Issue 023 | Money Needs a Job Too

October: Before You Build the Business

There is something about setting up a home that will make you very aware of what money is for.

Not money in theory.

Not revenue.

Not income projections.

Actual money.

The kind attached to something.

A utility deposit.

A moving truck.

A bed.

A dining table.

Cleaning supplies.

Groceries.

Something that needs to be repaired.

Something you forgot you needed until you reached for it and realized you didn't have it.

Money starts getting assignments very quickly.

This goes here.

That covers this.

We need to hold some back for that.

And somewhere in the middle of all of those decisions, I started thinking about how differently we talk about money when we're building businesses.

Most of the time, we talk about making more of it.

More revenue.

More clients.

More sales.

More opportunities.

But we don't spend nearly as much time asking a different question.

What is the money actually supposed to do?

Because making money and having money accomplish something are not necessarily the same thing.

I Don't Just Want My Business to Make Money

That sentence may sound strange coming from someone who teaches business.

Of course I want the business to make money.

A business has to generate revenue.

But at this stage of my life, simply being able to say that the business made money isn't enough for me.

I need that money to have an assignment.

I need it to do something.

I need it to create something.

Protect something.

Build something.

Make something possible.

Because I've learned that money can move through your hands without necessarily changing the condition of your life.

You can make money and still have no margin.

You can make money and still have no reserves.

You can make money and still be one emergency away from everything becoming difficult.

You can have revenue coming into a business and still personally feel financially constrained.

You can even build something that looks successful from the outside while privately realizing that very little of what the business produces is actually creating stability for the person who built it.

That's a very different conversation than:

How much money do you want to make?

I Think We Ask That Question Too Early

We love asking people their revenue goals.

What's your monthly number?

What's your annual goal?

What would six figures look like?

What about seven?

And there is nothing inherently wrong with having a number.

I believe in knowing your numbers.

But I think there is a question that needs to come before the number.

What does the money need to make possible?

Because $2,000 can mean one thing to one person and something completely different to another.

For someone, an additional $2,000 a month may mean finally paying off debt.

For someone else, it may mean reducing hours at a job they have outgrown.

For another person, it might pay for childcare so they have time to build.

It might allow them to help an aging parent.

It may fund health care.

It may give them the ability to take one day each week and actually rest.

It may create a savings cushion that lets them stop living from emergency to emergency.

The number by itself doesn't tell us enough.

The assignment does.

Money Is a Resource

In Issue 022, I talked about something I have had to confront in my own business:

I cannot continue treating myself as the unlimited resource.

My time is not unlimited.

My energy isn't unlimited.

My attention isn't unlimited.

My body isn't unlimited.

And if the business is going to stop relying on me to fill every gap, then other resources have to begin doing their jobs.

Money is one of them.

Money can buy time.

Money can buy support.

Money can create margin.

Money can fund systems.

Money can help you hire expertise you don't possess.

Money can help you rest without everything stopping.

Money can allow the business to continue functioning when you are not personally touching every part of it.

Money can create options.

And I think that last one matters more than we often acknowledge.

Money can give the visionary options.

Options about how they work.

Options about when they work.

Options about what they say yes to.

Options about what they can say no to.

Options about how much access the business gets to their life.

That is not greed.

That is architecture.

The Visionary Comes First Financially Too

The more I develop The Visionary Comes First™, the more I realize that it has to reach every part of the architecture.

We cannot say the visionary comes first when we're talking about capacity...

and then forget the visionary when we're talking about money.

If the business makes money but never meaningfully supports the person carrying it, something is off.

That doesn't mean every dollar belongs in the visionary's pocket.

Of course not.

The business has responsibilities.

Taxes.

Operations.

Technology.

Contractors.

Marketing.

Development.

Reserves.

Growth.

But the person who built the thing cannot permanently live at the bottom of that list.

I have seen entrepreneurs create businesses where everybody gets paid except them.

The vendors get paid.

The team gets paid.

The software gets paid.

The clients receive excellent service.

The business keeps moving.

And whatever is left eventually makes its way to the founder.

Sometimes.

That isn't sustainable either.

At some point, the business has to be designed to support the visionary, not simply be supported by them.

Revenue Is Not the Same as Wealth

This is another distinction I have been thinking about more as I get older.

Revenue is important.

Income is important.

But neither automatically means wealth.

You can generate substantial revenue and still own very little.

You can earn well and still have no meaningful reserves.

You can spend years producing value without converting enough of that value into things that remain.

Savings.

Investments.

Assets.

Intellectual property.

Ownership.

Something that exists beyond the next invoice.

Something that can eventually support you without requiring the same level of physical effort from you.

That matters to me now.

Not because I am trying to chase some arbitrary definition of wealth.

Because I am thinking about longevity.

Family.

Legacy.

What I want my work to create beyond the work itself.

