M&Ms: Options Not Obligations

Oct 16, 2023

After I quit my big company job, my first real "small bet" was a course on engineering career advice, but I never maximized its potential.

The course did well. To date, it's sold 1,751 copies. Not bad for something I charge $35 to 45 dollars for and from someone who was pretty bad at sales, me.

But people were practically begging me to add to it. I had so many calls with people who bought it, who were asking for more. My more business-savvy friends wanted me to re-record it, improve it, start a community on it so folks could ask questions, get help, etc. "It's a layup," they said. You could charge for one-on-ones. You could build an app to help remind people what they need to do. You could do so much more with this, they said.

But my gut was saying something else. Don't get me wrong, it was nice to have these options. "If nothing else works out for me," I thought, maybe I'll come back to this.

One of the best things I learned from Small Bets “It’s nice to have the option, not the obligation.” (Credit: DALLE 3)

But since I'd quit my job to do entrepreneurship, I knew this was not a topic I'd enjoy forever. Managing people's careers and navigating corporate politics, I was good at it, but I didn't have the energy to do it forever. And my enjoyment of this topic was decaying faster than a gossip's secret at work. There is big demand for career advice and mentorship for someone who loves doing that sort of thing all the time, it seems. I might've lost some revenue by not listening to my business-savvy friends. Who knows.

But I'm glad I didn't do it.

There is something to be said about having freedom, which is hard to quantify in the short term. In the short term, freedom can even look bad. But, I was able to jump on some amazing opportunities subsequently because I didn't focus on maximizing revenue in the short term and had a bunch of freedom.

If I was so busy running a community that helps engineers climb the ladder, a thing I was no longer doing myself, then I would've never run my newsletter cohort course with Chris Wong. The newsletter course was something I really enjoyed doing. It was a topic I was deeply curious about and one I've improved on the entire time. I would've never built some of the apps I built. I might not have had enough slack in the system to start teaching real estate and other things in Small Bets. I might've never been asked to partner with Daniel Vassallo or worse, I might've turned him down because I was too busy. I might not have had the opportunity to build all the things I am building for Small Bets now.

We built our own event management for Small Bets

Added some AI to Small Bets, among other things.

The Small Bets platform is getting nice & people are starting to ask for more. But its nice to have the option, but not the obligation…

But how important is having some slack to jump on an opportunity?

Matt Daemon recently explained that James Cameron asked him to be the lead actor in Avatar and even offered him 10% of the profits to do it. Matt told him he was too busy. In this video, while laughing, presumably to mask the pain, Matt explains, "You will never meet another actor that's missed out on more money than me." Matt's explanation is probably true because the first Avatar made $2.92 billion, and the second $2.32 billion so far. Matt might have lost some money in the short term by being less busy. But at $524 million for Matt (back of the napkin 10% from the two movies), Avatar would've put him in the top 10 list of the richest actors in the world. Right up there with Tom Cruise, who is worth $570 million. Then with all that money from those two movies he might’ve had to work less, who knows.

So, all of this to say, be less busy. Have more freedom, more options. Long-term prioritize work that maximizes enjoyment, curiosity, and energy. I firmly believe all of this eventually leads to better outcomes, it has for me.