(At least not the way you think)

Last week I watched out of curiosity a video/podcast episode from the series Deep Dives by the YouTuber Ali Abdaal.

He was interviewing someone I never heard of before: Daniel Priestley, a multi-business owner. Quite appealing to me since I aim to own multiple $M businesses in the next 11 years.

But I didn’t expect what happened: I had a realisation.

Not a businessman

See, I’m an academic. The hardcore one, a Ph.D. in Physics, and 20 years of experience in public research.

I have never been employed by a business (except those few small jobs to make some money as a student, only a few days or weeks).

All my perspective on being successful has been built in this context where knowledge and skills are everything.

Looking back on my attempts to build an online business, I mostly succeeded by doing freelance work: exchanging my skills and time for money.

It makes sense now since that’s what I’ve always done.

This is also how we are taught at school: learn a skill and be good to get good grades (i.e. get rewarded).

When we approach the real world, it’s only logical to keep this same process we’ve been conditioned to: I need to be good at my skill so people will employ me and give me money.

And then one day you realize that you can also make money without being employed. That’s what I did when I started freelancing about 2 years ago.

And it works.

Until it doesn’t fit anymore with your life and aspirations…

Life is changes

When a baby comes into your life it brings some changes. A lot actually!

And I started to struggle to do client work. Lack of time, energy, sleepless nights. Not exactly the ideal scenario.

But I didn’t want to give up so I had to find a solution!

That’s when I listened to the podcast episode I mentioned at the beginning.

Daniel Priestley gave a good list of insights from his personal journey. I will share them here soon.

But something hit me stronger.

He said: “ I don’t have any skill and I sell businesses for hundreds of millions”. What?? No skills?

His approach is to rely on others’ skills. Nothing really new. You outsource work, hire, delegate.

I knew all that. But somehow it never seemed to be applicable to me.

Maybe for those big CEOs, but not for me, barely reaching $10k TOTAL in 18 months of freelancing (admittedly with a loose schedule and a higher priority set on my day job).

But not this time.

I don’t know if it was the simplicity of the words Daniel used, it’s personable style. But it stroked me as something possible.

Yes, I don’t need to know how those skills. I know they exist and why they are important: design, copywriting, managing social media, etc…

But what if I could pay someone or partner with an associate so I can focus on what I do best: generating ideas, developing a vision, and connecting the dots?

Takeaway

So that’s what I’m experimenting with. With limited resources (from my recent clients) and experience.

I’m starting to act as a director, not an employee (even self-employed sounds a lot like being an employee).

Find talents that can help me, learn how to generate leads (the blood of any business) and scale a business.

I will fail. But at some point, I won’t anymore.

It won’t happen overnight and I will need to do the freelance work myself for a while to keep the finances afloat.

We’ll see. And I’ll let you know how it goes if you’re interested and follow me for updates!

Be great,

Frank