The Money Trap

Building in Public

The deposit hits on the 25th. Every month, without fail.

I check the number. It's good. Objectively, by any reasonable standard, it's good. I close the app and go back to whatever I was doing.

No celebration. No relief. Just — okay. Next month, do it again.

I didn't expect that feeling. I thought money would feel like something.

The Trap Nobody Warns You About

Here's the thing about being good at your job: the better you get, the more they need you. And the more they need you, the harder it becomes to leave.

You get promoted. Your salary goes up. Your title gets longer. Your parents are proud. Your LinkedIn looks impressive. From the outside, everything is working.

From the inside, you start to notice something.

Every win you produce belongs to someone else's story. Every deal you close adds to someone else's revenue. Every relationship you spent years building lives inside a company that could let you go on a Tuesday afternoon with two weeks' notice and a form HR already had printed.

You are spending the best years of your life building something that was never yours to begin with.

The Question I Couldn't Answer

I've had years of work experience now. Decent ones, by most measures.

But somewhere along the way I started asking myself a question I couldn't shake:

What do I actually own?

Not the title. Not the pipeline. Not the accounts. Not the relationships. The moment I walk out the door, everything stays behind. I take my experience, my skills, and whatever energy is left — and that's it.

I'm not saying the work wasn't real. It was. I learned more than I could have anywhere else and I'm grateful for it.

But there's a difference between executing someone else's vision and building your own. And once you feel that difference, you can't unfeel it.

The Moment It Became Obvious

A few months ago I was on a call with a founder. Early stage, small team, burning through runway. By any conventional measure, I was in the better position — stable salary, clear career path, none of his risk.

But he was talking about his company the way I used to dream about things when I was younger. With that specific kind of energy that comes from building something that didn't exist before you made it.

I hung up and sat with that for a while.

Then I opened a new document and started writing.

This Is Not a Resignation Letter

I'm not quitting my job tomorrow. I'm not burning anything down.

What I'm doing is running an experiment in public. Every side hustle I try, every idea I test, every failure and unexpected win — I'm going to write about it here. Honestly, with numbers, without the filtered version people usually share once they've already succeeded.

The goal is simple: figure out what I can build that is actually mine.

Maybe it works. Maybe it takes longer than I think. Maybe I find out the stable salary was the right answer all along.

But I'm done wondering. The wondering is worse than the trying.

The Real Trap

The trap isn't the job. The job is fine.

The trap is the comfort. The predictability. The way a good salary slowly replaces the question "what am I building?" with "what are we having for dinner?"

The deposit hits on the 25th. It's good money.

But money without ownership is just a very comfortable way to stand still.

I'm done standing still.

If you're done standing still too — subscribe.

— The Andes