Two things really stood out for me in your article and the comments.

Firstly, the importance that entrepreneurs develop the ability to predict change. Today the rate of change is only increasing and as an entrepreneur you need to make sure you don’t slip into a comfort zone. You need to constantly develop the skills that will help you predict change.

Secondly, the link between personal freedom and the management of emotions and finances. John K. Lunde makes a great observation in the second paragraph of his comment. It is all to easy to let emotions take control and start spending wildly. Before you know it things change and your not prepared.

Too many people treat any source of money they find as a dependable income, sometimes even before they actually succeed (counting chickens before they hatch, etc.). What’s important to realize is that personal freedom is directly linked to management of emotions and finances that money can bring.

I’ve heard many people say that a poor man will always be poor no matter how much money he makes – and it’s so true. You did two things differently in your Ebay experience that made all the difference:

-you recognized when the easy money was over (and that you were only benefiting from the easy money rather than deluding yourself that you had magically acquired online retailing skills that made you that money) and got out

-you saved your windfall to power the next step of life. If you had bought a fancy car or some other trapping of life with your money, you would never have been able to self finance a 4 year stay in Africa and change your life.

Now let’s look at a more common approach.
-20 year old (Joe) discovers Ebay buyers are foolish with money
-Joe starts making 2K, then 4K, then 8K each month in income
-Joe puts $20K down on a shiny new BMW and moves into a brand new apartment, costing him just $4K per month together and that must be fine because he’s making $8K a month and doubling fast!
-Ebay throws Joe a curveball and he only makes $5K the next month. Instead of
-Sellers flood the market and buyers get more price conscious, pushing Joe’s profit margin down from 20% to 5% over the next few months and requiring Joe to either increase his volume (sell more stuff at lower margin) or rapidly find better niches and suppliers to improve his margins.
-Joe whines about Ebay, other sellers, buyers, and the world in general as his credit goes in the toilet, his car gets repo’ed, he gets evicted from the apartment and he moves back in with mom.

Let’s just say that somewhere you learned something very important along the way about saving money and maintaining personal flexibility, and wherever you picked it up, that’s probably the most important lesson for most people.