Happiness as a currency: how founders build a life and business that feel like them

Happiness is a terrible KPI.

Until you realise it is the only one that makes any sense in a happy life and business that actually feels like you.

The real goal under all the goals

Think about the way the last year felt, not just the way it looked on paper.

All the doing, building, striving. The launches. The rebrands. The “big quarter coming up” pep talks.

If you strip the jargon off it, most founders are really saying the same quiet thing underneath:

I just want to be happy, in a life and business that feels like me.

That’s what happiness as a currency really is: treating happiness as something you actively invest in, not a bonus if everything goes well.

Not happy as in “always delighted”.

Happy as in:

• Proud of where the hours go.

• Not dreading the calendar.

• Earning in a way that doesn’t hollow you out.

Every time a founder sits down with Story Of Me, the slides and the strategy are the front door.

The real conversation is: can I build a business that lets me be myself and still win.

Big, honest wants change everything

Most founders treat happiness like a side quest.

Sleep a bit more.

Say no once in a while.

Squeeze pockets of joy around an already overloaded strategy.​

The problem is: small, polite goals let everything stay.

You can keep all your current offers, all your clients, all your habits.

You just push a bit harder and hope it somehow feels better.

But the moment you name a big, honest want...

“I want a business that feels like me and a life I’m not desperate to escape from.”

“I want to be known for one clear thing, not seven half-hearted ones.”

“I want to earn well without hating my week.”

...everything changes.

Big, honest wants do not ask for tweaks.

They demand cuts.

You suddenly see that a shocking amount of what fills your calendar has nothing to do with the life and business you say you want.

It might be profitable. It might impress people.

But it does not belong in the story you are trying to live.

That is the real shift:

Not “How do I do more?”

But “What no longer makes sense if I take my own happiness seriously?”

Ambition as a filter, not a flex

Ryan Holiday talks about how everything you say yes to is also a no to something else.​

Ambition is not just about going after more; it is about having something clear enough that you can say, “No, that doesn’t fit.”

Big, honest wants work like a filtration system.

Once a founder owns a bigger, truer goal...

“I want to work four days a week without my income dropping.”

“I want to be known for one thing, not seven.”

“I want my work to feel like me, not like a performance.”

...everything else has to pass through that filter.

Clients. Collaborations. Speaking invites.

Suddenly “it’s a great opportunity” is not enough.

Ambition stops being a shiny word on a pitch deck and becomes a tool.

You use it to say no from something, not just yes to everything.

Treating happiness as a currency

Here is the uncomfortable truth: you are already trading in happiness.

You trade it every time you take on a misfit client “for the money”.

Every time you agree to a project that lights up your Stripe account and drains your face.

Every time you say, “It’s just this season,” and then live there for three years.

When you treat happiness as a currency, you stop pretending you are playing a neutral game.

You admit there is always an exchange happening:

• This retainer for that Sunday-night dread.

• This hire for that deep breath of space.

• This speaking slot for that sense of alignment.

The question is not “Am I optimising for happiness?”

The question is “Am I aware of how much of it I am spending, and on what?”

If you took your life and work seriously as a source of happiness, a shocking amount of your current to-do list would not survive.

The point is not to burn everything down.

The point is to see the trade-offs clearly enough to stop pretending they are accidental.

Where your story becomes a decision tool

This is where Story Of Me really lives.

When you treat happiness as a currency, your story stops being a neat paragraph on LinkedIn and turns into a decision-making tool.

A clear story of who you are, what you care about and what you are here to do becomes:

• A filter for clients:

  Does this brief belong in the story I’m trying to live, or will it pull me off course?

• A filter for opportunities:

  Is this stage, this partnership, this pivot something the “future me” in my story would say yes to?

• A filter for pace:

  Is the way I’m working right now compatible with the life I say I want?

Founders come into Story Of Me wanting better words.

They leave with a clearer sense of what they will no longer trade away, time, energy, health, presence, for the sake of looking impressive.

At that point, your “about” page is no longer PR.

It is a boundary.

A public line in the sand about the way you want to build a business that feels like you, not a performance for everyone else.

Moments of radical honesty

Again and again, the same pattern shows up in founder conversations: the cost of the current story quietly gets too high in happiness.​

There is the founder with the beautifully “successful” consulting practice.

Booked solid. Big logos. Great fees.

On paper, they have won.

In conversation, they admit they feel most alive with one specific kind of leader or problem, and deadened by the rest.​

Once that truth is named, their story and positioning start to shift so that “the work that feels like me” becomes the centre of gravity, not a side category.

There is the founder whose product could, in theory, “scale to the moon”.

Investors love that line. Their nervous system does not.​

Underneath the pitch deck is a different want: a calm, profitable, smaller company that leaves room for a real life.

When that want is finally said out loud, growth plans get simpler, and “deliberately small, deeply excellent” becomes a more honest story to build around.​​

There is the founder who comes in asking for “sharper messaging”.

What they actually want is permission.

Permission to move on from a niche they have outgrown, without throwing away the credibility they have built.​

Their story becomes the bridge: a through-line that honours the old chapter while making it clear what game they are playing now.

Different contexts, same currency shift every time:

From “How do I keep everyone happy?”

To “What does a happy life and business look like for me, and how do I build around that?”

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What are you really optimising for this year?

So, what are you really optimising for this year?

Not the polite answer. Not the LinkedIn version.

The one you would say if no one could screenshot it.

A few questions to sit with:

• If happiness really is a currency in your business, what would you stop spending it on?

• What would you quietly retire, even if it still “works” on paper?

• Which offers, clients or habits give you a positive return in energy, not just income?

• Where are you spending happiness faster than you are earning it back?​

And then the harder one:

If you wrote your “story of me” as if happiness were the primary currency, what would change?

• Would the way you talk about your work shift?

• Would your niche narrow, or widen?

• Would your calendar look the same three months from now?

You do not have to post that story.

You do not have to turn it into a big rebrand.

But you do have to be willing to see it.

Because once you see the story you are actually trying to live, you cannot unsee all the ways your current strategy either funds it, or bankrupts it.

Small, polite goals will always let you wriggle out of that truth.

Big, honest wants will not.

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