Transforming Love Into Usefulness

Dreaming big and doing what you love is hollow without usefulness.

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One of the things that adults ask children is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Once they respond with whatever they want to do, the older person sometimes says back something akin to, “As long as you find something you love, you will never work a day in your life.”

I lived by that mantra for a long time. I spent my days doing what I loved, using my mind and my hands to build high-end custom furniture. But it wasn’t financially viable. How I ended up correcting that while still keeping my love intact changed my life and business forever.

Passion Isn’t Purpose

At the time, my wife and I were young, and we didn’t panic when the funds didn’t come right away. We felt that eventually my passion for woodworking would bring me success.

But then life punched us in the gut. My wife became pregnant, and our first daughter, Anne, was stillborn. We had been living with my grandmother to help take care of her in the evenings while we saved up for a down payment on a mortgage, but now our grief overwhelmed us so much that we could no longer do that, either. It was devastating.

A few years later, I was still running a business that wasn’t profitable, and now I was deeply in debt. My wife was pregnant with our fourth child, and we had to get on government assistance. I couldn’t understand why things hadn’t taken off yet.

Having Passion isn’t Enough

This notion of working on something you love is romantic, yes, but not entirely realistic—at least not how it’s currently framed.

My father was a partner at an elevator maintenance company. When they needed to replace the interiors, they would either scrap the entire shell or outsource the work to a local contractor. He suggested that there was a market for someone to come in and refurbish elevator interiors. At first, I remodeled the elevators myself. Then I found I could help elevator companies both keep the work in-house by doing the remodeling themselves and drastically reduce the time the elevator was out of service. Manufacturing customized remodeling kits was the solution.

Leveling Up

Instead of working in the shop, I got to use my creativity to refine this new interlocking panel concept and patent it. I focused on building scalable systems. This investment of my time compounded my productivity, allowing me to hire people to produce these kits. This meant serving more customers and creating more jobs. This was much more rewarding and far more useful than working by myself. Building a company with an intentional culture was another milestone.

So while it may be nice to tell your children to dream big and do what they love, it’s also important that usefulness enters the picture. Once it does, their lives will change for the better just like mine did.