Build your business so it brings you closer to your dream life. 🏝️ Trading risk for freedom 💎 Bitcoin x Real Estate x Stocks
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Joined January 2009
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I'm Marcel.
Entrepreneur. IT consultant. I coach freelancers. I invest in bitcoin, real estate and stocks.
One idea ties it together: build your business so it brings you closer to your dream life. I trade risk for freedom.
Here I share how I think about choices, risk and markets.
Follow along, or DM me what you're building.
A job feels safe because it hides the risk.
I learned that when my role disappeared in a reorganisation. Not my choice. Not my timing.
Freelancing doesn't add risk. It shows it to you.
So are you choosing your risk, or still pretending it isn't there?
Avoiding risk is still a choice, you just don't see the bill until later. I'd rather pick which risks I take than let a safe path pick them for me. nitter.cf/Tim_Denning/status/211…
Xbox will require most staff near Redmond to be in the office four days a week from February.
The reason given: it's easier to review work and make decisions together.
Fair goal. But reviews and decisions travel well when they're written down. A decision log goes anywhere.
For many it's not finding clients but choosing which ones to say no to. Saying yes to everything feels safe, but it's often the bigger risk.
Seasons also make the risk smaller. You're not betting your whole life on one purpose, just the next stretch. That makes choosing for yourself a lot less scary.
It's rare to find your purpose for life, so instead look for your purpose for this season.
What lights you up right now? What's a good thing to dedicate this season of your life to? Perhaps more importantly, what purpose served you well in your previous season, but you have outgrown?
Life is always changing. It's okay to pick a new North Star.
A small solo business with high margins is the quiet version of trading risk for freedom. Less to lose, less to manage, more of your life that's actually yours.
Recruiters used to call you. Now it's quiet.
That's not a verdict on your skills. The market shrank.
But waiting for the phone was never a strategy. It just worked for a while.
So who knows what you're good at, without a recruiter telling them?
Before I say yes to an assignment, I hold it next to my own ideals.
Not only: does it pay, how long does it run. But: does this fit the person I want to be?
When did you last turn something down because it didn't fit you?
Most people answer this with time. The harder part is giving up an identity or a kind of safety. That's usually where the real trade happens.
A Monday morning question for you:
It is common to think about what you would like to accomplish. It is less common to think about what must be discarded to make space for your new endeavors. The time must come from somewhere. What do you need to give up to make space for what you would like to achieve?
That's the risk trade most people never look at. One year of uncertainty feels dangerous because it's visible. Fifty years of the wrong life feels safe because it's slow.
One client pays almost everything. Your buffer is thin. It's fine, until it isn't.
I know what it's like when a decision about your work is made without you.
Spreading your clients isn't greed. It's how you keep the choice when the market turns.
Being registered as a freelancer is not the same as running a business.
In the Netherlands, CBS counts fewer freelancers while KVK registrations keep rising.
Be honest with yourself. Is this still a business, or a registration you're holding on to?
Time horizon is a psychological choice before it's a financial one. Once you've survived the worst case, the noise stops making decisions for you.
Rafael Vivas explains why the stock price volatility doesn’t matter to him:
“Our stock dropped over 90%. So, being cut by 20% or being cut by half is just like another day in the NFL for us. It doesn't phase us.”
“We don’t care about the short term.”
“If we feel like we're doing the right things for our business and growing, ultimately the stock price will reflect that.”
Two years all-in can be a great choice when it's a season you chose. It gets risky when it quietly becomes your identity and you forget to choose again.
For 2 years in his 20s, Rafael Vivas woke up at 4 AM and worked until midnight:
“I dated a girl at the time, and I told her, ‘I'm going complete Black Mamba.’”
“I was kind of a psychopath. I listened to these motivational videos all day while working.”
“I understood the future of the company was on my back, because at this point, all guns are pointed at us. We've burned the ships. We are there to win. There is no other option. So I would wake up at like 4 AM, and stay up until midnight.”
“Nothing else mattered to me besides work. It was the most important thing.”
Your client says: go through an agency. The agency takes a cut. You never see the full picture.
Sometimes that's the price of the work. Fine.
But if every assignment runs through someone else's margin, you don't have a market. You have a gatekeeper.
If that's you, DM me.
After the reorganisation I didn't look for another job. I went independent straight away.
Not because it was safe. Because I wanted more freedom in my choices.
So a question for you: why did you start freelancing? Is your work today still the answer to that?
AI didn't take your work. It took the part you loved.
You used to build. Now you review what a model wrote.
If the fun went out of your work when AI came in, you're not imagining it.
Staying relevant matters. So does liking your work. Don't give up one without noticing.
Run more than one business and you notice something odd. The one getting less of your time can even grow faster.
Attention is not the same as progress.
Work in sprints per business, not on everything at once.
"Lifestyle business" is often meant as an insult.
As if a business that pays well and leaves you time for lunch with the people you love is the lesser goal.
Scale is a choice. So is freedom.
I don't want to grow my businesses in a bigger team, I want them to grow my freedom in life to choose how to spend my time.