Only lazy people work !!

That was a statement made at Chris Howard‘s Billionaire Bootcamp last week by “Lifestyle Trader” Aussie Rob – and it really struck a chord with me.

At first it sounds counter-intuitive. People go to work – whether that’s for somebody else or in their own business – and they put in a solid day’s work satisfying their customers, either external customers or internal customers. How’s that lazy? And surely we want people working hard in our businesses don’t we, not being lazy? So how can it be right that people who work are lazy?

Let’s think about the nature of work – for me, work means doing something I’d rather not do. This web definition fits well: “exert oneself by doing mental or physical work for a purpose or out of necessity”. It’s those last three words that matter: ‘out of necessity’ – ie not out of pleasure or desire. And why would I chose to spend my time doing stuff I’d rather not do? Because I’m too lazy to find a way to earn good money doing the stuff I want to do!

And of course, it’s easy to just keep on going to work – where someone tells us what to do, and we have a regular routine that we don’t have to think about. So we don’t have to put in the intellectual (and emotional) effort of moving out of our comfort zone. Even for senior managers, where they have to think a bit about how to serve their shareholders better, there’s still a level of agreed activity that doesn’t need much deep thought. And for many so-called entrepreneurs, their business is really more like a job, just without the security – they’re still doing a lot of the work unthinkingly, and without a real plan for the future.

The work I do with opportunity management, particularly Opportunity Matrix™, is all about finding what me clients want to do, and making sure they have a way to make it pay. Sometimes I have to tell them to stick with the ‘work’ for a bit – while they put in the intellectual and emotional effort to make their passion viable as a means of making a living. Or to be precise, making a life. Because what you do for a living doesn’t have to be work – if it’s something you passionately enjoy. I think it was Confucious who said “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. H Jackson Browne Jr said “Find a job you like and you add five days to every week”. And I speak to many entrepreneurs who tell me “I’m never going to retire, I’m going to keep on doing this until the day I die – I’m having too way too much fun to retire!”

Over the course of the week at Billionaire Bootcamp (I was crewing, not participating, and I still got massive value from it) I’d come to realise that I’ve been looking for some kind of easy answer to take my business – and my life – to the next level. And there isn’t an easy answer. There is a simple one – do the research to understand my market, do the study to enhance my expertise, create an offer that builds on both, and tell people about it. But it’s not necessarily easy – it requires some diligence and effort. And like many ‘entrepreneurs’, I’ve been hoping to find some kind of short-cut – I’ve been too lazy to apply myself to finding the best path for me & my business.

So when Aussie Rob came out with his statement, I realised: I have to work because I’ve been too lazy not to!

Where in your life are you taking the easy option ……… and making your life harder?

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