The Life Stewardship Formula

My next 10-year run.

Champagne problems are interesting dilemmas. The vast majority of us live very comfortable lives. This means that the vast majority of our problems are overwhelmingly-easier compared to those of both other times in the past and other parts of the present. We should be very grateful for this. Everyone reading this is in the top one percent of the world in terms of standard of living and wealth. In any other time, such a statement would be as incomprehensible as it would be ludicrous.

However, I’m of the belief that, in our day and age, they don’t get enough credit as they should for being what they still are- problems. There is so much outwardly-bad in the world that the important stuff, the real stuff, often gets lost in the shuffle. There is always more going on beneath the surface than meets the eye. This is true with our culture and world generally as it is with us individually.

Particularly in the case of young people today, we are caught in a Catch 22. On one hand, we have more problems than we’ve ever had in regards to the most important topics you can be faced with in life- career, love, meaning, etc. On the other hand, we are seemingly unable to talk about any of them. Look at how much you have! You should be grateful that you can even think about these things! Shut up! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Rah!

Those statements are true. However, sometimes raw truth can get in the way of nuance. We “have more” than generations in the past, yes. We should be grateful that we can even contemplate the bigger things in life, absolutely. We should have agency and be self-reliant, 100%. We should talk less than we do, to be sure. All of these things are true.

But yet, this narrative still remains incomplete. The reason? If you can’t discover a way to answer the deeper, more meaningful questions in life, what good does having more, displaying gratitude, having agency, being self-reliant, and doing more than we talk even do? In my opinion, not much at all. If there is no value to be mined from obtaining and/or pursuing something, then all the things we “should” feel turn out to be, mostly, completely meaningless.

Thus, even though problems can be champagne or “first-world” in nature, they are still problems. They must be answered and solved for. If we can’t get the big things right, God help us as we try to pursue the little things. This is a bigger problem than people realize, in my opinion. It deserves far more attention and press than it has gotten- by a wide margin.

Over the past six months in particular, the particular champagne problem I’ve been faced with has been eating me alive. Six months ago, I was faced with a major decision regarding my career. Six months before that, I had foolishly blown up the company I was running. To be fair and gracious to myself, I did it in the way most founders do- by running out of cash. A couple of bad ads, a product that wasn’t marketable, a gigantic ego, and a padded business bank account is a rough combination, as it turns out.

So, when that happened, I pivoted into high-ticket sales consulting. I was lucky enough to get onboarded quickly to an offer as a closer for what appeared to be a great offer. I had never closed at a high level before in my life. I was very bad at it. I invested in a mentorship program. I got better at it and became a leader in that community. This translated into my skills on the offer. I became the top closer within the first month. Over six months, I collected over $500,000 in cash and nearly $1 million in revenue.

But then the bottom fell out. The company leadership was not honest with me- nor their clients- about their fulfillment on the backend. It wasn’t good- at all. So, I made the hard decision, bet on myself once again, and left. I didn’t have the capital nor the ingenuity nor the will to start my own offer. For the time being, I thought I would find another consulting gig, stack cash, and eventually make my way to pivoting towards starting anew once more.

What ensued, up until the time of this writing, was what I’ve described to the few who know the intimate details as a nonstop six-month bare knuckle bar fight. Offer after offer. Bottom falling out after bottom falling out. Lie after lie. I had brought a barely functional knife to a gunfight where everyone else had automatic weapons. I lost tons of sleep. My anxiety skyrocketed. I was looking over my shoulder constantly. More days than not, I made myself nauseous with worry, not knowing if I could pay for my next month’s mortgage or utility bills. I always made it work. I took my bullets and made it out alive. But it wasn’t pleasant.

Over this time, as one would assume, I slowly became angry, disillusioned, and resentful towards the industry I had made my living in over the past three years. The information product and services space, in theory, is still an incredible industry. It offers the ability for individuals to change their lives at scale more than any other on the planet. No industry is more impactful at both an individual level and societal level than the info space. I stand by that statement.

