Do what you love & the money will come
They say do what you love and the money will come. But they leave out the part about the fact that sometimes you have to do what you don’t like to do to do what you want to do, and that as an entrepreneur, the highs are higher and the lows are lower.
Over the past six months, Alyssa and I talked a lot about the future of our business. We asked ourselves questions like: how big do we want to get? who are our ideal clients (really)? and are we in this for the long haul or do we want to sell someday? We knew we needed to answer these questions to determine what we were building toward.
We came together for our business partner retreat in June, prepared to share our individual thoughts. I’m not going to lie, although we had already talked ourselves in circles over these topics, today was when we were going to define them in detail, and I was nervous – would if we were on totally different pages?
The good news? We weren’t. I walked away from the day feeling refreshed, rejuvenated and excited about the future of Prosper Strategies. Together, in a matter of hours, Alyssa and I had found our balance and could see the way forward – or so we thought. We decided we weren’t growing our company to sell it, but to turn it into something we wanted to stay involved in for the long haul, and we came up with three guiding statements to build Prosper around:
- We want build a company of integrity, one that we’re really proud to call ours. I know exactly what this means, and I know Alyssa does too, but it’s harder to define, other than by saying, this means we need to follow our moral compass at every turn – when hiring, firing, and bringing in new work.
- We want to foster an environment our employees love to be in every day and where we all like coming to work. We want to create a place where passionate, entrepreneurial thinkers can be creatively authentic.
- We want to work with clients who are making a significant impact on their industries and the world. Clients we can really get behind and be a big part of building their success.
The highs are higher and the lows are lower
Following our retreat, my goal was to wake up every day and to remember these three things and to make decisions with these guiding pillars at our center. That was, of course, until rather than me owning Prosper Strategies, Prosper Strategies owned me. Within a matter of weeks, two staff members from our small, but growing, company left us days apart from one another and we learned a (now former) client was unable to pay us…to the tune of $50,000.
Remember that whole bit about the fact that the highs are higher and the lows are lower. Need I say more? The wind was knocked straight out of me, and I could barely breath let alone remember each day why I started my own company. I am telling you the honest to God truth when I say, I don’t think I’d still be standing if it wasn’t for Alyssa (and our amazing Prosper crew that completely stepped up to the plate). Having partnership gives you strength in the face of adversity.
Piecing it back together for 2016
At the end of 2015, I was still reeling, and with everything going on I felt like I was losing my creativity (sleepless nights and reviewing the books for the 45th time will do that to you). So as I walked into 2016, my goal was to exercise my creative muscles daily and, once again, to remember why I started this business – oh and to reignite the Prosper blog. To help me in my endeavor, Alyssa bought me the book Creative Confidence, by Tom and David Kelley, the brains behind IDEO and the Stanford d.School.
When her and I sat down to discuss our new blogging approach, I had just finished a section of the book titled, “From Duty to Passion.” Something at the top of the chapter really struck me, but I hadn’t immediately related it to Prosper. There was a sketch of a seesaw: on one side there was a heart and on the other side there was a dollar sign. All the sudden, during our meeting, it hit me – this is our quest: achieving a balance between creating a profitable business and one that also brings us fulfillment, joy and purpose in everyday life and allows us to make a meaningful impact, not just for our clients, but for the world at large.
David and Tom write:
To us, the heart represents humanity, in the form of personal passion or company culture — happiness and emotional well-being. The dollar sign represents the financial gains or business decisions that keep the lights on. The seesaw is a reminder to consciously pause and consider both aspects in decision making…
I grabbed the closest napkin and drew the seesaw for Alyssa (I know that sounds cliche and there was totally a piece of paper sitting right next to it, but when the light bulb struck the napkin was closer, and I had to get the burst of creative energy down.)
As Tom and David gracefully articulate, doing what you love doesn’t always mean the money will come. You have to balance what you love, with what you’re good at and what people will pay you to do. The real truth is that sometime the lines get blurred or in this analogy the seesaw tips too far to one side or the other.
Love vs. Money
This idea of Love vs. Money is one way of expressing that we believe it’s as much about people and making an impact as it is about turning a profit, and with every decision, we need to seek a balance. Here, we’re sharing our journey – the highs, the lows, the things we want to do and those we don’t – in hopes of building a community of other purpose-driven entrepreneurs who we can share with, inspire and learn with along the way on a mutual quest to find balance in our businesses between two important forces: love and money.