And I think many experts eventually reach this realization.

There comes a point when you stop asking:

How much can I earn from what I know?

and start asking:

What can what I know help me build?

Those are two very different questions.

The Business Should Make Something Possible

Maybe that's the simplest way I know to say it.

A business should not just make money. It should make something possible.

What is it supposed to make possible for you?

Not somebody else's life.

Yours.

Maybe your business needs to supplement your household income.

Maybe it needs to eventually replace your salary.

Maybe it needs to give you the ability to leave work earlier so you can be present with your children.

Maybe it needs to support ministry you don't want to monetize.

Maybe the business is the economic engine that allows you to keep something else sacred.

That's important.

We've been talking recently about how the gift isn't always the business.

Sometimes the business is built around what the gift has developed in you.

And sometimes that business creates the financial sustainability that allows you to continue giving the gift freely in the places where you believe it should remain free.

That is an important distinction for faith-rooted experts.

You do not have to put a price on everything God put in you in order to build a sustainable life around what you carry.

But something has to sustain the person carrying it.

Otherwise Urgency Will Give Money Its Assignment

If you don't decide what money is supposed to do, urgency usually will.

Whatever is loudest gets paid.

Whatever is due gets handled.

Whatever breaks gets fixed.

Whatever opportunity appears gets funded.

And before long, another month has passed.

More money came in.

More money went out.

But nothing significant changed.

This is true personally.

And it is true in business.

Without intention, revenue can disappear into operation.

You worked.

The business earned.

Everybody stayed busy.

And yet the life you said you were building toward didn't move much closer.

That's worth paying attention to.

Because sometimes the issue isn't that the business didn't make enough money.

Sometimes the issue is that the money never had a job beyond keeping everything going.

Keeping Everything Going Is Not the Same as Building

I have spent seasons doing that.

Keeping things going.

Handling what needed to be handled.

Taking care of what was in front of me.

Solving the next thing.

And sometimes life requires that.

There are seasons when survival is the assignment.

I don't believe in pretending otherwise.

But survival should not quietly become the permanent business model.

There has to eventually be movement from:

keeping things going

to:

building something that remains.

That may mean reserves.

It may mean hiring.

It may mean ownership.

It may mean reducing debt.

It may mean building intellectual property.

It may mean developing a product that can sell without you being present every time.

It may mean investing outside the business.

It may mean simply creating enough financial space that you are no longer making every decision from pressure.

The specific job will be different for each visionary.

But there should be a job.

This Is Why We Can't Start With the Business

This whole October conversation keeps bringing me back to the same thing.

We have been starting too far downstream.

We ask:

What should I sell?

What should I charge?

What kind of business should I start?

How can I make more money?

But Business Architecture asks us to move backward.

Who is the visionary?

What do they carry?

What are they actually trying to build?

What kind of life has to exist around it?

What does the business need to make possible?

And only then can we intelligently decide what kind of economic structure belongs around the vision.

Because if you don't know what the money needs to do, how can you know whether the business you're building is actually capable of doing it?

A business that needs to generate an extra $1,500 a month may be architected very differently from one that needs to replace a six-figure salary.

A business designed to create personal income may look different from one designed to build assets.

A business that supports ministry may need a different structure than one intended to become a legacy company.

Possibility is not prescription.

The right architecture depends on what the money has been assigned to accomplish.

And the Assignment Can Change

That's important too.

The job of the money today may not be the job of the money five years from now.

There may be a season when the job is:

help us breathe.

Then later:

replace my salary.

Then:

buy back my time.

Then:

build reserves.

Then:

create assets.

Then:

fund legacy.

The business can mature because the visionary's life is maturing too.

That is why I don't believe in building businesses around formulas that assume everybody wants the same thing.

We don't.

And we shouldn't.

The Visionary Comes First means we understand the person, the vision, the value, and the life we're actually designing around.

Money is part of that architecture.

I Want My Money Working Too

I've spent enough years understanding what it means for me to work.

I know how to work.

Many experts do.

That's rarely our problem.

We know how to carry responsibility.

We know how to deliver.

We know how to figure things out.

We know how to produce value.

But at some point, the resources created by all that work have to begin working too.

That is part of sustainability.

Not simply:

How much can I make?

But:

What can this money now carry that I shouldn't have to carry forever?

That is a very different way of looking at it.

And I think it is one more way we protect the visionary.

Because maybe the goal isn't for you to keep becoming stronger enough to hold everything.

Maybe the goal is to architect a business where eventually, you don't have to.

The Architect's Question

What does the money from what you're building actually need to make possible in your life?

Don't rush to a number yet.

Think about the assignment.

What needs to change?

What needs to become possible?

What should money eventually be able to carry that you are carrying right now?

Start there.

Because money needs a job too.

Grace and peace,

— Angela