But, as one of my old sayings goes, nothing is ever true until it’s tested. The info product space has all the potential in the world. The problem? It’s run by two primary groups of people, generally speaking- greedy people, and kids. Greedy people, who will do anything for a buck, take advantage of kids- mostly young men in their late teens and early to mid 20s- to pump their marketing through our algorithmic platforms and leverage the insecurity of these young men, most of whom are afraid they’ll ever amount to anything, to hard sell products and services to jack up ad profitability to scale products they, more than likely, can’t fulfill on. Is this everyone? Of course not. I know many wonderful people who sell many wonderful products. But is this most of the space? Without exception and question.

All of that to say the following- currently, I find myself at an impasse with what I want to do with my career. The spot I’m in is a very perplexing one. In many ways, I’m set. If all goes according to my design, my long-term finances will be completely totally set by the time I turn 30 in a year and a half. I’ll have three times as rich a retirement as the projected average of most people my age- without lifting a finger for the rest of my life. This includes my future wife and an inheritance for my children and children’s children. I could be a janitor and be set for life. Money, in that way, is the least of my concerns. This is not to flex. It’s to state reality.

In addition to long-term finances, the rest of my life is incredible beyond my wildest dreams. My social life, once the bane of my existence, is humming. I’m deeply known by several close friends and am rooted in my local church community. My romantic relationship is continuing to develop at a great pace. My girlfriend is my best friend. My health is better than it’s ever been- never before have I been this content with something that I’ve been long discontented with, with a community to support me through it. Most important of all, my relationship with God is thriving. I truly feel like I’m living out His plan for my life, which is all I can ever ask.

I write these words as a man of immense gratitude. My life is more full than I ever thought it was going to be. I am happier beyond what I ever expected or imagined. I used to pray that times would be as good as they are now. For most of my life, I doubted I would reach this point at all. Skipping gratitude would not only make me immoral, but stupid.

However, as mentioned, there is one thing left that I still have to solve for- what I want to do vocationally NOW. Never before have I faced a dilemma like this. This one was always easy for me to figure out and fix. But in this season of my life, it has become the thing that has stumped me over and over again.

I have no idea what my calling professionally looks like beyond finding a next job, something I’m not concerned with at all, if I’m honest. Writing has still not been able to sustain me financially. Yet, I feel like I’m called by God to find a way to do so. Beyond writing, I can’t seem to find a single thing that makes me feel as aligned to my God-given purpose as that, or as happy to engage in it as it does. To put it simply, I’m struggling- hard.

In addition, I have found a building frustration growing within myself. Particularly over the past few months, the content I both consume and speak about has turned on me. I no longer get the joy out of it that I used to. Is part of it that the team that I thought I was on, the people that I supported, and the cause I claimed to believe in have all turned out to lie about, well, everything? Partly, for sure.

But I have to examine myself as well. And, looking back on some of it, I don’t like what I see. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, to be sure. Yet, the last thing I want to do is become a character, someone who is getting so played by things going on in culture that I become a marionette for whoever wants to use me as a stump for their favored cause. I don’t think I’m there yet. But, given another couple of months with this feeling, and I’ll at least be close- and close is close enough for me.

This culminated in a conversation I had with my dad a couple of weeks ago. Particularly after the Iran War kicked off, I wasn’t only agitated- I was pissed. Should I have been? I’m not sure either way. I love my country very much. But I also understand deep down that I can’t control anything that comes with how my country operates, no matter who is in office. I felt betrayed, my narcissism coming out in spades, as if they should consult me before conducting an operation such as this one.

My dad told me the same thing- control the controllables. He saw where my mind was at and rightfully whacked me for it. That conversation made me do something different, and something that was much needed- look outside of myself. What is the broader picture? Is stuff like this really going to be defined by life? Is the news cycle, like so many people I’ve admired for so long, really what I want to chain myself to, particularly vocationally?

