What’s important for people who make a living with their skills to take the next step.

Let's say you have a special skill and can consistently perform tasks.

You receive many requests and have no trouble with daily life. You can even afford some luxuries. At first glance, it seems like a good flow, but as you continue to exchange your skills for compensation, you suddenly hit a wall. It's the wall of 'I can't move forward from this point.' Let's say there's such a person.

If that person can continue the same business scheme for their entire life, then that's fine. If you truly believe you want to do your current job until you die, there's no particular need to change your life. Just keep going as you are.

However, if you glance at the news, phrases like 'jobs that will disappear in the future' dance across the internet. It's a rapidly evolving world. Is it truly possible to continue the same job endlessly until the end of your life?

Technological innovation might occur somewhere, and there might come a time when your skills are no longer useful. With the current business scheme, it might become a world where you can't earn money. Also, due to physical issues, it's possible that continuing the same job will become difficult.

Unless you're exceptionally lucky, I believe it's becoming a world where it's difficult for individuals to continue the same job for their entire lives. That's why, for the turning point that will eventually come, the necessity arises to seize an opportunity to step into the next phase.

However, if you continue to work, always using your skills as a weapon and constantly seeking compensation for them, aren't you often overwhelmed by daily life?

That's where investment becomes necessary, requiring a leap of faith. This applies to money, but also to investing in your own skills. Investing effort. This is what's needed to move to the next step.

It takes considerable courage to treat work for which you usually receive payment as an investment and offer it for free. This is especially true if it's an invitation from someone else, for example. You might feel like you're being used cheaply and become somewhat dissatisfied, wouldn't you?

However, whether it's an invitation from someone else or a project you started yourself, you cannot create work without first offering your skills.

For example, let's say you launch a new business. At this point, no one will give you money upfront, of course. If anyone does, it would be an investor, but for that, you need a presentation, foresight, an appealing personality, and a business plan. To earn money by doing something new, you need something to attract those who would provide funds.

What is that 'something'? Of course, it's a product or service. To create this product or service, you need skills or capital. To start something new, you need your own skills or the financial power to purchase them.

At this point, I think those who can neither offer skills nor pay money should just continue their current lives. They are likely people who feel fulfillment and future potential in their current work, rather than taking the risk of stepping out.

However, if you want to change something, you need to pay one of those. To create a new direction. And to start building the next future. If you think you can achieve something without paying anything, I believe that will be difficult. No one is going to do it for you.

If someone invites you to a business and says, 'I want to borrow your strength to realize this idea, let's do it together.' What you should consider is not how much compensation you'll get for the skills you provide. What you should consider is how much value there will be in realizing that business or idea.

If it truly has value and can become a big business, the compensation will be far greater than selling a single skill. For example, if you grow that idea to the point of selling it in two or three years, even if the split is fifty-fifty, you could conservatively estimate tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of yen if it goes well. In that case, you would no longer be just a skill holder, but could proudly live as an entrepreneur, investor, or founder. Alternatively, there's also the possibility of a large executive compensation.

Conversely, if you participate as a subcontractor, you would be throwing away all those possibilities. This is because you would merely be an outsourced party or an employee. If that business has the potential to transform in the future, being a subcontractor would definitely be a 'loss'.

However, when an offer comes, it's better to remove future financial calculations from your mind when making a decision. The value I just mentioned is not monetary value, but whether it can solve problems in the world. It's about whether the proposed idea has that much appeal and future potential.

Next, it's about people. Whether you can develop a constructive and good partnership with the person who invited you, even while clashing at times. Ultimately, I think the human element is significant. What you do is important, but if the question of 'who you do it with' is settled, things will largely work out somehow.

If you feel that assessment is correct, offer your skills and whatever else you have without hesitation. Then, focus solely on growing the business, and if you continue to strive for a big goal, whether it's a sale or an IPO, you will undoubtedly find yourself having moved beyond your former self and stepped onto the next stage.

And finally, here we talk about profits and shares. Thinking about money comes after you've decided, 'I can do this with this person.' After that, it's true that you need to properly decide on shares, terms, and so on, at the beginning. Without this, it will ultimately lead to trouble. Consult with a lawyer or similar, and make sure to firmly establish from the start where you will gain benefits.

Tighten what needs to be tightened, and once you decide to do it, do it thoroughly. It's quite difficult at first, but you'll get used to it. Eliminate any unnecessary hesitation from the start and dive into the business with full force. Surely, if you genuinely feel from the bottom of your heart that you can work with this person, good results will await you, no matter the form.