Lessons I Bought With a Pay Cut
$96,000.
That was how much money I made in my start-up sales job right after I dropped out of college.
$10,000.
That was my entire income in my first full year of running On Purpose Adventures, plus whatever I scraped together from demolition work and random gig projects.
Can you guess which year was one of the best of my life?
Yeah, that $10k year was incredible. I made lifelong connections. I travelled, tried new things, and learned more about myself. AND I kept at it only making $10,000 in both 2012 and 2013.
Even that number is generous. Most of my revenue came from side hustles that had nothing to do with the business. The company itself was barely producing anything at the start. But those early years were where I cut my teeth. That’s where I learned how to plan events, solve problems on the fly, and build the foundation that lets us charge what we charge today.
I didn't have a family at that time and my living costs were low. Not everyone has the freedom to take a leap like that, and I don’t pretend they do. But I did, and it changed everything.
I wasn't cooped up in a corporate office where I quickly realized that lifestyle wouldn't work for me. The paycheck was solid. The life wasn’t.
That’s when I first stumbled into something people are finally starting to talk about today: your happiness-adjusted income.
In other words, what your life gives back on top of what your employer pays you.
The freedom to shape your day.
The ability to be present for your family.
The energy you don’t lose fighting burnout.
The purpose you feel when your work actually matters to you.
When you factor those in, the so-called “low income” year ends up being one of the richest.
Click here to check out this look back at some of the fun we had in that first year of business!
The Intangible Benefits That Actually Shape a Life
1. Identity
When you build something from scratch, you don’t just create a business. You create a clearer version of yourself. I figured out who I was when no boss was telling me what to care about.
Building those early adventures sharpened skills I didn’t even know I’d need later. For the first ten years, people knew me for adventure event planning. Over the last five, that reputation expanded into leadership development, training, and facilitation. And now the next chapter blends both worlds.
2. Freedom
Not the influencer kind where people pretend to work on beaches. Real freedom. The kind where you choose your challenges, your schedule, your collaborators, and your trajectory.
3. Energy
Work that drains you is expensive. Work that energizes you is priceless. Even in the $10k year, I had the kind of drive that makes you jump out of bed in the morning rather than hitting snooze.
4. Growth
When everything is on the line, every skill gets sharper. Strategy, communication, resilience, creativity. That year wasn’t profitable, but it was unbelievably valuable.
Those lean years taught me the craft. Fourteen years later, I get to create experiences that mix the adventure roots of On Purpose Adventures with the leadership depth I’ve gained through the books, the work, and my relationship with Dr. Troy. None of that showed up on a spreadsheet in year one.
5. Connection
You meet different people when you’re building something. People who think boldly. People who take risks. People who see potential instead of problems. Those relationships ended up being worth far more than the $86k difference.
Why This Matters for Leaders Today
We tend to measure success with the easiest metrics: revenue, salary, headcount, square footage, titles.
But people don’t stay for numbers. They stay for meaning, belonging, autonomy, trust, and the chance to feel like their contribution matters. They stay because their happiness-adjusted income is high.
The sense that their work counts for something.
Those are the same intangibles that shaped my life during that low-income, high-growth year.
And they’re the same things your people are craving right now.
Those early years didn’t pay the bills, but they built the skillset, the relationships, and the leadership acumen that shape what we deliver today. Fourteen years in, the work looks different but the heart of it hasn’t changed. The next evolution blends adventure with leadership in a way I couldn’t have imagined back when the business was scraping by.
What’s one intangible benefit you could lean into, cultivate, or elevate this year?
The answer might not change your budget, but it could change everything else.