This is not to throw shade at anyone in this space, many of whom are great people. I believe for most of them, no matter what their opinions are, they are motivated by a deeper desire, one that all humans feel- a mission. All humans want something to dedicate themselves to. All humans want to feel as if they’re building something that can both be constructive to who they are now and who they want to be in the future. All humans want to be deliberate and intentional in what they go after, and why.

I am no different. Upon realizing this, I had an epiphany- that was what I was missing. I was doing a lot of things. I was “making progress” with my career, more or less. But I wasn’t living on a mission. I wasn’t doing things to serve a broader picture. It was always me, me, me, the psychodrama of my own life, one whose episodes are more and more boring as they progress. God help the viewers who get a front row seat to that catastrophe.

So, I did what I always do when I’m stumped on a problem- write it out until I figure out something resembling an answer. The result of that writing was an idea that I believe will define the next 10 years of my life, and serve as that aforementioned mission I’m embarking upon:

The Life Stewardship Formula.

The formula is spelled out in the heading image of this article. Written out, the math works (for now) as the following: Consistency multiplied by the product of values, self-control, and meaning, all multiplied by the power of God. I’m not sure if the architecture and order of the math of the formula is 100% correct. In fact, I can almost guarantee the structure will, in some ways, change.

But what I am fully convinced by is that this formula, in some way, shape, or form is the way, broadly speaking, to achieve a successful life. This is the case no matter what your definition of success. In fact, that’s the beauty of this whole thing. You decide the endpoint. Only you can understand where your train of life is ultimately going to end up. You just need a vehicle to get there. The great samurai Miyamoto Musashi once said that once you know the way broadly, you can see it in all things. The Life Stewardship Formula is that broad.

Let’s break down the component parts individually. Consistency is what allows you to build mastery, the thing that develops the foundation for all current and future growth. It’s hard to steward anything if you’re not consistent with doing that thing. It is not the end point- it is the starting point. If you’re consistent at doing a lot of constructive and good things, your life will turn out great. If you’re not, your life will turn out bad. It is the key that turns on the engine of your life.

Values have been my mission over the past six years. Without your values in alignment, it is impossible to know how to navigate life. You will not know what to do, how to make decisions, and how to order your life in a way that benefits you and the people that you love. You must know them, and know them intimately, in order to live an stewarded life.

Self-control is the most underrated component of success in life. The thing that hardly anyone talks about that affects people the most is the one catastrophic decision, if not more, that people can easily walk into. Getting into massive amounts of debt. Getting 100 pounds overweight. Doing nothing about your addiction to dating apps, or porn, or sports betting. Self-control is about maintaining your personal freedom and sovereignty, the only thing that differentiates an stewarded life of the few from one of the masses. This is critically-important, and critically-underrated.

Meaning is the portion that I’m missing now. It is the why of your life, the thing that gets you out of bed when you don’t want to be consistent, you don’t want to live up to your values, and you don’t want to control yourself. In a way, it’s the strongest form of motivation there is. If you don’t have meaning, you don’t have a reason to live up to the standards you set for yourself. Having meaning to your life is essential for good living.

Finally, none of this matters if God doesn’t play a role. A large part of this is understanding how God operates and works biblically. The Christian God is not a God of addition and subtraction. Rather, He is a God of multiplication, of abundance, of more. This is not a prosperity gospel. This is the Gospel. God is not a formula, even though He has a massive part in this one. But understanding God and His purpose and will in your life is paramount, and must be included.

Arthur Brooks has popularized the concept of the spiral career, where you devote large chunks and seasons of your life to advancing your mission and cause, each one building upon the last, and each lasting about 10 years. The Life Stewardship Formula is my next 10-year run. Starting in 2027, this is going to be the next leg of my calling, my career in which I am dedicating myself to pursuing.

What does this look like practically? Writing a book about each component, and then somehow trying to piece this entire puzzle together in a way that everyone can understand and benefit from. After I secure my employment and settle in there, every spare minute of my thought process will be occupied by solving this formula. It’s my biggest odyssey ever. I’m ready for it.

I hope you’ll be along for the ride as well.

Own the Day,

Sam