Early in his investing, Joe’s results suffered because he needed to be needed — he wanted to feel valuable to the companies he backed. The breakthrough came when he saw what great investors actually want: for the things they invest in to thrive without them.
“Great investors, they want to feel like they’re unnecessary. Great CEOs want to feel like they’re unnecessary, that the whole thing can run without them.”
The need to be valuable is quietly disempowering. It keeps you indispensable by keeping others dependent, which caps both their growth and your returns. Wanting to be unnecessary does the opposite — it empowers people, and empowered people generate more value.
“If you want to be valuable, you’re disempowering people and you make less money than if you want to be unnecessary because then you’re empowering people and you make more money.”
It also frees your time. Once Joe stopped needing to be needed, his capacity to invest improved and he could do more with the same hours. The same disempowerment dynamic Joe describes in caretaking relationships shows up here as a direct brake on wealth.
Related Concepts
- Taking responsibility for others’ happiness disempowers them
- Money works for you when it expresses your alignment
- Feeling lack creates and sustains the lack
- Stop fixing others to help them change
- Neediness repels what you want
- Gratitude for abundance removes the fear of losing it
- Depersonalizing money creates financial freedom
- You cannot judge the value of your own input