All about the money

Image created by ChatGPT with DALL·E

There are two types of concerns I get when talking to founders (and other ambitious people) about money:

1) They care about getting rich, but feel like they shouldn’t.

2) They don’t care about getting rich, but feel like they should. 

Let me address each one in turn. 

1. “Is it bad if I want to make a bunch of money?” 

I was a bit surprised at first when I kept hearing this from my tech founder clients. Why wouldn’t wealth creation be a valid and healthy goal, assuming it is indeed wealth creation—real value creation, not grift or fraud? Isn’t it obvious how wealth can be deployed in service of building the fully-lived life you envision?

But the moral stigma against money and wealth runs deep in our culture, and I find that many of my founder clients have internalized it to their detriment. This is probably exacerbated by my idealistic coaching: when they pick up on the principled vision of builders that animates my approach, they assume I must frown upon…