Yet I couldn’t be more grateful that I started these businesses and they ended up failing.
These were my last words in the blog article “Momentumless ‘momentum’”, addressing my business adventure from April to November 2024.
Why would I say that? Why would anybody be grateful that all their business attempts failed so far?
In this blog article, we will discuss this topic, and I will provide insights on how one finds a deeper mission in what they pursue and I how I managed to do so.
In these last three to four months my thoughts, vision and mindset changed drastically.
I was a true Wolf of the Wall Street fan, I basically loved money, I was considering money as the single indicator of success and wanted desperately to make a lot of money at the early stage in my life, which is why I tried to launch businesses several times (I then realized it’s not about an agency but just about acquisition of a rare hard-skill and monetizing it. So, do not try to launch an SMMA, instead master a skill (e.g. videography, digital marketing, chatbots, UX/UI design etc.) and sell your skill as a service, if you wanna make money that way.) Yet I didn’t want to earn so much, so quickly in order to buy Lambos and chill in Dubai in my twenties but rather because of the thoughts of retiring my family, never need to work a 9-5, and moving to seaside have a dog, buy a vintage car and a propeller plane and pursue a peaceful life and eventually a peaceful death.. These were indeed fine goals I’d argue. But..
But then I felt a loss of eager and desire to grow a service based business, to acquire a B2B skill, become initialy a salesman, or to make fast and big money and rest in peace my whole life.
And with time, the pursuit of making lots of money, at least making money at the early stages of my life this way, lost all its meaning to me. Something was missing deep inside. The idea of making money and moving to seaside wasn’t that fulfilling anymore.
I was looking for a greater meaning, a fulfillment, I didn’t know what, how to find or achieve it or even why I felt this way but something in my mind had replaced the pursuit of making money and all these goals above, something I craved deep inside, something much more meaningful beyond materialistic temptations. But what was it? What meaning was I looking for, what kind of fulfillment? And how was I sure that this was the right decision?.. I was not.
Shortly after my thoughts about craving a deeper meaning, I’ve read the Mastery by Robert Greene and my inclination to seek a meaningful pursuit made much more sense. “Avoid the false path” he said:
A “false path” is defined by false attractions and intentions which include the desire for money, fame, attention or even the fulfillment of parents’ wishes. But if one follows these and draws their path on such false reasons, they are unlikely find the fulfillment they crave because of the lack of interest and correspondence. In case you have already realized that your are on a false path, you have to take immediate action to prevent it. (The Concise Mastery 101)
Yet I wasn’t 100% sure of my thought until I heard these phrases from an interview with Sam Altman:
[…]
Interviewer: What’s the source of motivation for people, what should people be looking to find to be inspired or to keep going on these ideas for a long period of time?
Sam: I think if you don’t actually believe what you’re doing, it’s really important, if you don’t derive satisfaction from what you’re doing then you will not be able to sustain all of the bad things that happen an incredibly long period of time that the bad things happen over. […] But I think the reasons that a lot of people, and by the way it’s totally cool when people start off saying “Well I want to make money” or “I want to be famous” I think a lot of people start that way […] but pretty quickly or at least in the first few years, I think, a lot of people find a deeper mission for why they do what they do and that drives them than for the rest of the time they work.
Interviewer: Have you noticed a change in what motivates you over the last say 10 or 12 years?
Sam: Yeah, […] early on like a lot of other people I think I was, well: “I wanna make money” you know “I wanna be in the press” or whatever else […]
This was a scene from the interview Sam Altman : How to Build the Future. And as I listened to this part for the first time, I felt such an inspiration, satisfaction and validation for my craving to pursue a deeper mission.
I indeed had discovered and started my entrepreneurial journey initially for money but then desperately felt the need of a fulfillment, a deeper mission.
And the fulfillment I was looking for, I then figured out, was: to squeeze the most out of my potential in topics I am interested in and have a natural aptitude for and to create value in them to eventually have a meaningful impact.
OK. I then knew that I was going to pursue a deeper mission. But what would that going to be? I needed to find it.
The side effect of reading the Mastery by Robert Greene was that I obsessed over finding my true calling, my purpose, my “life task” that I was going to become a master at. It was at least a decade of dedicated hard work I was going to put in, so I had to choose wisely and be very careful. Right? Well, I thought this way and started my research to find my “life task”. I created mind-maps, asked my parents and peers, couldn’t sleep at nights thinking what topic I had the best potential, strength, inclination and interest for. But I couldn’t figure it out this way.
I was good in math, but I didn’t necessarily want to be a mathematician, I was playing the guitar, singing and loved ’80s-rock but still didn’t want to be a musician, I really was a talented child in painting but I also didn’t want to be a painter or a designer, or I had a logical process of thinking, was good at problem-solving and fine in physics and liked planes. But do I really want to be an aerospace engineer working my whole life at a company? I don’t know, perhaps I do.
After a while, just before burnout from thinking what I wanted to do with my life, I read “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport and it changed everything. It argued and convinced me that the “passion hypothesis” isn’t the right path to follow but rather the craftsmanship mindset, that says one has to acquire autonomy, competence and relatedness to love something. And said this quote that shifted my mindset 180 degrees:
Don’t obsess over discovering your true calling. Instead, master rare and valuable skills.
To this extend Paul Graham says:
The way to figure out what to work on is by working. If you’re not sure what to work on, guess. But pick something and get going. You’ll probably guess wrong some of the time, but that’s fine. It’s good to know about multiple things; some of the biggest discoveries come from noticing connections between different fields.
So I was sure about the trial and error method for finding my “life task” while acquiring rare and valuable skills. Due to my natural aptitude in maths, logical thinking and problem-solving, and interest in tech and generative AI, and its promising future I decided to pursue a path in AI.
So I currently have been improving myself in this topic, teaching myself about Python, Machine- and Deep Learning, Calculus and Algebra, Agents, LLMs, and every other aspect about AI, while researching about new AI tools and startups and possibilities, but also attending to events and communities about AI, tech and entrepreneurship. All just to become a master in this field.
So in the 4-step formula to do great work of Paul Graham, I consider myself being at the very beginning of the 2nd step:
Four steps: (1) choose a field, (2) learn enough to get to the frontier, (3) notice gaps, (4) explore promising ones. This is how practically everyone who’s done great work has done it, from painters to physicists.
So I truly believe, if you follow this path you will figure out the deeper meaning and mission too, you were looking for.
Even though, I still think that it is possible to speed-run a hard skill and monetize it very rapidly, you might later on lack the fulfillment you crave. That’s the reason why I quit after almost a year of experience in this “skill as a B2B service” framework.
I have an inner feeling—an inner voice of being meant to achieve more, to do “Great Work” and have a meaningful impact. If you also have such a feeling, try to connect to your inclinations, interests and strengths, and to find the optimal thing for you to master. Do not worry if you don’t like your decision after a while, switch to another topic that might suit you best. Yet, while doing so do not turn this into a habit and waste too much time of your life that you actually have to invest into learning and doing the thing. Instead try to stick to one thing, as much as possible. And eventually create a roadmap for your journey. For example mine is: “acquire rare and valuable skills, meet similar minded and valuable individuals, dedicate energy and time to a field and master it, identify a massive problem in your field and solve it, drive innovation, create enormous value for people, contribute to humanity and bring it forward, have a meaningful impact.”
