Making money versus making a mark

This is the line we walk as small business owners. We start our businesses hoping to do both. Somewhere, however the bottom line... the ability to support ourseves becomes more important than our professional aspirations.

It's not the end of the world if we forget our way for a while in order to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. At some point however, as the financial aspect of business ownership improves we need to find our way back to making the work meaningful, otherwise, we will quickly tire of it.

The funny thing, is that once you get to the point where you can make work meaningful, in many cases, it also becomes more profitable. Go figure.

This article focuses on helping employers make work meaningful for employers, but I think it applies well to business owners too. Here's an excerpt:

According to research by Adam Grant, an associate professor of management at the Wharton School, making this connection doesn’t just improve morale. It also has a huge impact on the bottom line. Grant has discovered that when people get to meet a living, breathing person who benefits from their work, their job performance skyrockets. In one study, Grant found that university fund-raisers who listened to a scholarship recipient tell how the assistance had benefited him increased by 200% the number of weekly calls they made to potential donors. The average amount of funds they brought in jumped 500%, from $400 per week to more than $2,000 per week.

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