Valentine's special: I left her in bed to go to a meeting. Did I do the right thing?
I wrote this in 2017. But it’s valentines day, so here’s a rare post about my personal life crashing into me being an “all in entrepreneur hustle bro”, and the price of success on my love life...
I do sometimes think: “What do I do all this for if I have no one to share this with?”
On a private beach with an insane view in Mexico would be a hell of a date!
It’s valentines day so here’s an updated repost of a 2017 article where I had to decide between my heart and my wallet:
When it was a straight choice between staying in bed with her, and going to the meeting I was being paid a lot of money to attend, I wondered what I did it all for.
I was swapping something pure (staying in bed with her) for something mechanical, calculated, though somewhat future-facing (going to the meeting).
And so I laid there with her slim body laying on top of me, only my sticky underwear between us.
I squeezed her tanned skin and bit my lip.
She told me to get up and shower (lol).
Half asleep & exhausted, she asked me to critique her website before I left, she had an idea she wanted to grow.
I put my adult brain in gear and told her getting traffic was the easy part if you had ad money, getting people to connect with her idea is harder (and other ideas I don’t recall now, I wasn’t thinking about blogging all this at the time ha).
I ran my fingers through her hair and kissed her goodbye.
She told me she was glad we met.
I nodded and thought about my upcoming trip to America.
At times in the meeting that day I’d be thinking about her.
It’s rare I think about anyone the next day, I just have too much business stuff on.
Then I’d nod my way back into the conversation with the client.
This was reality now.
How can so many people be running startups, but so few failing, if so few are successfully exiting?
Is it a slow death from a thousand app uninstalls?
Is the culture of embarrassment greater than the strange culture of “failure is good”?
Where do the startup losers go?
Everybody thinks they have the key to beating the thing.
Most see the writing on the wall early but hope their luck will change.
When it comes to odds, all of us who run companies are old ladies in Florida with scratch cards: they play the lottery or read horoscopes, we start companies. Odds of being a millionaire: more similar than we’d like to admit…
Writing this on a train after the client meeting, a pretty girl has just come and sat opposite me.
Strapped sandal shoes, short black and white dress, dark, shoulder length hair, big eyes and lips.
She notes me with a wry smile then goes back to her phone. I look away, as is the custom to not be “weird”.
One could spend their whole life chasing the perfect woman and be no closer to finding her.
As any relationship unwinds, the madness comes out, from both sides.
Much like startups, though they have an entirely different sort of madness.
Relationship advice is very bad, entirely based on one person’s opinion.
On the flipside, business advice from one person who has “done the thing” is priceless.
Read this if you’re looking for a mentor:
As for relationship advice?
It’s too personal to be applicable to most situations, as every relationship is different.
Some people may end up alone in life, which sucks, but almost all startups lose.
At best they lose years in time, at worst they lose time and all their money (with the most unlucky of all being those who take out personal loans to fund first-time ideas which collapse).
When I decided to “start my own business” I was claiming welfare/benefits from the government.
My chances of success were one big lottery ticket.
So I did (and still do) the only thing I knew to do to “guarantee” success:
Put every day of every minute into it.
Is it possible to succeed (goal = financial freedom, make a million dollars by helping a million people) WITHOUT working all day everyday?
Maybe, but I’ve seen very few of these stories.
Steve Jobs bought his staff at Apple t-shirts t-shirts that said “90 hours a week…and loving it!”
Elon Musk said:
“If you work 80 hours a week and your competitor only works 40, within a year you’re twice as far as them.
If you do that for a few years, you’re so far ahead they can’t catch up”
Tesla and SpaceX are the proof in the pudding.
Whenever I bring up this argument, people try and hit me with the “I don’t wanna build a massive company or change the world, just be financially free...”
The punchline is, sadly, you need to work as much as possible to even replace your full-time jobs’ money.
This is the message I tell people, but getting back to my reflections on leaving that beautiful girls’ house at 8am in the morning, I thought about a phrase which became the title of this article:
“We neglect our relationships for our careers or our careers for our relationships”.
Money solves a LOT of arguments any couple has.
But neglecting family and kids to put every minute in will cause drama too if they don’t understand.
If you’re single, you’re in a great spot!
But sometimes I think about it.
So much time spent on business in these best years of my life, so little time spent on sober self-reflection.
Constant entertainment needed from my phone to turn my brain off - no energy to go “out” with friends at the end of a six-day week.
Most days off spent sleeping in bed or watching Netflix (people ask me what I’ve done since I moved to Mexico this year - almost nothing, just worked and rested…But at least I have a standing desk outside in the sun now!)
My quest for financial freedom has devoured my life, when my heart wanted to stay in bed with one of the most amazing girls I’d ever met.
With wages not rising since 2008, “get rich quick” schemes have risen to unprecedented levels (crypto’s, NFT’s, dropshipping courses etc) as people taje longshots in desperation to keep up in this expensive world.
Get rich quick schemes generally don’t work, and even when they do, it’s based on luck - You’ve not learned anything to do it again.
The answer is hard work and sacrifice.
Probably sacrificing what you want in life the most.
I never saw the girl from this story again.
Mornings like that with her are moments of calm in a noisy world of responsibility and long hours.
I write these posts on Substack to help get you to financial freedom faster.
Happy Valentines day, and wishing you many great moments with the love(s) of your life as you drag yourself through the “hard” business stuff.
Find a way to get the work done AND to have these magic romantic moments.
God knows we need them.
Brilliant 🔥
Great post, Vin. I remember watching movies and wanting to emulate those lifestyles, but once I became a parent I learned the pain of choosing work over witnessing those priceless moments of your kids growing up. That's avoidable heartbreak. More than just a quick photo you snap on your phone, but being present, looking them in they eyes, and capturing those moments with them. That's happiness. Enjoy every minute of being single - these are years you will look back upon fondly. Long life my friend - and Happy Valentine's Day