I'm Done Pretending I Know My Net Worth

I put $10 million on my profile a month ago. It was technically accurate. Three million plus in revenue over three years times a 3-4x multiple. That's the math founders use when they want to feel rich without actually having money.

I cringe at it now.

I watched a founder claim a $35 million valuation based on a $1 million seed round.

The math required for that to work requires assuming everything goes perfectly and nothing ever gets disrupted.

That worked until December 2025. Then Claude happened, and suddenly that $35 million was a delusion.

I could do the same thing with what I built. I could say SimpleDirect was worth millions. I could take that number and run with it. I could use it in conversations to seem bigger. Every founder does it.

But I shut the business down. I turned off auto-renewals and emailed customers to tell them manually. I restructured what's left into something I can actually run. And now that $10 million number on my profile feels like a lie I'm telling myself every time I see it.

So I stopped.

The Five Things That Actually Matter

What actually matters? I've narrowed it down to five things, and net worth isn't one of them.

Cashflow, Skills, Health, Relationships

First: low expenses.

This is the ONE thing you actually control. You can't control whether the market values your business.

You can't control whether AI makes your service irrelevant. You can't control what customers decide they want to pay.

But you can control how much you need every month to keep going.

For the last month, I've been obsessed with this number.

If my expenses are $15,000 a month and I have $500,000 in the bank, I have 33 months of runway. That's not negotiable. That's real. Everything else is optionality.

Second: cashflow.

Not growth. Not revenue. Cashflow. The actual money that hits my account on Friday.

SimpleDirect and our other businesses were doing real revenue. But cashflow was always messier than the top line suggested.

Margins looked good on a spreadsheet. In reality, I was managing customer refunds, payment timing, and a hundred small leaks.

The revenue number felt impressive. The cashflow number was what actually paid the bills.

Third: long-term skills.

What can I do that someone else can't automate away in six months? For me, that's understanding capital structures, positioning, and what founders are actually thinking when they make decisions.

Those things don't get commoditized because they require judgment, not just execution.

Fourth: health.

Four to five times a week I move my body. I sleep when I can. I take the medication I need.

A $10 million net worth is worth nothing if your nervous system is fried and you can't think clearly.

I've seen founders with huge valuations on paper who were completely broken. The net worth didn't save them.

Fifth: relationships.

The people who know what you're actually thinking. The people who tell you when you're lying to yourself.

The people who stick around when the number on your profile drops. That's the only wealth that compounds.

Valuations Are Hostages

I saw Forbes' 30 Under 30 list last week. Most of those valuations are gone. The companies are struggling or closed.

The founders are starting over. And they spent two years defending that number to everyone who would listen.

A $50 million SaaS company could be worth zero tomorrow if Claude figures out what you're doing and does it faster. That's not hyperbole.

That's the world we're in now. Valuations are hostages to how fast AI solves the problem your company exists to solve.

So what does net worth even mean? It means the market thinks your asset is worth X on this particular day.

Tomorrow it could be worth half that. Next month it could be worth nothing. You can't eat a valuation. You can't live on it.

What I Actually Have

What I actually have is this: a business that does around $15,000 a month in consulting revenue, enough cash to not panic for 33 months, and the ability to think clearly because I'm not pretending anymore.

That's not worth $10 million. It's worth everything to me, because it's real.

Backing Away

The insidious thing about net worth metrics is that they let you lie to yourself in public.

You put a number on your LinkedIn and it becomes real to everyone except you. You know it's bullshit. But you defend it anyway because once you wrote it down, backing away feels like failure.

So I'm backing away. The $10 million is off my profile. What I'm focused on now is smaller and uglier but true: how do I stay alive, stay sharp, and stay independent?

Those three things don't make it onto a Forbes list. But they're the only three things that matter when the game resets.

You are the asset. Not your company's valuation. Not your net worth. You. What you can think. What you can do. Who trusts you. Those things are the only numbers that actually mean anything.

Everything else is infrastructure waiting to be disrupted.