You are a hard working, smart business person; have kept your head down and built up your business from scratch to a sizable scale.

Announcement after announcement, the news and media talks about a way of financing businesses.

You’re curious to learn more about it and so you meet with these financiers.

The financiers tell you they take a portion of your earnings forever at a discount to provide financing.

You feel uncomfortable but you keep listening because everyone else does it.

Then they tell you, if the value of your future earnings does not exceed the amount they give you, they are entitled to get paid back first, before anyone else is paid back.

Now you’re skeptical, but hey, everyone else is doing it.

Everyone around you cheers you on to get this done, it’s what success means in this land.

The financiers push you to think bigger; show you a glimpse of the promise land where you are the emperor.

It requires their financing.

You’re not sure what it all means, but you really need the validation. You’ve been toiling for years, the publicity proves the naysayers wrong.

You go for it.

You do it multiple times over a few years. The validation feels great, but deep inside something feels off. You ignore it, but it doesn’t go away.

You finally wake up one day and realize what it is.

You realize how little of your life’s work you actually own.

You realize the cost of the ownership you gave up along the way.

You realize the risk you took on, to give the financiers additional protection for financing you didn’t need.

You realize what purpose the publicity, announcements and cheering serve.

You ask yourself: was it all worth it? could you have gotten here without it?

Ownership. That one word takes an entirely new meaning for you.