Have You Lost Sight of The Purpose of Your Business?

Let me begin this post with a story.

There was a rich guy who took a vacation and decided to getaway to Mexico. While in Mexico, he stayed in a posh beach house where local fishermen go out everyday to bring back their daily catch.

One day, the guy bumped into one of the fishermen during his walk on the beach. They started to converse and he learned that the fishermen go out to the sea in the morning, come back around 3 hours later, sell his catch for that day to a hawker and spends the rest of the day hanging out, singing with his friends and spending time with his family.

As the conversation continued, the rich guy asked the fisherman why don’t he get a small boat instead of that raft. That way, he can multiply his output by 3 times. And if he worked overtime, he can further increase that by 200%. Then in a year’s time, he would have enough money to buy a ship.

Then as he catch more fish and multiply his output, in 5 years of working 18 hours day, he can introduce an IPO and create a company. By that time, he’ll be rich and free to do what he wants to do.

After explaining the details, he asked, what will you do then? The fisherman thought for a while and said…

Well, I would like to sing with my buddies, spend time with my family and watch my kids grow up…

What Do You Really Want?

We all have an ultimate objective when we started a business. We want freedom. We want a comfortable life or perhaps we want a certain kind of house.

But we never just want the money. Most of us don’t fall in love with money… we fall in love with what the money can buy. I think it’s important that we stop once in a while to remind ourselves of that.

A lot of people, myself included sometimes, work endlessly to make more money. We don’t normally have the ultimate purpose be the incentive of working. Instead, we let making more money be our focus. We’ve lost sight of the fact that we’ve already got what we initially wanted.

As a result, a lot people get frustrated with life because it seems that they never get what they want.

Take a break. Give yourself some credit because you did achieve what you set out to do. You just didn’t know it.

Make very clear to yourself that making more money is not the goal. Enjoying life is.