My dad charged me to use the lawnmower.
When I was a kid, I wanted a paper route. I thought how great it would be to ride my bike and sling papers, perfectly landing on doorsteps. Then my mom reminded me it was 1990, and not 1950. I needed to get more creative than that. Growing up in Colorado we either had lots of snow, or plenty of spring showers. Opportunity came from the sky in the form of snow removal or lawn care. I ran with it.
In my early days, I expected I would be rich. After all, $4 an hour would add up fast right? From my first paying gig, I found the money didn’t really matter. Being helpful, and providing a service to someone that they needed, and saving them from doing it was more rewarding the cash in hand. I don’t think I processed this much at the time, but helping people was literally the objective. It bothered me if I needed to perform my job and they weren’t home. I remember that feeling when hearing “Why don’t you come by later, I won’t be here, but I will leave you $10 under the doormat.” Painful! That wasn’t what I wanted.
When I was 10 or so, my dad loaned me the lawnmower. But there was a catch. I had to pay him a rental fee, clean it, and gas it up. As a budding entrepreneur, I thought this was total B.S. $2.50 to rent the lawnmower!? My dad reminded me that I needed to be responsible for my equipment, if it wasn’t mine, to begin with, even more, caring than ever. To make money costs money, and I can’t expect to make money with free resources and handouts. +1 point dad.
Hard work and making the right choices is a critical thing in most businesses. But when you built your entire life on that idea, it weighs on you every day in every way. I know a lot of business owners. I only know a few that are entrepreneurs in the truest sense. To me, being a business owner feels like I’m serving the bottom line. Leveraging assets, employees, and relationships to get to my financial goals. Somewhere in there, I feel like a lot can get lost. Sometimes entrepreneurs invent new things or maybe pave the road for unique ideas. The real winners are the ones that do that with style, humility, and putting people before all else.
Being an entrepreneur means taking a greater risk. Elon Musk comes to mind. Even after making millions selling PayPal, he still risks it all on SpaceX and Tesla. At one point, he was almost broke and mortgaged his last dime from his home to push one last sprint on Tesla. It was going to work or go up in flames.
The driving force for Musk wasn’t money. He is an entrepreneur, with an idea, a passion, and a dream bigger than himself. A future of transportation that will change the world. How can you not bet on that?
For me, being passionate about helping people led me to where I am. After working for soul-less companies in marketing departments, helping them chase that dollar.
Helping others has been the core of who I am and continue to be. Over the years I moved from designer to developer, to strategist. Solving problems and helping is paramount to my life and something I will continue to embrace.
What about you?
