Work Big, Live With the People You Love

Twenty-seven, by international age.

This is the moment just before that moment.

With my birthday ahead, I find myself thinking about what kind of life I want to live.

I will make a lot of money.

The company will grow, too.

It will become a world-class company.

The products and systems I build will reach very distant places.

But the life I want is not, in itself, simply a life of making lots of money and building a big company.

I must be free.

I am not held captive by the company all day.

Even if the company and its systems run 24 hours, it does not become a structure that only survives if I hold on to it all day.

What I have to do is watch a few important points,

make a few important decisions,

and move directly at the moments I am truly needed.

Money is centrally important too.

Not ending at the level of not worrying about living costs,

but holding the economic options that mean never bowing to people, companies, states, or platforms because of money.

More than money itself, I hold options.

The power to refuse the work I hate,

to meet the people I want to meet,

to go to the places I want to go,

and to keep pushing what I believe is right, for a long time.

Not the person who lays every brick by hand.

The Architect's life.

I make the structure in which systems, people, capital, and technology can each move in their own place — and I design that structure.

Not every task handled by me directly; the structure I built handles the work.

A system that moves without me, and changes to a larger direction when I step in.

And that scale is not small.

Not ending at one small SaaS doing well,

but influencing, across many industries and many regions, the very way companies run.

A system I built runs in Korea, runs in Japan, runs in America,

and at some moment I watch it doing someone's work in a place I have never even visited.

Yet the organization is not enormous.

Rather, small and strong.

Not an organization that proves its power with headcount or office size,

but one that uses AI and code and automation and capital so that few people create tremendous productivity.

A company large in scale but not heavy, strong but not slow.

Where I live is not tied to one place either.

A life of being in Seoul when Seoul needs me, going to Tokyo when there is work in Tokyo, and going to San Francisco when something important happens there.

A country, too, is a set of options rather than a fence that pens me in.

A life of doing the needed work where it is needed, and returning again to the people I love.

And I can keep making things.

I do not only code.

I do not only manage.

I write, I make videos, I build brands, and I build products.

I leave what I think in some form in the world.

I do not become someone who quits making because the company got big — a person left with only meetings and management.

To me, work is not labor.

Business and history and technology and writing and meeting people are not separate things —

at some moment they connect like one enormous game.

I watch the market, meet people, make something; it brings in new people and new chances,

and from there new thoughts arise again.

So work becomes play.

But there is something more important than all of this.

People.

Wanting to see the world at its full size does not mean living coldly.

On the contrary — to the people I truly cherish, I give enough time and enough steadiness.

However big the company I build, if I cannot comfortably share a meal with someone I love,

if there is no time to go see the people I miss,

if I must spend my whole life being chased by the company I made — that is not the success I wanted.

The power I want is not the power that moves people by force.

Power given and received through choice, rather than domination.

Customers choose our product because it benefits them more,

excellent people come because being together is fun,

and capital and opportunity gather naturally because the results are there.

A structure people walk into on their own, without being held by force.

I believe that kind of power lasts.

So if I draw the life I want as the scene of a single day, it looks like this.

I open my eyes in the morning and there is no need to get up in a rush for the company.

Customer systems in many parts of the world are already running, and revenue is coming in.

What I have to check is a few important numbers and a few important decisions.

In the daytime I eat with someone I like, or walk.

I read books and sometimes write.

Then when an interesting problem appears, I go deep for a few hours and build one new system.

Sometimes I am in Seoul, sometimes in Tokyo, and when necessary I go to San Francisco.

I meet the important people, make the important decisions, and return.

Not a life spent managing hundreds of thousands of employees.

A life that moves an enormously large system with the smallest motion of a hand.

Come to think of it, the phrase I sometimes use — conquering the world — is not the opposite of this either.

It is not winning the world by burning up your entire life.

It is the reverse.

Building a system strong enough that its influence on the world keeps growing,

while your own life becomes freer and freer.

Influence grows, and my time increases.

The company grows, and the organization gets lighter.

In the end the system grows more complex, and my life grows simpler.

That is probably the life the present me wants.

A mighty system. A small organization. Vast options. People I love. Enough time. Constant creation.

And in the end it returns to one sentence.

Work big — and live with the people you love.

The world, at scale. The system, strong. Life, free. With the people I love, and enough time.