Hey friends,

With the 4th of July this weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about independence.

Not just as a country, but as individuals.

When I started my first business at 25 years old, I remember asking myself a simple question:

What is true freedom?

At first, I thought financial independence meant making more money.

Today, I think entrepreneurs are really chasing three kinds of freedom.

• Time freedom to choose how we spend our days.
• Creative freedom to build the things we believe should exist.
• Financial freedom to support our families, save a little for the future, and remove the stress that money can create.

They’re all connected, but financial independence is what makes the other two possible.

But over time, I realized that’s not what I was chasing at all.

True freedom isn’t doing nothing.

It isn’t escaping work.

It’s waking up each morning and getting to work on something you genuinely care about.

It’s making enough to support your family, save a little for the future, and end each day knowing you spent your time building something meaningful.

That idea reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Marcus Aurelius in Meditations (Book 5, Section 1):

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do?'”

I love that perspective.

Our purpose isn’t to avoid work.

It’s to find work worth doing.

That’s why so many of us start businesses.

I still remember leaving my corporate job. During my first few months on my own, I was making about 10% of what I had been earning.

On paper, it looked like a terrible financial decision.

In reality, I was 10x happier.

For the first time, I was building something that belonged to me.

Every customer mattered.

Every improvement mattered.

Every day moved me one step closer to financial independence.

Not because I wanted to stop working someday.

Because I wanted the freedom to choose the work I spent my life doing.

Today, I think financial independence isn’t the day you stop working.

It’s the day you wake up excited to do the work you’ve chosen.

Whether you’re celebrating this weekend in the United States or somewhere else in the world building your own independence online, I hope you take a moment to appreciate what you’re building toward and how far you’ve already come.

So maybe today, or one day soon, you can say it too:

Happy Financial Independence Day!

Marvin
Chief Growth Officer
MemberSpace