For a long time, I thought money was the answer to a question I hadn't quite figured out yet.

Not in a greedy, cartoon-villain way. More in a quiet, background-hum way. Like if I just had enough — whatever enough was — the anxiety would ease, the decisions would get clearer, the version of me I was trying to become would finally show up.

Spoiler: it doesn't work like that.

I've made real money. I've lost real money. I've had years where the business was flying and years where I was quietly doing the maths on what we could sell if we had to. I've sat across from deals that felt electric and said yes. I've sat across from deals that felt electric and said yes when I should have said no. I've bought things I thought would make me feel something, and I've sat in the driveway afterwards wondering what I was expecting.

What I know now, that younger me didn't, is this: money is a genuinely terrible way to keep score.

Not because it doesn't matter. It does. Anyone who tells you it doesn't is either very wealthy or very dishonest, possibly both. Bills are real. Options require capital. Security is not nothing.

But as a scoreboard — as the thing you use to tell yourself whether you're winning — it's broken. Because the number is never the number. There's always a bigger one. The goal post doesn't stay still. You hit the target and for about forty-eight hours you feel something, then you recalibrate and suddenly you need more of it to feel the same thing again.

I used to pass on family stuff for deals.

Not often. Not proudly. But it happened. There was always a justification — this one's important, it won't take long, I'll make it up. And I probably believed it. The thing about chasing money when you're younger is that you can frame almost anything as necessity. You're building something. You're providing. You're playing the long game.

You're also missing dinner.

I'm not interested in performing some transformation story here, where I tell you I woke up one day, saw the light, and money stopped mattering entirely. That'd be a lie and you'd know it. I still care. I still want the business to grow. I still think about deals and opportunities and what's possible. That drive hasn't gone anywhere. I'd be suspicious of myself if it had.

But something has shifted.

I think it happened slowly, the way most real changes do. A few deals that worked out beautifully and left me emptier than I expected. A few moments with the girls where I was physically present and mentally somewhere else entirely. Elise saying something once — not cruelly, just plainly — that I've never quite been able to unknow.

The maths changed.

The same opportunity lands differently now. Not because the money isn't attractive. It still is. But I'm doing a different calculation underneath. What does this cost? Not in dollars. In the other stuff. Time is one. Presence is another. The kind of person I'm being while I'm doing it — that one matters more than I expected.

Marcus Aurelius wrote something to the effect of: ask yourself, at every moment, whether this is necessary. Simple question. Ruthless if you apply it honestly.

I've started applying it to the money stuff. Not to every decision — I'm not that evolved. But enough to notice the difference between want and need and actually this is just ego dressed up in a business plan.

The scoreboard I used to use was flawed. Not worthless — flawed. It measured the wrong things, which meant I was optimising for the wrong outcomes. Good news: you can update the scoreboard. It doesn't require a crisis or a TED talk or a trip to Bali. It just requires being honest about what the number actually means, and whether you'd trade what you're trading to get it.

I'm still figuring it out. Some weeks better than others.

But I'll take that over the alternative — which is waking up one day with a very impressive total and a quiet, nagging sense that you spent the currency that actually counted on buying more of the currency that doesn't.

If this gave you something to think about, feel free to forward it to someone who might appreciate it.

If this was forwarded to you and you want these straight to your inbox each week, you can subscribe here:
👉 brodenjohnson.co

Until next time,
Broden Johnson