Stop Aiming For Profit If You Want Your Business To Grow
From creative pursuits to side hustles, getting into business for the money is like screaming at a cat to obey your orders.
There is always a story behind someone wanting to pursue something. But the significance of that story and how long it is hinges on several factors. Some of it will depend on how long we’ve been pursuing this objective. Others will be on the underlying values that this goal speaks to.
Not every story has to be an epic adventure though. Sometimes we pursue things for the simplest of reasons. And that’s okay.
But it’s well worth looking at some of those simple reasons from time to time and really determine if something is actually worth pursuing for those reasons. Because it could be the difference between growing yourself or wasting your time.
One of the biggest goals that people have these days is to grow a business. Whether it’s a side hustle, jumping into the gig economy, or leaving a job to start a business from the ground floor, these are the starting points of typically lengthy stories.
But they can be dangerously cut short when they are focused on a specific outcome or are pursued for a specific reason.
That reason and outcome is to be profitable.
Here is why.
It Kills Other Reasons
Obviously, the notion is crazy on the surface. Every business ever created is meant to be generating you revenue and therefore profit. But that’s kind of the point.
That’s the businesses job. That’s not your job.
Your job is to find a way to make that work up to a point that you are comfortable with what you are getting and putting in. But a lot of people miss out on that.
Partially because money is an addictive object that messes with our minds. When we focus purely on profit, we tend to lose the other reasons for why we started a business in the first place.
This is significant because a business is an extension of ourselves. What we think will determine how we act and how the business develops over time. While being profit oriented will help in bolster a companies revenues in some cases, it can lead to a lot of terrible and exploitative tactics.
We’re seeing that already with big companies. Sure they are making a killing and their stock values are incredibly high, but aiming for endlessly higher profits quarter after quarter and year after year causes issues.
Mass layoffs are routine. Employees feeling disengaged with their work and with the company they are working with. Companies will cut costs by cutting corners on production or sourcing weaker material or participate in child labour.
And even though medium and small sized companies lack the large scaling resources of massive corporations, those companies can indulge in the same practices in their own way.
They can take on more and more clients than what they can handle and force employees to work overtime (without additional pay) to meet the requests.
A small local bakery store did exactly that. The owner who was making their employees do that is no longer there.
Point is, seeking profit as the sole reason for getting into business brings out the worst in us.
It Wastes Your Creativity And Talents
Getting into business is a massive leap and a different world than working a day job. What safeguards are there with a day job are now gone when starting a business and that changes everything.
It changes how you think about the problems you are facing as well.
Just like with any goal we pursue in our lives, goals change us in some way. We have to acquire new habits and think a bit differently to achieve our goals in most situations. Starting a business is no different.
Starting a business means expecting yourself to make changes to your life, to dive into new things, to learn and grow. But also to learn your reasoning for doing so.
If the goal is to ensure your business is turning a profit and that you become rich, then that will influence your behaviour and how you see those things. You’ll focus your attention on things that will turn a profit rather than on genuinely helping people or serving people.
As a result it narrows your creative thinking and the talents that you are working on. When they are focused solely on driving a profit then it’s a matter of focusing on the tactics that will get you there rather than practicing a broader scope every single day.
And if you do a terrible job at turning a profit, then it’s going to result in wishful thinking. Such was the case of many games my brother worked on over the years. Most never managed to launch at all because they lacked the resources and promised employees would get paid after the game is launched and they make their sales.
This created development issues and the games were never launched. Meanwhile every employee was thinking this new game would make them into millionaires.
It Wastes Your Time
If a business is already built to turn a profit, making your own objective to make it profitable is redundant. It’s like yelling at a cat to obey your orders.
Cats are assholes. They couldn’t give a damn about what you’re telling them.
My roommate had to do a few check-ins for one of his friend’s cats while his friends were out of town. The cat is a rescue and it seems like his scent triggers this cat to attack him.
Despite giving the cat plenty of treats, telling the cat to not attack on multiple occasions, and being friendly with the cat, the cat still attacks him.
Building a business with the intention of making a profit plays out kinda similarly. The business won’t take a bite out of your leg, but your business sorta has a mind of its own and it’s focused on making money.
Telling your business to be making money is along the same lines as telling the cat to not do the bad thing. It’s going to be doing it anyway and the question is how are you going to adapt to it?
Doubling down on the same sort of thing doesn’t fully solve the problem.
The nature of businesses themselves isn’t going to change. Every business has a specific goal in mind and it needs money in order to achieve that goal and function in the way it’s supposed to. Profitability is merely a side objective despite the fact so many people make a big deal about it.
As human beings, learning that relationship as early as possible when pursuing a side hustle or a business idea is key because it changes how we approach everything. It leads to the rationale that you don’t need to write a best-seller book on your first try. It leads to thinking you don’t need millions upon millions of Youtube subscribers to run a successful channel.
It leads to you being smarter about the people you hire for your business and to truly value the people choosing to work with you. It leads to you being a better human being actually contributing something good to the world and those around you.
And that’s what building a business is about.
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