At that time, I didn't know where to go next: scale the agency, focus on developing an AI calorie counting bot, or do something else? And then a more experienced entrepreneur I knew told me:
If you're doing business just for the money, you'll burn out when scaling. You'll be overtaken by those who are genuinely interested, because they don't need motivation—they simply can't help but do it. So what's the point of spending time on a business that doesn't ignite you?


I kind of shut down then. I thought: "Well, money isn't such a bad reason if you're generally interested in doing it." Then I started honestly answering the question: does what I do ignite me?

With the advertising agency, the honest answer was "no." Normal, stable, but not exactly 100% my thing.

And after a few months of reflection, I realized that I really enjoy bringing people together. Seeing someone accomplish in six months what they couldn't do alone in three years. And then it's not so much about money as it is about the inner fire for the work.

You can only scale what energizes you. Everything else sooner or later becomes hard labor.

I kept putting off creating my community, never got around to it. But actually, it was the fear of going into what really drove me the most.

My channel: Ilya Kramnik