The 40-year heist

You have roughly 40 productive years in your working life.

40 years to build something. To create wealth. To compound your efforts into freedom.

And the default path - the one your parents cheered for, your professors validated, your LinkedIn network celebrates - is to spend all 40 of those years making someone else rich.

The math they don't show you

When you trade your time for a salary, even a good one, here's what you're really doing:

• You build equity in someone else's vision (they compound, you don't).
• You accept a ceiling on your upside (no matter how well the company does).
• You pay the highest tax rates (salary is taxed brutally compared to capital gains).
• You generate zero transferable wealth (when you stop working, the money stops).

Meanwhile, the person who hired you is building all four: equity, unlimited upside, tax advantages, and generational wealth.

This isn't a conspiracy. It's just math. And it's a terrible deal that works against you for four decades.

The greatest lie about risk

The wide-spread lie about entrepreneurial risk is not just pernicious but backwards. They'll tell you entrepreneurship is risky. That you need the "security" of a steady paycheck.

But here's what they don't say:

• 40 years in corporate is also a risk - automation, age discrimination, market shifts, political maneuvering.
• "Security" is an illusion - no job is safe; your equity in the company is exactly zero.
• Opportunity cost - every year you don't build is a year of compounding you miss out on forever.

The real question is not whether building is risky.

It's: "Can I afford not to try?"

The clock is ticking faster than you think

And about that "security" you're clinging to?

Your employer is already running the math on replacing you with AI.

Not because they're evil. But because they're simply yielding to unprecedented economical forces - unseen since the industrial revolution. The moment your salary exceeds the marginal cost of an algorithm that can do 80% of your job, you're gone.

Those caring, lovely, "we're a family" corporate hands that feed you? They'll replace you without blinking the instant it makes financial sense. They'll send a kind email. Offer outplacement services. Wish you well.

But you'll be out. And your decades of loyalty, your 60-hour weeks, your sacrificed evenings and weekends - none of it will matter.

Not your job title. Not your tenure. Not your "essential" role that you convinced yourself can't be automated.

What you own. What you built. What generates value without needing you to show up every day.

The diffusion of AI throughout our job markets is a once in a century event, pushed forward by colossal economic forces. It's not going to politely wait for you to finish your 40-year sentence before it reshapes everything.

Why don't more people try?

Because the system is set up to keep you in place:

• 12+ years of schooling trains compliance, not agency.
• Social validation goes to the "safe path" (even when it's anything but).
• Golden handcuffs get tighter every year (mortgage, lifestyle inflation, the fear).
• Information asymmetry - most people genuinely don't understand how wealth is built.

But mostly? Fear.

The fear of failing. The fear of what people will think. The fear of leaving the script.

What actually happens when you try

We're not talking about becoming the next unicorn founder. Most people who build something don't make headlines.

They run profitable HVAC companies. Software agencies. E-commerce brands. Consulting practices. Property management firms. And hundreds more.

Boring, unsexy, wealth-generating machines that give them:

• Control over their time
• Equity that appreciates
• Tax advantages
• Exit optionality
• The dignity of building something that's theirs

And yes, some fail. But even those who "fail" often end up with:

• Skills that make them more valuable
• A network they built themselves
• Clarity about what doesn't work
• Zero regret about never trying

Just Try

Not next year. Not when conditions are perfect. Not when you've saved enough or learned enough or networked enough.

Just try.

Start building something - anything - that's yours. Test an idea. Talk to customers. Launch something imperfect.

Most people never start because they're afraid they'll pick the wrong thing.

So pick anything. Test it. If it doesn't work, you'll have learned something that most people spend 40 years avoiding: what's real and what's not.

The only unforgivable mistake is spending your entire working life wondering "what if?"