This evening I went out with some people from work for a few drinks. I don’t actually drink alcohol so I was there really for the social event because I actually like the people I work with. It ended up being a late night because myself and one of the other senior people I work with hung back to discuss business and our take on everything.
This one individual is someone that I genuinely respect because he’s a fine manager of people, has exceptional business savvy, is very sharp technically and is basically a good person. We get on well together because of a mutual respect, but also, I think we just like each other’s company.
This person then said to me that my performance on this particular curly project I’m working has created something of an aura around me at work – to quote this person, “People pretty much think you’re ten foot tall and bulletproof now.”
If you’re not familiar with that phrase it basically means “you’re untouchable”.
That was pretty interesting to hear because while I work in a team, generally speaking, my role is national and I report directly to the National GM of our business unit, so I don’t get or need much feedback – like most senior roles, you don’t need your boss to tell you that you’re doing a good job all the time.
For me, it’s important to like what I do for work. You spend a fair portion of your life working, so if you hate it, then that’s a really horrible existence. In my case, my job is actually really fun and I enjoy working with the clients I have to deal with. To be honest, it’s not even like work.
The other critical thing to be happy and successful is to be good at what you do and this is where I think it crosses over into a discussion around business quite nicely.
Lots of people tell you that you should do what you love, follow your passion and the money will appear. I’ve said it before in these posts, that’s largely crap. I’d sit around, eat pizza and watch Netflix all day if I had my way. Yes, I like my job, it’s fun, but I like watching episodes of the Blacklist and eating pepperoni and mushroom pizza more.
I think it’s important to strive to be good at what you do. I’ve always concentrated on improving myself at whatever I am doing with respect to work and business. I’m willing to put in the work to be better at something because the reward is very satisfying.
In business, this kind of constant improvement is what allows you to build and maintain your momentum. Improving the way you do things and becoming better equipped to serve your customers is the best way to be successful.
So we’re back almost where we started from. If you’re going to work or run your own business for a large part of your life, then you should enjoy it. The easiest way to enjoy something is to be successful at doing it. And the best way to become successful is to work hard at what you do to improve yourself or your business.
If you can follow that cycle, get some wins, then you’ll absolutely be enjoying what you do!