Code, Content & Capital: The Path to True Freedom

In this episode, I share how I realised I’d built another job instead of the freedom I was chasing. We explore the difference between being self-employed and building scalable assets through leverage, and why this shift has completely changed how I think about business, wealth, and entrepreneurship.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So for the past year and a half, I have run my own freelance marketing business, a marketing agency, offering paid ads as a service to clients. So don't get me wrong, this was great. It was my first true taste of being a business owner, entrepreneurship, and it allowed me to step out of my 9 to 5 and go all in on my own thing. I had a small book of clients which ranged some months, and my lowest months were two to three clients, and my best months six to seven clients. I was in control of my own schedule, and some months I was actually earning more than I was earning previously at my nine to five jobs, although some months I did earn less. But over time I started to come to this realization that I hadn't really escaped the system. I had just built myself another job. Now there's nothing wrong with selling a service like as a marketing agency, offering marketing services to clients. In fact, it's one of the lowest barrier ways to start a business because the cost startup cost is very low, and you can literally just call up businesses and offer them your services. So it's one of the fastest ways to make money because you're exchanging your skills for income. The problem is that you're still trading time for money. If you stop working, the whole business comes to a halt. And honestly, I found myself working more than I ever did before. Working every day, I'd wake up to problems, WhatsApp messages from clients, demanding things, wanting to cancel, wanting to know updates about campaigns, and uh my business would go to bed with me too. So you're constantly fighting to get clients, fighting to deliver results, and also fighting to retain those clients, just prevent them from leaving. So it's really a more flexible version of employment, but you also have to chase invoices and sell the service as well, as just managing the campaigns. So most people stay on that treadmill their entire lives, most people stay in the employment treadmill their entire lives. That is, some branch out and go self-employed, and a very few create real businesses which are scalable. So the people in employment typically get a promotion, earn a little bit more, but then what happens is their lifestyle starts to expand. They get a bigger apartment, they get a newer car, they take more holidays, more dinners out, their income grows a little, but their expenses also grow too. And because their income is directly tied to selling their time, their freedom doesn't grow at all. Because the second they stop working, the second the money stops coming in. So once I really understood the system that we live in, I realized that if you want to create true freedom, you need assets that work for you instead of constantly working for your income. And that realization sent me down a rabbit hole of learning about investing, personal finances, and business. I wasn't obsessed with becoming rich, I simply wanted to spend my life doing work that I was passionate about, that I enjoyed, and most importantly on my own terms, choose my schedule from where I work, when I work, when I want to work, whilst earning enough to support the life that I wanted to live. And that's still my goal today. Maybe it will change one day, but today that's enough. So back in 2019, I was living in England, Bournemouth, to be exact, in Dorset. I was working three jobs. During the week, I worked in an office, I started as a graphic designer, then later moved into sales. At weekends, I cut hair as a barber. I learned how to be a barber straight after college. When I was trying to be a musician, I needed a way of earning income, so I went to uh barber college, and then I kept doing it part-time. So on Friday and Saturday nights, I'd perform with my band in local bars, and I'd also perform solo as well, and I was doing covers gigs in bars and pubs, and I earned enough to support myself, had a comfortable life, had a decent apartment, okay car, little runaround. I was never rich, but I was able to save a little every month. But the problem is I was permanently exhausted. I was always it felt like I was always running on this treadmill. At the time I was in my mid-20s, so I could get away with it. I had the energy to grind for seven days a week. But now I'm in my mid-30s, I don't want to work three jobs anymore. Seven days a week. Of course, when you're building something in the beginning, you have to work your ass off. Like if you're building a business, it's gonna be all consuming. Um, and I would recommend if you want work-life balance, get go just get a get a job and enjoy your evenings and weekends. But if the business depends on me showing up every day forever, then I know I understand that I've simply created another job, I've created a cage for myself. So I don't want success that comes at the cost of every evening and every weekend. And the more I understood business, and honestly, running my own agency helped me come to this conclusion, the more I realized the people who become truly free don't necessarily work harder, they