A well-known phrase in East Asia goes something like this: “it’s better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of an ox.” In my brief and cursory research for this post, I noticed several variations, including my personal favorite: “it’s better to be the head of an ass than the tail of a horse.” Either way, the phrase celebrates the entrepreneur, recognizing those who go out on their own.
The idea is profound, especially in modern times, where greater power in the employment market is being centralized with fewer and fewer individuals. Sure, a corporate job might feel safe, but in this post, we examine the human toll on being “the tail.”
The irony is that I’ve spent the entirety of my working life in the tail of the proverbial ox. I’ve never been an entrepreneur, always the worker bee. And for the bulk of the last decade, I’ve worked for large organizations, some of them with thousands of employees.
It’s better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of an ox.
To be fair, some organizations that employed me were small, and there was a tiny element of family. Those jobs, primarily in the restaurant scene, were the most enjoyable times I’ve had in my working life. Sure, I might be looking back with rose-colored glasses to some degree, but despite the low pay and grueling hours, there were some key elements in place for job satisfaction: fast pace, autonomy, creativity, and engagement. Entrepreneurs experience many of those same elements.
But don’t you want to retire early?
Yes, our saving and investing strategy is built to provide enough passive income to never work again. By that definition, sure, we could actually retire in our 30s. Based on just about any modeling scenario ever done, when we reach our goal, we can theoretically expect a very low chance of running out of money before we are returned to dust. Of course, assuming we continue to keep our spending in check.
However, many in the FIRE movement (Financial Independence/Retire Early), and even traditional retirees, report a high level of boredom or even depression when faced with 40+ new hours of unstructured time off.
Financial independence is wonderful and all, but if you fill all of your downtime with TV in your working life, you won’t automatically flip a switch and have a a handful of productive hobbies. Just like getting a dog won’t turn you into an avid runner. The list goes on. Check out this and this for a couple discussions on the boredom dilemma of retirement, both early and traditional.
For me, there’s two reasons why I’d like to be at the helm of a new venture even after I’ve reached financial independence.
(1) Additional income lowers sequence of returns risk.
(2) having a meaningful entrepreneurial venture provides work and life satisfaction. I’ve rarely encountered that in 8+ years of time in the tail of the corporate ox.
The Corporate Model Vs Entrepreneur
The corporate world has been the butt of jokes (or the tail? Get it??) for decades. Often-quoted movies like Office Space or shows like The Office highlight some of the ridiculous cultural elements that exist in the corporate world. It’s no surprise then that a majority of Americans are not satisfied in their jobs.
I actually work for a good company that treats its employees well. I have a great salary, reasonable flexibility, and a good deal of vacation time. What’s the problem?
Well, for many people, there is no problem. You do you. But my personality is such that I clash in this environment. I find it increasingly difficult to be motivated to work non-stop for nine hours a day to meet a quarterly production goal. Even if I’m a key team member, I feel distant from the product and even more distant from the company’s greater ambitions. A common sentiment and cause for job dissatisfaction is that employees don’t have much say in how the company is run. Finally, there’s the inescapable fact that despite my best efforts in the tail, those at the head of the ox reap the most benefit.
What’s next as an entrepreneur?
Honestly, I don’t know. I will leave the corporate ox tail once we are satisfied with our financial situation. Mrs. CC, however, would like to stay on with her ox, for some time at least.
I want to embrace what I feel is the long-repressed spirit of an entrepreneur. The beauty of this is that the bar for “success” is quite low. We will likely not even need the money! Obviously, it doesn’t make sense to embrace a money-losing proposition, but I also don’t need to provide for our total cost of living. The compound interest from our investment strategy is handling most of our cost of living.
Maybe just running this website is enough. I don’t make any money, but after nearly eight months of writing here, I gain far more satisfaction out of this work than what I do in the tail of the ox. Perhaps putting more focus here in the future will be engaging and satisfy my needs.
The Fog Shall Clear
There’s also the “Fog of Work.“ This concept, first introduced to me by Doug Nordman of The Military Guide, explains that it’s no surprise that we don’t know what we want to do with more free time. We’ve been so busy working, preparing for work, commuting to work, or recuperating from working for so long that we haven’t had the chance to figure it out! So, when people tell me they don’t have a recreational passion or idea for a side business, it’s completely forgivable. You probably haven’t had much time to consider it!
