We had a conversation in the van yesterday I want to tell you about.

We were on a stretch of highway near the coast. The kids had been entertaining themselves with a road game involving license plates and increasingly aggressive trade negotiations. My oldest was sitting up front, which he'd negotiated as a privilege earlier in the week. The other kids were in the back, deep in their own world.

He turned to me and said, "Dad, do you know what you're doing right now is unusual?"

I asked him what he meant.

He said, "Most kids' dads can't take a month off. They can't drive across the country. They have to be at the office. We're with you all day every day for a month. That's not normal."

I wasn't sure what to say. I told him he was right, and that it wasn't normal, and that I was lucky to be able to do this. He thought about it for a minute and then asked the question I've been turning over ever since.

"How did you make that happen?"

That's the question.

That's the entire question.

I gave him the version of the answer he could absorb at his age. I told him it was because of how the work I do is structured. That I built it on purpose to not need me sitting in front of it every minute. That this took years to figure out, but that once it was built, it kept running whether I was there or not. He accepted this with the polite skepticism of someone who suspects there's more to the story but has decided he's gotten enough information for now.

What I didn't tell him, but what I want to tell you, is the longer version of the answer.

The reason I can take a month off and drive across the country with my family is not because I'm gifted, smart, or working harder than anyone else. It's because at some point I made the decision to stop building a business that needed me, and start building a business that worked without me. Those are two completely different decisions. Most people are building the first one and assuming they'll figure out how to convert it into the second one later.

You don't convert the first one. You can't.

The first one is a job that pays you for being there.

The second one is a business that pays you whether you're there or not.

The structure is different from the start.

You either build for one or you build for the other. Trying to do both is how you end up running the first one forever.

The members inside the sprint right now are building the second one. Not by accident. On purpose. They're picking the service, building the system, setting up the billing, and stepping back. The whole structure is designed to work without them having to be there for it. That's the entire point of the sprint.

The reason this matters for the kid in the front seat asking how I make it happen is that someday he's going to be making his own version of this decision. Not about agencies. About whatever he ends up doing. And whatever it is, the same fork is going to show up. Build something that needs you. Or build something that doesn't.

The "doesn't" version is what lets you take a month off and drive across the country with your family. The "needs you" version is what makes that impossible.

If you're at your own version of that fork right now and you've been on the sidelines about the sprint, this is the angle worth thinking about. Not "will I make money." You probably will. Not "is this real." It is. The real question is what kind of business you're building. The kind that frees you up. Or the kind that traps you.

The sprint is built around the "frees you up" version. That's the only version it's designed to produce.

​Build the version that frees you up →​

We're heading deeper east today. Cape Breton tonight. The kids have been told there might be whales. They are extremely invested in whether this is true.

Talk soon.

Adam

P.S. The license plate game has now generated enough conflict that we've had to introduce a binding arbitration clause. My wife has been appointed arbitrator. I remain the appellate court of last resort and have been recusing myself aggressively.