The Pathway To Freedom

You don’t get paid for effort. You get paid for value.

Creating Independent Value In The Marketplace

The goal for starting my business 18 years ago was freedom. Freedom from the whims, politics, and preferences of others — the ability to build something stable and profitable that aligns with how I desire to live.

After six months of studying business models that promise freedom, I found that many of them delivered dependency. The goal was to find a business model that did not have the weakness of one entity or one person being able to change the profitability of my company based on their decisions, values, whims or preferences. I found one that stood apart: professional trading.

Trading, when done skillfully, allows a person to engage directly with the global marketplace — without a boss, without clients, and without a gatekeeper.

But to see trading only as a way to make money is to miss the deeper principle:

Traders add value to the marketplace in ways that stabilize and improve it for everyone involved.

How Traders Create Value

When most people think of traders, they picture screens full of charts and numbers. But at its core, trading is an act of service to the economy.

Here’s how traders add value:

• The provide liquidity. Traders stand ready to buy what others want to sell and sell what others want to buy. This keeps markets moving and it keeps prices fair. Without liquidity providers, investors and companies would struggle to enter or exit positions efficiently.

• They help discover price. Every trade reflects a judgment — an opinion of value. Collectively, these opinions form what we call price discovery. The continuous tug-of-war between buyers and sellers tells the story about what something is worth right now. That’s value creation through clarity.

• They absorb risk others want to avoid. Traders willing to take the opposite side of a transaction allow others to hedge their exposure and protect against uncertainty. A farmer locking in a corn price, an airline securing future fuel costs, or a tech company managing stock-based compensation, or a retiree using options to protect a lifetime of savings — all rely on traders to make those risk-management moves possible.

• They reward insight and discipline. Markets are a meritocracy of ideas. The more you understand supply, demand, psychology, and probability, the more valuable your participation becomes. You’re compensated in direct proportion to your understanding of how value moves, therefore profiting from changes in market prices.

In other words, traders create value by bringing order, efficiency, and balance to the world’s financial ecosystems.

The Elon Example: Value Is Perception Backed By Results

To understand how markets reward value, consider Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package at Tesla. It isn’t guaranteed money. It’s a performance-based contract — a reward that only materializes if shareholder value increases dramatically.

That’s the same principle traders live by every day: You are paid in proportion to the value you create, not the time you spend.

Musk’s value to Tesla isn’t his personality or fame; it’s the perception that his leadership, innovation, and risk-taking can multiply the company’s worth.

The market recognizes and prices that value — just as it does when traders correctly anticipate and respond to changing conditions.

This is the essence of wealth creation: You don’t get paid for effort. You get paid for value.

The Independent Trader’s Edge

Trading is one of the few endeavors where:

• You answer to no employer or client.
• Your profits are determined by your understanding, preparation, risk tolerance, and discipline.
• No single company or person can destroy your livelihood — because your skill is the product.

That kind of independence is rare and precious.

It represents a form of self-determination — the freedom to chart your own course, set your own goals, and build a lifestyle aligned with your beliefs and convictions.

But there’s another, higher form of self-determination that Scripture speaks of: the freedom to choose eternal life. Just as a trader must study the markets to understand how value moves, we must study the Word of God to understand how life itself moves — from temporal to eternal.

Both kinds of knowing require learning first. You can’t trade what you don’t understand, and you can’t truly know God without first seeking Him through His Word.

Of course, you “could” trade what you don’t understand and “happen” to get lucky, but is that sustainable? Will that approach create consistent profits to sustain a business? …a lifestyle?

“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” — Jeremiah 29:13

Learning is the bridge between desire and knowing — in markets and in life. The trader learns patterns, workflows, systems, cycles, and probabilities; the believer learns principles and promises. Both are acts of faith — one in the order of markets, the other in the order of eternity.

When you develop skill, you gain the ability to make profitable decisions regardless of circumstances. When you develop faith, you gain the ability to make righteous decisions regardless of circumstances. In both cases, the reward is freedom — one temporal, the other eternal.

That’s the true edge of the independent trader: not just financial self-determination, but a life built on learning, knowing, and choosing wisely.

A Lesson for Visionaries

Even if you never trade a single stock or options contract, there’s a takeaway here for every person who has a vision for their lives:

Develop skills that the marketplace values, not positions that depend on approval.

Elon Musk’s compensation, a trader’s profits, the corporate career journey of an employee, or an entrepreneur's customers or contracts all flow from the same place:

Those who can consistently create value for others will never lack opportunity.

When this is understood, every way we earn income — through entrepreneurship, career, or investing — can be shaped to support the life we want to live, not someone else’s priorities.