Mind Your Own Business: On OPB

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There’s a popular phrase out there used to describe loans, investments, and living off the dole of other people: Other People’s Money (OPM). While this can be a really broad umbrella of different terms and meanings depending on the context, it’s usually used somewhat disparagingly to tell people building a business or building wealth to be careful — don’t use OPM if you don’t have to. OPM comes with strings attached — always. You take OPM in exchange for some form of control.

I had a conversation with a business partner recently who expressed his disdain at OPM. “Never take OPM unless you have to in order to meet your goals,” he told me. “I hate OPM. I prefer to keep as much to myself as possible. Once you take OPM, you’re answerable to the OP — Other People. You stop being your own boss.”

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody familiar with the phrase OPM — it’s a common bit of advice. Novice entrepreneurs and businesspeople think getting investment is a victory — but it just makes you answerable to more people. OPM can be a useful tool, but only when the purpose of getting it is clear and a significant ROI can be returned. The corollary phrase that’s mostly ignored deserves some attention — OPB — Other People’s Business.

To become wealthy in the United States today, you should mind your own business and avoid OPB. Being an employee of a company can feel safe — until the next major recession or losing a primary client — but it isn’t going to make you wealthy. Lots of young people go for a safe job right out of college as a way to build some wealth, get some experience, and pay off some student loans, with the desire to go and launch their own venture someday. While they’re busy building somebody else’s business, the clock ticks away at the opportunity for them to build their own. They get OPM in the form of a mortgage and get a house and then a car loan. They get so far down the rabbit hole of OPM and OPB that they can’t leave.

Similarly, the craze of day trading from home and making a lot of money while buying and selling shares of public companies — companies built by other people — rarely works (have you met an extremely wealthy day trader?) and those who do have the luxury of engaging in day trading have usually made their money elsewhere first. This involves competing against plenty of other highly competitive, intelligent people and competing against machines. Most people who try day trading end up blowing a ton of money on it. In the desire to make money with pieces of OPB, they lose their own money.

If you want to (honestly — not through crime or politics) become wealthy in the US today, you need to own equity in a company that you helped build. That’s the simple fact of the matter. Save some doctors and lawyers who are very good at building wealth while bringing in a fat paycheck, most of the wealthy (not necessarily high salary) made it through minding their own business and not meddling with OPB.

I meet plenty of young people who tell me that they want to be invested in multiple companies by a certain age. That’s a cool goal but few can tell my why they want to be invested in other companies. Some say so they can make it big — not realizing that most VCs and angel investors made it big before they got into the venture capital space and mostly do it as a form of helping to build businesses. These short-sighted young people view riding the coattails of another succeeding entrepreneur as a way to build wealth.

Beware OPM — you cede control over your life in exchange for other people’s money (this is true with debt, investment, or gifts) — but also beware OPB. These two forces play off of each other. The safety and allure of OPB brings one to lifestyle inflation and needing more OPM just to get by — without actually putting that OPM into a real investment! Mind your own business, not other people’s businesses, if you want to really create value and reap the benefits of it.

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