Money Had Nothing to Do with This Equation

I've faced death twice. The first time was a coral snake. Lying there facing death, I noticed something I've never forgotten: money had nothing to do with this equation. It was absent entirely.

What does facing death teach you about money?

It teaches you where money belongs in the order of things. It's a tool. It buys time, options, and experiences, and it can protect the people you love. All of that matters. What it can't do is stand in for the life itself, and when the life is the thing on the line, you see that very clearly.

I came out of that experience and made changes I've kept ever since. I left the corporate fast track because it wasn't me. I haven't taken a paycheck as my identity since. My income is a function of what the business produces, and that's the way I want it. If the business creates value, I'm paid. If it doesn't, I need to fix the business, and my worth as a man isn't on the table.

That distinction carried me through some hard years. I've had foreclosure notices on my door before. Just because I ran out of money doesn't mean I'm a failure. That business failed. I've had failures, and it doesn't mean I'm a failure. It means that idea failed.

Why did my relationship with money get easier when I stopped chasing it?

When I stopped worrying about money is when it became easy. When all I thought about was money, I didn't have any, and I never slept.

My read on why: a man who is afraid of losing money makes defensive decisions. He holds a dead business too long because closing it feels like losing. He takes the wrong client because the check is there. He stays up at night running numbers that won't change by morning, and then makes tomorrow's decisions on four hours of sleep. Fear of money costs you money, and it costs you the sleep and judgment you need to earn it back.

So I built a device to take the fear off the table. I call it pillow money: six months of runway, never touched. I don't even care what interest it earns. It's the reason I sleep at night, and the clear head I wake up with is worth far more to the business than whatever that money could earn.

How much is enough?

I'm not a billionaire, nor do I want to be. Do I need $10 million cash in the bank? No, it wouldn't change my life.

What changes my life is experiences. Experiences over Things. Live-music weekends with my wife. The trips my sons and I plan together every Christmas. I'd rather do than have. I'd rather do something than own something.

The men I coach are usually very good at making money. Most of them have already proven they can. The question I put to them is what the money is for, and whether the way they're chasing it is spending the things they can't get back. Money is recoverable. Time and energy are not.

You don't need a near-death experience to run this inventory. You can do it this week. Write down what you'd want on the list if you were lying there tomorrow. Then look at last month's calendar and see how much of it went to the things on that list.

What's on your list, and how much of your week does it get?

~b