use leverage. It's the model that they choose which determines the freedom, the end result. It's where they direct their energy. Most people hear the word leverage and immediately think about debt. And yes, that's one form of it. When you buy a property with a mortgage, you're using the bank's money to control an asset worth far more than what you actually deposited. If you rent that property out and the rent covers the mortgage whilst leaving you of some profit, you've used financial leverage to create an income. And many people have built wealth this way for decades. The UK is full of property millionaires who are leveraged up to the eyeballs from the banks, but the rents cover the mortgages and their lifestyle. The debt really isn't the only form of leverage. There are much more powerful kinds and kinds that I prefer. The first is media, it could be in the form of a podcast, a YouTube video like this, a piece of content on social media, a song uploaded to Spotify, a book for sale on Amazon, a digital course, a community. You create it once, and you can sell one to many. It continues working for you long after you've actually finished making it. Someone can discover a podcast episode you recorded three years ago. A YouTube video can continue to generate views 24-7 while you sleep. And a book can be purchased thousands of times without you having to rewrite it. Every piece of content becomes another asset in your catalogue, and over time these assets compound. This is one of the reasons SaaS businesses are so attractive. Today we have tools like Clawed and Lovable that allow people to build software without being expert programmers. Instead of solving the same problem manually for every client, you build software that solves that problem. You create the solution once, then thousands or even millions of people can use it simultaneously without you having to manually serve every customer. Companies like Slack, Zoom, Dropbox, Notion didn't become enormous because they hired millions of employees. They built software that scales and they used code as leverage. That's fundamentally different from a service business where you're trading, where every new client requires you to trade more hours and requires more of your time. Even sales works the same way. Yes, great salespeople can earn great fantastic incomes because they're paying on performance. But if you do stop selling, you're so does your income. Leverage is about building something that can continue making money without you constantly being there. And to me, that's the real path to wealth and freedom. Before the internet, the primary way businesses scaled was by hiring people. You own a coffee shop, you hire baristas, customers buy coffee, you pay wages, and then keep the profit. What's left? You're no longer selling only your time. The downside is obvious. People are expensive, training takes time, you have human error, managing teams adds complexity. Some people call in sick, labor costs may rise, you have rent, business rates, and every other overhead that comes with running a physical store. Software and digital products have much higher margins because once they're built, the cost of serving every customer is pretty small. That's why these kinds of businesses can scale so massively. Once I truly started to understand this, like it completely changed how I thought about business, I realized that freedom isn't just about earning more, it's about building something that continues creating value without requiring you to actually be there. Something you build once that keeps on working, something that isn't dependent on your time. That's why I decided to wind down my paid ads agency. I made the decision this month. I found myself spending more and more time on sales calls, servicing clients, campaign management, and fulfillment. Clients would stay for a few months, then leave, and then the cycle would begin again. I'd go back to chasing clients, dealing with all the client service delivery, and then some clients would leave, and then it would just be ongoing. And I couldn't see a future where that business scaled into the life I actually wanted. One of the hardest decisions in business can be walking away from something you spent years building because your identity becomes attached to it. Your ego tells you you've invested too much time to quit. And that sunk cost fallacy convinces you that walking away means wasting everything that you've built. But honestly, sometimes the smartest move is climbing back down one ladder to climb a different one. From the outside, you know, people may think you're crazy. Why are you walking away from this? It can look like you're moving backwards. But honestly, sometimes changing direction is exactly how you move forwards. And these days, I'm far more interested in building businesses that use code, media, digital products as a leverage than businesses that depend entirely on my time. Because I don't just want to earn more, I want to own assets that continue creating value, whether I'm at my desk, asleep, or halfway across the world. To me, that is what business and entrepreneurship is really about. Not building a business that owns you, but building one that eventually sets you free. So if you found this helpful, make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. Comment your thoughts below, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace out.