I’m confident, with time for the fog to clear, that I’ll come up with something that’s engaging as an entrepreneur. Maybe if I’m lucky, this engaging work will make a little bit of money too. My unapologetic criteria for the head of the chicken goes something like this:
- I’m not going to an office for 40 hours a week, unless seasonal
- Would prefer location-independent, potentially web-based work
- Must be meaningful for me
- I want to learn new skills
- I must be the head of the chicken
Summary
Obviously pursuing a career as an entrepreneur is not for everyone. I don’t yet know if it’s even for me! And you certainly don’t need a lifetime’s worth of investment income to finally go out on your own.
Take some of our recent interviewees for example, Kris Hampton and Justin Brown. These guys love the climbing lifestyle, noted a business niche for which folks were willing to fork over their money, and the rest is history.
I really admire those willing to take a risk and build something. Only now, after I’ve reached a very stable financial foundation, am I willing to pursue my own venture. Hats off to the entrepreneurs out there!
If money was no issue, what would you do with your time and energy?
Thanks guys, see you next week.
I go back and forth between thinking that I will have plenty of things to fill my free time when I am RE and the reality of knowing that I work a lot and will have a lot more free hours than I currently do. Your post resonated with me because I have thought about making my time meaningful. I don’t want to retire to the couch and simply watch TV all day. I started my blog thinking that it may be a hobby that I continue into retirement.
I have also thought about other options that provide income. And I too would definitely want to be the head of the chicken. I have had the luxury of not really having a boss to answer to in my current job and I am not about to experience that again. Maybe I’d like to open a business and/or do some consulting.
Regardless, you raise some great points that people need to consider as they move toward early retirement. Great post thanks for writing it! Cheers, Pai
p.s. I love the clipping chains name to reference the FI goal! If I could retire in my 30s, I’d probably retire to climbing.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment! As a climber (clipping chains is also a climbing reference too), I like to think that my obsessive hobby will keep me busy. But a selfish hobby probably isn’t enough to keep me “satisfied”. Nor is early retirement. I need something that is fulfilling. Fortunately when time is on your side, that something will probably make a few pennies too. Thanks again.
I think climbers have a ready-made pursuit to fill a fair chunk of time, which helps put them into that second bracket.
I was an ‘entrepreneur’ early on in my 20s. Brought up with a fair bit of ‘rich dad, poor dad’, and ‘millionaire next door’ I’d already decided that, in your analogy, that I did not want to be the ‘tail of the ox’. I made some good money through a couple of startups but in the end, none were successful. I lost a chink of money and went into the corporate world to a ‘real job’. I went to a lot of ‘entrepreneur’ events, and in retrospect I think that entrepreneurship is heavily romanticized, and the whole scene is rife with ‘survivorship bias’.
Family members and friends of mine have started their own businesses. Additionally my father-in-law runs an accounting firm, and my father was a tax auditor – both have given me good insights as they get to see into the books of many SMEs. It’s really an all-engrossing affair if done well. You go from being the tail of the ox, to the tail of 30 oxes. In other words, you go from having one boss, to multiple – your new bosses are of course, you customers. Only, your new bosses complain, and sometimes they don’t pay you, or they go broke, and they don’t care what hours you work etc. etc. Many ‘entrepreneurs’ would be better described as ‘self-employed’ I think.
I think at it’s heart the underlying idea of ‘being the head of the chicken’ just means have a level of self-determination. However, I don’t believe that being an ‘entrepreneur’ necessarily guarantees one any more power or agency than simply being a bit higher up the corporate ladder.
Jackson, thanks for poking around over here. I think you’re exactly right, and perhaps I am over-romanticizing entrepreneurship in the traditional sense.
However, the beauty of FI, as you know, is that I don’t need to provide a living wage to be successful. To make things quantitative, I’d venture to say that a profit of $5-10k (USD) per year would be quite successful for me. With such a low bar, I have a lot of margin for creating something fulfilling without bending over backwards to make whiny customers happy.
In fact, it’s actually not advantageous for me to make much money at all. My goal is to stay in the lowest marginal tax bracket, living in that sweet spot of having supplemental income to hedge against sequence of returns, but not having so much that I incur higher insurance premiums and taxes.
Or I could just go rock climbing 😉