Entrepreneurs are at the forefront of the 21st century. Look back 50 years at the cultural heroes who made the cover of Time magazine or any of the other periodicals, and you’ll see military or political leaders, artists, or scientists. Today, they are people like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs.
So, there’s a growing awareness that entrepreneurs are driving the world’s progress, but what motivates people like you to go off on your own with no guarantee of success or even income?
It isn’t what most people think. It’s not money, and it’s not status. It’s freedom. This freedom comes in four different varieties, and when you become conscious of them, it has a tremendously clarifying effect on your thinking:
- Freedom of Time
You want to spend your working life doing what you really enjoy, and you also want the freedom to spend time not working so you can have a full life and pursue your other interests.
- Freedom of Money
You don’t want a ceiling on how much money you can make to do a great job or develop valuable new solutions or inventions. And if your efforts generate money, you don’t want anyone dictating how much money you can keep.
- Freedom of Relationship
There are certain people you love working with—both inside and outside your business—and you want to spend more and more of your time surrounded just by these people you click with, whom you appreciate and who appreciate you.
- Freedom of Purpose
This entrepreneurial company you’ve created is not just a job or a career; it’s a vehicle to all sorts of things that relate to your fundamental values and ideals. This gives you a tremendous sense of purpose for being on this planet. Entrepreneurs are the most significant contributors of money, opportunity, and capability to communities worldwide in every field of human activity.
When you lose sight of these four freedoms, you start hitting barriers and encountering complexity. At any time, you can bring your focus back to expanding these freedoms and find that your life immediately gets simpler; your decisions, actions, and communication become more precise, and you experience continual growth.
Four Entrepreneurial Freedoms
