This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 22-year-old Emil Barr from Ohio. Business Insider has verified Barr’s claims, including his net worth. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I wrote that maintaining a work-life balance will keep you mediocre in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in August, I didn’t think my views were that controversial.
I built my first company, Step Up Social, from my dorm room during my 2021 and 2022 sophomore and junior years at Miami University.
I received thousands of comments beneath the article and on social media on the three-and-a-half hours I slept on average each night, the classes I skipped, the friends I lost, and how I outsourced everything nonessential, including cooking food, meaning I gained 80 pounds.
It was all so I could spend as much time as possible on my company, and get closer to achieving my goal of being a billionaire by age 30.
Step Up Social was worth $15 million when I exited last year, and my second business, the employee upskilling platform Flashpass, is now valued at $50 million.
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What really surprised me was how negatively many people reacted. Some called me crazy, which I took as a compliment, as I’ve always been a bit weird. Others thought I was a jerk because I suggested they weren’t making money because they weren’t working hard enough
But we can’t be the generation that demands paid internships while we’re still in college, wants to work from home in our pajamas, and preaches this idea that everyone should make six figures and work a four-day week.
I believe advocating for extreme work-life balance is a recipe for mediocrity.
I accept that lots of people have very fulfilling lives working 40-hour weeks and being able to show up for their kids, and that making $20 million in your early 20s is not the norm.
I ate a lot of cheeseburgers and cookies to survive working until 3 a.m.
At the time, it was all about survival. You get really hungry when you’re still working at 3 a.m. Unfortunately, in my college town, the only places open after midnight were the cookie store and the cheeseburger joint, so I ate a lot of those.
Since cutting out the midnight cookies and cheeseburgers, I’ve lost about 30 pounds, but I’d love to lose another 30 in the next year. I’ve tried to do things like hire trainers, but my work schedule is still far too demanding. I care very little about how I look and more about how my weight and health affect decision-making.
Focusing on my business instead of getting blackout drunk wasn’t a huge sacrifice
Most of my relationships didn’t survive. But I find college relationships inherently superficial, with very little business yield and far less personal yield than people think. Drinking with a group of quasi-strangers for six hours until I black out has never really appealed to me. It didn’t feel like an immense sacrifice to not have 50 people blowing me up on Snapchat to go to the bar on a Saturday night.
I’ve also had childhood friends reach out and say, “If you don’t hire me for at least $100,000 a year, we’re no longer friends.” Some people become a bit parasitic and feel like they’re entitled to some portion of your wealth.
But I have really valuable and deep relationships with others who are either starting and building companies or who have built and sold them. There’s such a small group of entrepreneurs who have also really had to make sacrifices.
I’ve optimized my life to spend more time with my family
As for my family, I don’t think they had any idea what was going on.
I missed most major events, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, from 2021 to 2023. I always thought I would spend more time with them once I had achieved some degree of financial freedom, but I didn’t convey that to them. That was a bit painful for my family, because it felt like I was estranged, and they didn’t know why. But if I had communicated the degree of financial risk and pressure I was under, I think it would have made them far more worried about me.
I think they get it now, especially since I’ve optimized my life to spend time with them. I typically work 100-hour weeks, getting up around 8:30 a.m. and working with minimal breaks until about 6 p.m. Then I’ll spend between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. with family and friends, then work until 1 a.m.
Financial freedom has also enabled me to have a more flexible travel schedule. Sometimes I’ll visit my grandparents in Chicago or my dad in New Mexico. I’ve also been able to gift my family things like cars.
My girlfriend, whom I met at college, has been super supportive. She lives with me and is used to how I work. I’d like to have a family, but I don’t think about it too much, as I’m sure most 22-year-olds don’t.
I would make the same choices again. I was fortunate in how quickly my sacrifices resulted in a return on investment. This was not 15 years of not seeing my family or becoming chronically obese. This was a very concentrated, 24 months of real effort that started with me as an 18-year-old with no money and ended with me being a millionaire.
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