LABOR DAY

I’m working today. In fact, I spend a lot of all my days working. I am truly blessed because my work doesn’t seem like “work”. I have been blogging for so long that I would actually be sad if I didn’t express my thoughts on a daily basis. I enjoy reviewing my days by way of a blog. My writing is mostly meant for myself, but I hope that when I share it, others will be stimulated and get some benefit from it.

When my family first moved to the United States, the only job my father could get was doing manual labor in a factory, about 50 miles from the farm where we lived. My grandfather who owned the farm plowed the fields using a horse to pull the plow; now that is hard work! In those days working hard meant producing more, either at our job or working the farm. Success was defined by a bigger pay check or a bigger yield from the fields.

How things have changed! Today manual labor is disappearing, and it will become even scarcer with the growth of robotics which will eventually take over most of the existing work, manual and otherwise. More than 40% of the American Workforce sits at a desk. I still hear complaints from small business owners about how hard they are working. The definition of hard work, in my opinion, has changed.

In the “old days” workers were pushed by others, to stay busy and to increase their productivity. The results were visible at the end of each day. Today our version of hard work is measured by the security you provide your family and the financial profit your business makes.

I define small business hard work by the amount of calculated risk the owner is willing to take, the desire to be innovative and the desire to lead change rather than to follow it.

The amazing new business that we hear about achieved their results by doing productive hard work.

Seth Godin has the following definition about hard work: “Hard work is about  risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejections. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.”

The 94% failure rate among small businesses in the United States is not because they don’t know what to do, but because the fail to do what they know they should do.

Building a solid future requires pushing the envelope every day; by doing so, you will achieve sustainability in your business and a great future for yourself and your family.