The Challenges and Rewards of Being a Business Builder

I am living proof that you can do well as a business builder, even if you hate hard work.

For me, hard work boils down to one of two things:

• Doing something that bores me.
• Doing something I don’t care about.

One of the best things about owning your own business is that you can make it into anything you want. That means you’re doing something that interests you at every stage of its development. And since you have control over your company’s future direction, you can’t help but care about it.

How do you keep your work interesting?

The answer, for me, is simple: What is new and challenging is always interesting. It’s the old, routine work that is dull and boring.

I don’t think I’m unusual in that respect. I think almost everybody feels the same way. Yes, routines are comfortable and relaxing. But it’s the new and challenging work that makes life exciting and fun.

By changing your role as your business grows – from primarily employee to primarily manager, and then to primarily business builder and wealth builder – you fill your business life with interesting challenges. At every stage of your company’s growth, you have to overcome new obstacles. To do so, you have to learn new skills… and work hard.

You may feel, as I did years ago, that you don’t want to work harder; you want to work easier. That’s good. Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

In fact, looking back at my career, I see a pattern of starting work and then trying to make it easy. I get an idea. It seems very exciting. I work with someone to help me launch the business. And from then on, I’m trying to get other people to take over my work so I can do something new… and, therefore, more interesting.

[Ed. Note: Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]