Sometimes you need to lose yourself to remember who you are.
In November 2011, I did something I hadn’t done in six years: I took a job working for someone else.
My friends looked me in the eye and said flat out, “This isn’t you.” They were right, but I needed to find that out for myself.
After years of building my business, carrying the weight of everyone’s livelihood on my shoulders, making every decision, solving every crisis—I was exhausted. The idea of having someone else worry about where the next paycheck would come from felt like liberation. A steady salary, predictable hours, someone else’s problems to solve. For once, I could just be an employee.
So I spent a month weighing the decision, handed my business over to my inexperienced team, and walked into an open-plan office to become what I never thought I’d be again: someone else’s subordinate.
From King to Gatekeeper
On November 1st, 2011, I was directed to a cubicle right by the entrance where I literally became the department’s gatekeeper. Everyone who walked in had to pass by me, and I found myself lifting my head to acknowledge greetings like some sort of corporate receptionist.
I missed my office immediately—my space where I ruled, where I made decisions that mattered, where I controlled my environment. I tried negotiating for better space with the department administrator, but she recited some memo explaining why she couldn’t help me.
I was stuck as a gatekeeper.
It was surreal. I almost quit those first few days, but I forced myself to stay. I told myself I needed to learn what it meant to be an employee again, to understand what my own team experienced, to become a better leader by remembering what it felt like to be led.
What I discovered shocked me.
The Myth of My Own Work Ethic
Before taking that job, I had a very specific image of myself. I thought I was a natural early bird who sprang out of bed ready to conquer the world. I believed I was a working machine who could go twelve hours straight without breaks, Berrocca, or coffee. I actually hated public holidays because they meant wasted opportunities to get more work done.
I thought money didn’t drive me—that I could do more for less as long as I enjoyed what I did. I believed I was incredibly patient, capable of working with even the laziest team members without losing my cool.
Then I became an employee again, and I realized I was just like everyone else.
I dreaded going to work. I pulled myself out of bed and chased deadlines by their tails. By 12:30 PM, I was exhausted and couldn’t stop checking my watch, waiting for lunch break. I took short naps during lunch and came home drained.
I was a monster in the morning until I had my Berrocca and coffee. I highlighted holidays on my calendar and lived for weekends. I couldn’t wait for payday and got excited about memos announcing half days.
I was caught in the corporate grind, and it was grinding me down.
The Mirror I Didn’t Want to See
Taking that hard look at myself was devastating. I had stepped so far out of my own skin that I barely recognized the person staring back at me. The driven entrepreneur who controlled his destiny had become just another worker counting down the hours until freedom.
I started reminiscing about the “good old days” when I owned my time, controlled my schedule, and made decisions that actually mattered. I wanted to get back there as fast as possible, but I also needed to understand what had happened to me.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Ownership
What I learned during those eight months changed my understanding of work, motivation, and human nature forever.
When you’re building something that belongs to you, every hour invested compounds. When you’re working for someone else, every hour is just traded for money. The psychological difference is profound.
When I was running my business, those twelve-hour days felt energizing because I was building something. When I was working for someone else, eight hours felt draining because I was just completing tasks that served someone else’s vision.
It wasn’t about the work itself—it was about ownership.
The Great Deception of “Work-Life Balance”
Corporate life promised work-life balance, but what it actually delivered was work-life separation. Instead of integrating meaningful work into a life I designed, I was compartmentalizing someone else’s priorities into predetermined time slots.
The irony was devastating: in trying to escape the stress of entrepreneurship, I had traded ownership of my time for the illusion of security. But that security came at the cost of everything that made work feel like building rather than just doing.
The Day I Quit
After eight months, I packed my lessons and corporate experience into a small box, tucked them alongside my battered pride, and quit.
I remember walking back to my office for the first time as a business owner again. It was around 10 AM on a Tuesday, and the streets were empty. For a moment, I felt guilty—had I told my boss I would be late? Then I laughed at my own absurdity as I took a right turn at the traffic lights and headed back to my kingdom.
That feeling of driving to my own office, on my own schedule, to work on my own vision—it was intoxicating.
What the Experiment Taught Me
Those eight months weren’t wasted time. They were a masterclass in understanding the difference between being an entrepreneur and being an employee—not just intellectually, but viscerally.
Entrepreneurs aren’t superhuman. We’re not naturally more disciplined or motivated than employees. We’re just people who’ve chosen to tie our energy to ownership rather than security.
Context shapes behavior more than character. Put an entrepreneur in an employee context, and they’ll behave like an employee. Put an employee in an entrepreneurial context with real ownership, and they might surprise you.
The grind is the same; the meaning is different. Building a business is just as exhausting as working for someone else, but it’s the difference between exhaustion that builds something and exhaustion that just gets you through the day.
Time ownership is everything. The ability to control your schedule isn’t just a perk of entrepreneurship—it’s the foundation of everything else. When someone else owns your time, they own your potential.
The Lesson for My Team
When I returned to my business, I looked at my team differently. I understood why they watched the clock, why they needed clear direction, why they didn’t think like owners. They weren’t owners.
But I also realized that some of them could be, if I created the right conditions. If I gave them real ownership over outcomes rather than just tasks. If I let them control more of their own time and methods. If I shared the upside, not just the workload.
Some of my best builders today are people who made that transition from employee thinking to owner thinking because I remembered what it felt like to lose that ownership myself.
The Choice We All Face
Everyone faces this choice at some point: security or ownership. A steady paycheck or the uncertainty of building something. Predictable days or the chaos of creating value.
Neither choice is wrong, but they’re fundamentally different. And you can’t really understand the difference until you’ve experienced both.
My eight-month corporate experiment taught me that I’m unemployable—not because I can’t do the work, but because I can’t live with someone else owning my time and limiting my potential.
Some people discover they prefer the security and structure of employment. Others realize, like I did, that they’re willing to trade security for ownership.
The Real Return on Investment
People often ask if those eight months were a waste of time. They weren’t. They were an investment in understanding myself and my team better. They taught me why entrepreneurship is hard but why employment felt harder for me.
Most importantly, they reminded me that time is the one thing that, once lost, can never be recovered. Those eight months taught me to value my entrepreneurial freedom not as a burden I carry, but as a privilege I’ve earned.
Given the choice again, I choose the business grindstone every day. Not because it’s easier, but because it’s mine.
And that makes all the difference.