It's a Hard Road, But You Reach the Top: Joe Murphy on Building His Own Lane

Freedom Files is our interview series. Real people who live on their own clock, telling us what that actually looks like. No scripts, no polish, real people in real places.

For this Freedom Files conversation, Jabari sat down with Joe Murphy, owner of PureJunk Media, over video while Joe was on the road. Twenty years in corporate construction came before five years of building a marketing business he can run from anywhere there is a computer, which is exactly where he was when he answered these questions: standing in the street, on a trip, working.

The conversation

Jabari: How would you say you live the unconventional lifestyle?

Joe: My job is marketing, so I can take it anywhere there's a computer. Today I'm standing in the street and it's a good way of living. I work more hours than I used to, but I'm not miserable, because I'm doing what I want to do.

Jabari: How long have you been doing it this way?

Joe: About five years now. I was in corporate construction for twenty years before that. Back in the '90s there was no money in the kind of work I actually wanted to do, so I listened to the adults, got a job, and worked harder than anybody else. And there were still bills that needed to be paid. So I sat down and figured out what to do next.

Jabari: What advice would you give someone in their first year of going out on their own?

Joe: It's not going to be sunshine and roses. It's a hard road. It's a dirt road, and it's the one that goes over the mountain. If you go over the mountain, you eventually reach the top, but you've got to enjoy the journey while you're on it. Overnight success takes ten years, twenty years, to happen.

Jabari: What's a habit you get to do more of now that you have this freedom?

Joe: Travel, mostly, and I keep working while I'm doing it. Once you're running your own thing, there's always a new headache. First it's figuring out how to pay the bills, then it's figuring out how to pay an employee. But you're always facing a new challenge, and that's really the goal.

Jabari: How do you keep work from taking over completely?

Joe: Honestly, I'm still figuring that out. But I make sure that on a trip, I leave the technology behind for one day. No phone, no way for anybody to reach me unless it's an emergency. You have to make time for yourself and learn to put up those boundaries, especially early on, when you're hustling so hard you'll say yes to anything.

Jabari: What would you tell someone who wants to start their own thing but doesn't know where to begin?

Joe: Do as much networking as you can. Your network is your net worth. And I don't mean showing up expecting business. People don't work with you just because you show up, they work with you because you made a relationship. Go there to make a friend, not a sale. If you help enough people reach their dream, you'll reach your own.

Jabari: What does the freedom lifestyle mean to you?

Joe: You don't have to answer to anybody, but you answer to everybody, your employees, your clients, whoever's counting on you that day. Once your machine is running the way it should, that's real freedom. It's being able to do what you want, when you want, even if it doesn't mean you stop working. My grandmother used to tell a story about her dad telling her, "we're not poor, we just don't have any money, we have what we need." That stuck with me.

Jabari: Any last words for someone thinking about going their own way?

Joe: Just go for it. Talk to yourself like you'd talk to your best friend. If your best friend walked in and said the things you tell yourself, you'd tell them they're wrong. The bully will always be there, telling you what you can't do, and I work on quieting mine every day too. But you put it in check. You let yourself go after it. Anything is possible.

What stays with us

Joe didn't quit a job to chase a lifestyle. He worked twenty years first, learned what he actually wanted, and then built a business that let him run it from a street corner, a job site, or the front seat of his car. That's the part that matters here: freedom wasn't the starting point, it was five years of hard road after two decades of paying dues. The road being hard doesn't cancel the freedom. It's the price of it.

New Freedom Files conversations land here as we film them. If there's someone whose story belongs here, tell us at crew@no925.co.