The Entrepreneur's Dilemma

Your mate just posted on LinkedIn: "Hit 200K this year! Living the dream 🔥" with a photo of himself at his desk. At 11 PM. On a Sunday.

You do what any good friend does and stalk his wife's Instagram. Her stories from that same Sunday: family dinner with their two kids, empty chair where dad should be. The kids had drawn a picture for him that's still stuck to the fridge from last week.

That's not living the dream. That's optimising for the wrong bloody metrics.

Here's a stat that should make every entrepreneur pause: Business owners have 15% higher divorce rates than employees.

That's not because we're inherently bad partners. It's because we've been sold a definition of success that's slowly poisoning our lives.

You started your business for freedom—control over your time, income, decisions. Makes sense. But then traditional business advice kicked in: scale up, add services, automate everything, build systems, hire people, optimise for growth.

Revenue goes up. You hit six figures, then multiple six figures. The LinkedIn posts write themselves.

But something weird happens. The more "successful" you become, the less free you feel.

When you calculate your true hourly rate—factoring in all the hidden time costs, the system management, the mental overhead—most of us are making less per hour than corporate jobs we could easily get.

And that's just the financial cost.

Grab your phone calculator. Take last month's revenue. Divide it by the actual hours you worked. Not billable hours—ALL the hours. The emails, the admin, the lying awake at 2 AM thinking about client problems.

That's your real hourly rate.

Now the hard question: How many family dinners did you miss last month? How many date nights? Kids' events? How many times did your partner go to social events alone because you were "too busy"?

When you factor in the relationship costs—the conversations you missed, the connections you didn't make, the presence you didn't give—what are you really earning per hour of life lived?

Most entrepreneurs would gladly pay their current hourly rate to get their evenings back, to be present for family dinner, to go to bed without checking emails.

You're paying that hourly rate right now. You're just paying it with your life instead of your money.

Marcus from Sydney was the classic entrepreneur's dilemma case study. Making $95K, working 50-hour weeks, constantly stressed. His 8-year-old daughter drew a family picture with four figures: mum, herself, little brother, and the family dog.

Dad wasn't in the picture. When he asked why, she said, "You're always working, so I drew you at work instead."

That hit different.

Marcus did something radical: He looked at his service offerings and eliminated 80% of them. Kept only brand strategy for tech startups—the work that energised him and paid the best. Then he doubled his rates.

Result: Revenue up to $130K (37% increase), hours down to 35 per week (30% decrease). He's present for school pickup now, has energy for weekend family activities.

His wife's one-liner: "I got my husband back."

Your move: List all your services. Circle the top 20% that energise you AND pay well. Consider killing everything else. Then double your rates on what's left.

No plug today. Just want you to go and grab life by the balls.

This Week's Switch-Off Move: Have dinner with your family/partner/yourself without checking your phone once. Put it in another room. If that feels impossible, if you're twitching to check emails between courses—that's your answer right there. Your business is eating your relationships.

The family dinner test isn't about dinner. It's about whether you own your business or whether your business owns you.

Don't optimise for LinkedIn metrics while your kids forget what you look like without a laptop.

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