Chase Freedom, Not Capital
O'Leary is unambiguous on this point: if your reason for starting a business is to get rich, you will fail. Not sometimes. Every time. Every entrepreneur he has met who achieved a significant exit was not calculating toward it the night before it happened. They woke up wealthy because they had built something of genuine value, and someone else decided to pay for it. His own example is The Learning Company, which sold for $4.2 billion. He was one of the founding members with founder shares. The night before the deal closed, he was not thinking about the money. He was thinking about the work. When the ten founders came back to the office the next day, none of them knew what to do except return to their desks. The target O'Leary sets is personal freedom, the ability to decide how you spend your time. He still works harder than he ever has, but now it is entirely by choice. The only attribute he says you need to get there is the ability to separate signal from noise. Every minute, people will chase you with ideas, calls, requests. If it is not on task for the signal, it is noise. Push it aside. That discipline, applied consistently, is what separates the people who get free from the ones who stay in what he calls the sea of mediocrity.