Dan Sullivan: Your 10-Year Plan For Freedom

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Why did you become an entrepreneur in the first place? There was a possibility, a dream, that drove you to take that leap. If your life today isn’t quite what you imagined — too busy? too much pressure? — pause for a moment and reconnect with that initial instinct. It can show you the next evolutionary step in your entrepreneurial career.

The Four Entrepreneurial Freedoms.

You probably became an entrepreneur because you wanted freedom. As a business owner, you have freedoms in four specific areas that employees simply don’t:

1. Time: You decide when to work and when to take time off.
2. Money: Your income potential is limitless. It’s a reward for the value you create, not a salary determined by someone else.
3. Relationship: You choose the clients and team members you interact with.
4. Purpose: Your business gives you the means to accomplish your goals in life.

In each of these four areas, you have the “freedom to,” which gives you the opportunity to achieve the things you want, and “freedom from,” which lets you eliminate things you don’t like from your lifestyle.

Exercise: Your 10-year vision.

The first step toward having the future you want is to articulate what that is. On a piece of paper, make a four-by-two grid and label one side, “Time,” “Money,” “Relationship,” and “Purpose” and the other side, “Freedom From” and “Freedom To.”

Now, project forward ten years and fill in each of these eight spaces. Articulate a vision of how you’d like your life to be:

• What does your workweek look like? How does it allow you to experience the best of both business and personal life?
• How are you able to focus on your money-making abilities? How have you eliminated distractions and annoyances?/li>
• What sort of exciting people make up your clientele and team? What kind of frustrating people are no longer your problem?/li>
• Now that you’ve got the time and money to do what you like, what lifetime goals are you accomplishing? What “stuff” have you offloaded and turned into an opportunity for someone else?/li>

Make it up, make it real.

Now that you’ve got a compelling vision of your life in ten years, you just need to make it real. That relies on having structures set up in your everyday life that help you think, decide, communicate, and act in ways that are consistent with having that future.