I started my own consulting business in 2020. I don’t think I could have picked a worse time to do so. It was March 2020 - right before COVID hit - and I had quit my job after lining up my first client. I quit, I was sued by my old employer, and I had that mouth-in-your-stomach moment that this client I spent so long acquiring will need to drop me because of a global catastrophe.

Fortunately, it all blew over. I managed to keep that client and I ultimately went on to continue to work with them for years afterwards. The relationships I formed there I value deeply and I will never trade for the world.

It is now 2024. The pandemic has ended. As has my time in Sydney. After a rental increase of 50% over 2 years, I ultimately decided that the place had outgrown me - and I had outgrown it - and it was for the best if I returned to Perth. I packed up all my things and headed back to sunny Perth to be back with family and with old friends.

—

I’ve never been one for the corporate life. I remember my first job with a big corporation - Woolworths, as a shelf-stacker - and how much I hated that job. The people I met there? Awesome. The company? I fucking hated it.

I hated going to work. I hated the bureaucracy. I hated the idea that what I did was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I was a cog in a machine, and they will never treat me well or look after me.

I remember quitting the job on a whim, and I didn’t even turn up to my last shift. I remember calling in “sick” to my last shift, in the car with my mates, and we headed out to the beach. I really did fucking hate that job.

—

When I was moving back to Perth, I asked myself what I would do with myself. I had always had this thought floating around in my mind that small businesses were an underserviced part of the market. The Deloittes, the PWCs, and and BCGs of the world only cared about companies that could afford their >100k projects. They didn’t squabble around in the $5-10k market. Too few profits for their partners. Too few positions for squishy project managers and agile coaches to hide in. Small businesses were too careful with their money to be profitable.

So that’s what I did. I closed out my contract work with my clients in Sydney and I started to position myself towards the small business community in Australia.

And there hasn’t been a time where I’ve been so anxious in my life.

—

Capitalism does funny things to your perception of value. “Oh! A company will pay me $200k per year to stand around and do nothing? I must be pretty important.” But am I? What if I make $60k per year and generate $200k of value to my clients and the businesses I work with? Surely then I’m more valuable, no?

I’ve never felt less valuable. I spend so much time doing things - doing sales, doing marketing, doing engineering - for a pretty meek salary of $80k. Is it average? Sure. But, in saying that, I’ve worked the last 3 Sundays in a row. And it’s not even crunch time.

You start to question a lot about yourself. Am I doing the right things? Why don’t I just sell my body to BHP and build a product that no one uses, cares about, or wants to be associated with? Why don’t I use AI to charge another $10 per week to a struggling single parent’s health insurance, knowing that she won’t bother to change providers for that amount?

Why not just sell out, buy that slice of paradise in the Baldives (a new phrase I heard for Baldivis, an “affordable” outer suburb of Perth), and live the good life? That’s what everyone around me does, why don’t I?

—

I worry about money running out. I worry about the $150k that I’ve accumulated with all my hard work over the last 5 years whittling into nothing. I worry that I will be sacrificing the future of my family on a dream that was never going to come true anyway. I worry about what my (soon-to-be) wife will think of me. What my family will think of me. What my ex-colleagues thinks of me, when they say “he could have been something.”

I worry about society thinking I’m done. I worry that I will get trapped in this local optima, where I make $60k per year and I work 60 hours a week. A future where I never achieved my vision for me and for my family, and they would have been better off with me making $200k and working 40 hours instead.

—

I know what I’m doing is the right thing. I know that all of my hard work will result in an outcome - either a complete success, or a complete failure. I know that, in reality, I won’t live like this forever. Rather, it is likely that any experience I gain here will mean I can just make more money on the other side if I really want to.

I know what I’m selling is valuable. I know what I’m selling is novel. I know what I’m doing has potential.

I am just riddled with anxiety. And it is an anxiety that only I may bear, else my family and my community will instead. And I am stronger than them.

-Kale.