Entrepreneurship and the Two Types of Wealth

During one of the times I went to a Baptist church, I learned about a way of thinking that divides wealth into two categories: capital wealth and spiritual wealth.

This essay is about entrepreneurship, because that's the perspective I know best. I'm not saying entrepreneurs struggle more than people in other careers, but I do think our profession creates unique challenges to maintaining what I would call spiritual wealth.

Capital wealth is easy to measure. You can look at someone's bank account, net worth, or company valuation.

Spiritual wealth, on the other hand, is invisible. I don't have a perfect definition for it, but I'd describe it as a state in which you're so internally fulfilled that it naturally overflows into the people around you. Have you ever met someone who, even while going through difficult circumstances, still treats others with kindness, offers a hug when you need one, and genuinely makes people feel loved? They may not be wealthy financially, but they seem incredibly wealthy spiritually.

For entrepreneurs, maintaining that kind of wealth can be difficult. We constantly face problems that sometimes threaten the existence of our own companies. And because our company often becomes part of our identity, it can feel as if our own future is constantly under threat too. How are we supposed to stay emotionally balanced while working long hours, solving endless problems, and carrying responsibilities that no one else can carry? Sometimes it feels like carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders.

Today was one of those days.

I've been working a lot, including several hours on Saturday, and there are still problems in my company that, if I don't solve them, no one else will. I found myself lying in bed with negative thoughts, not even having the strength to get up.

Then I thought, "I need to go to church."

Over the past few months, church has become my greatest source of spiritual wealth.

I almost didn't go because the friend who usually goes with me isn't going today, so I'll have to go alone. But simply thinking about church immediately changed my mindset. It reminded me that I've been running low on spiritual wealth and that church has become the place where I replenish it.

Personally, I wasn't finding that kind of renewal at work or at the gym.

Another reason I think entrepreneurs are particularly vulnerable to becoming spiritually poor is that startups are almost entirely oriented around capital wealth.

If you choose the venture capital path, you'll spend most of your time trying to increase revenue, valuation, and growth. Your company's goals become your own personal goals. After all, you created it. Its success starts feeling like proof of your competence, while its failures start feeling like proof that you simply weren't good enough.

That creates enormous emotional pressure.

If your company isn't growing the way you hoped, it's easy to start feeling incapable. And the difficult part is that you usually can't say this out loud. If investors sense that you've lost confidence in yourself or your company, why would they invest in you? So many founders suffer in silence while projecting confidence to everyone around them.

Over the past few months, I've started believing that spiritual wealth grows when your identity is rooted in something that doesn't rise and fall with circumstances.

Relationships can end.

Companies can fail.

Money can disappear.

Even the people we love won't be with us forever.

If our identity depends entirely on any of those things, then our emotional stability rises and falls with them. We spend our lives trying to balance one fragile thing after another.

For me, faith in God has become that unchanging foundation.

It gives me something constant that exists independently of my successes and failures. Something that doesn't become more valuable when my startup grows or less valuable when it struggles.

That has become my source of spiritual wealth.

I'm not trying to be impartial here.

I don't make any money by convincing anyone to believe in God, nor do I have anything specific to gain from writing this.

I'm simply sharing something that has changed my life.

As an entrepreneur, I spent years trying to solve everything by myself and relying only on the physical world to guide my decisions and define my identity. It was exhausting.

Since my faith has become a source of spiritual wealth, I've become more emotionally stable. And, perhaps surprisingly, I also think it's made me a better entrepreneur.

So if you're a founder who feels like you're trying to optimize every metric except your soul, maybe it's worth asking whether you're investing in both kinds of wealth.

❤️