Re: Risk

“That’s too risky.”

I hear it all the time.

When people ask what I do for a living some people respond by telling me about a cousin or brother-in-law who either “lost” a ton of money in real estate, or recently made a fortune.

It never fails though – if they have the distant cousin who “lost it all” they have formed an opinion that buying a home, renovating it and selling it at a profit is just “too risky”.

I usually just smile and listen to their story.  Here is reality from my perspective and how I would like to respond:

“Of course my business is risky. So is yours. I have just learned to reduce the trust the process and focus on doing good work and helping other people.”

When I say “your business” it may be that you own a small business like I do.  You get up everyday and you are in charge of how you spend your time and how you respond to the challenges that may come.

Your business may mean that you work for someone else.  You get a paycheck every other Friday.  Your job may be your business.  It’s how you make a living.

Your job may have risks as well.  You could be going to work at a job you don’t really care for, or working with people you would never associate with outside of work.  That causes a tremendous amount of stress.  Some people don’t feel fulfilled by their work – but they say to themselves “Hey. It’s a check.”

Few people want to admit but their job may not be all that secure.  Millions of people learned that lesson the hard way in our last recession.  Thankfully, we are through that era as a broader economy.  Sociologists are telling us that many of the people that were laid off and have gotten back to work don’t seem to be as happy working today. Economists are telling us that those people who lost their jobs are still not earning as much as they were in the early and mid 2000’s.

For those people that are back to work, they are getting a check, but something is still missing.  Just having a job sometimes isn’t enough.  Sometimes people want a purpose as well.

I think that is one of the reasons we as a country are having such a surge in entrepreneurship.

I am a big fan of choosing your own destiny.  By that I mean – planning and mapping out where you want to be – as opposed to being at the mercy of your boss’ plans for you.

If you started working 5 or 10 or even 20 years ago – are you where you hoped you would be in your career today?

Did you have bigger plans at the beginning and over time slowly lost your dreams as they got mixed in with the challenges of everyday life?

What if you could turn it around and start enjoying your work more?

I hope you come and join all of our WREIA members are our meeting this Monday. I want to share a plan that we have devised, utilized and shared with other students.  Some of those students have gone on to mini-retirements of their own.  They checked out of the workplace and are enjoying their life on their own terms.

One of the biggest risks for all of us is that we spend all our time and energy living a life that is not rewarding, unfulfilled, and suddenly realize that we have put all our  effort into building another persons dreams – and not focusing on our own future.

Join us on Monday and take away a few tools and exercises you can use to get focused and get determined.  Just being at WREIA on Monday and taking action on what you learn will help you finish this year strong and start 2016 with passion.

Remember – We are in the home stretch of 2015:

Make this week a great week for your business!