while earning dollars.
In ten years, your businesses are humming along, generating great passive revenue. Yet, you’re always working, seeking new opportunities and ways of increasing your assets. You’re happier than you ever been while being hungry and realizing that relying on yourself is the only thing that counts in the world. The only thing that’s real. To you, there’s no other alternative; there’s no Plan B.
As the light turned green, I began to cross the street, while the women, seemingly oblivious to the light change continued talking on the street. In that one instant our parallel lives converged and diverged. In that one instant I quickly replayed my past and future, and continued walking to my training session without looking back.
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