__________________________________________________________________________________________
10/25/16
8:25pm
My friend and I sit together in a low lit cafe; with good food, good coffee, good music, and very cool art on the walls; and discuss business ideas. We love this place. And we love to sit together and talk. It’s freaking fun! We are successful already.
Questions have been presenting themselves to me as my twenties ended and my thirties began: Does this excite me? Do I feel drawn to it?
***Is the time and energy of making money off of this worth it to me?***
That last one is the more important one to me, I have found. In my later twenties I really played with different ways I could make money. I discovered that I could make money off of literally anything. Anything I tried, there was money to be found. I decided to define Success as whether I could see myself living off the money I saw coming in. And lo and behold, I could see myself living off of anything I tried! And yet, none of these avenues turned into the way that I make the money I live off of. But, why? Well…actually having to put in the focus and effort of building success in any of these areas simply didn’t interest me. Actually, focus and effort pretty much turned me off. Yet I do know that you can only get out of something what you put in. So there was a dilemma. I know that to up my level of income, I must up my level of output. And upping my level of output wasn’t worth it to me. So, I had to be happy right where I was. And I was in a way. I was happy that I wasn’t slaving away anywhere I didn’t want to be. But I still wanted to figure out how to achieve more income. And the question arose: What area of interest feels worth my time and effort to make money off of it?
There’s an important distinction here. For me, at least. Some people ask themselves, what do I love to do? What brings me satisfaction? There are plenty of things I love to do and that bring me satisfaction. But I want to do them simply for the satisfaction, not with the added focused effort of turning it into money: Of coming up with a brand, streamlining that, creating a website, marketing it, going to events to promote my services, advertising, talking about it with others as a service I could provide them, truly believing that I can satisfy clients and make them feel good about spending their money on me, answering emails and phone calls, writing emails, making phone calls, producing content related to it, researching the market, targeting a market, testing out ideas on an audience, seeking out feedback and utilizing it, keeping my eyes on the future, figuring out competition, figuring out how to advance in changing landscapes, figuring out growth and expansion, and all the other myriad details of turning something into a business. In my eyes, that’s what upping my level of output involves. So, christ! I better really love putting in that type of effort or else focus on a lower-effort 9-5 and use that money to then do the things I love for fun. And believe me, I see nothing wrong with living that way! Whatever satisfies you and makes you happy! Where I got tripped up in the whole lower-effort 9-5 was that I put a lot of my money towards figuring out how to make money off of the things I love rather than do them for fun.
But yet! Fun is an important ingredient! As I said to my friend in this cafe that we love: “The more fun we have with this, the better we’re going to do with it.” And why do I believe that? Because when everything I listed above becomes fun, because the idea of doing this thing I love in a way that makes me money is truly exciting and joy inducing for me, then it is worth my time and effort to make the money. So…to crystalize this even further for myself:
***What will make, making money, fun? ***
Ah….now that is a question I am enjoying asking myself. And I’m feeling the answers coming. Yippee!
__________________________________________________________________________________________