The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success
By Adii Pienaar
Life and business are not mutually exclusive. Business can, and must work for you, not the other way around. We have been conditioned to believe that being willing to sacrifice everything is the ‘right thing to do’ and the entrepreneurial way. That is a flawed approach.
Being an entrepreneur should not overshadow everything. Being an entrepreneur is just one expression of life and creating a life-profitable business can generate not only financial wealth, but a rich life.
The real treasure comes from having once-deferred dreams here for you right now – not after some unknown number of years grinding away. You are an empowered entrepreneur, living life on your own terms, just as you always wanted.
Most entrepreneurs think of a successful business as one that can look forward to infinite growth into an infinite future. Because we seldom challenge that notion, entrepreneurs often develop a ‘growth at all costs for as long as it takes’ mindset. But we seldom take inventory and add up the costs to our lives, even though we feel the subtraction.
The life costs of the business
What are you feeding your business, that growing dragon with the insatiable appetite? How expensive are these feedings and how long will you have to bear these costs?
When you add up all the life costs of the business to you and your family, the disappointments, absences, missed experiences, stress and sleep deprivation you’ll probably find your business is running a net life loss even if it is turning a financial profit.
The gains cannot offset the loss. Don’t let your business success bankrupt the rest of your life. Life is supposed to be whole and wholesome, worthy of your humanity and that of those you love.
Just like your body cannot be understood by referencing only a leg or a toe, your life cannot be understood only as a function of your business. The most meaningful experiences you will ever have are mostly not with work and not with colleagues.
If you stop filtering all your life through your business, and start filtering your business through life, you have the chance to make it add to your life instead of taking from it.
Set your intentions for your time according to what you believe is most important to a life well lived. With that you can begin to move towards a life-profitable business model, redistributing time, attention and energy. Remember, where you spend time, you spend heartbeats, and those are finite.
About the Author
Adii Pienaar’s background has always been as a bootstrapped founder, having launched, among other businesses and initiatives, the e-commerce platform WooCommerce (at least the second largest e-commerce platform globally after Shopify) in 2007, and email marketing platform Conversio in 2014, which was recently acquired by Campaign Monitor.
Life Profitability is his fourth book.
Adii has previously published Rockstar Business, and Brandiing and his first collection of poetry, Motion, is available on Amazon. A native of South Africa, Adii lives in the Winelands of Cape Town with his wife, Jeanne, and their two children.
- PUBLISHER | Tracey McDonald Publishers |
- ISBN | 978-1-77626-085-0 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R265.00 |
- Classification | Business Management |
For more information | Janine Daniel | +27 (0)83 327 3393 | mail me |
