Everybody is doing work, nobody is doing business

If you’re wondering why your firm’s financial performance or your personal career trajectory is not tracking to your expectations, the answer is probably “everybody is doing work, nobody is doing business”.

I think Tim Urban from waitbutwhy.com summed it up nicely when he wrote (and I’ve edited very slightly for clarity in this context):

“Becoming a famous actor doesn’t simply mean getting as good at acting as Morgan Freeman, it means getting as good at the entire actor game as most movie stars get by the time they break through. Acting ability is only one piece of that puzzle—you also need a knack for getting yourself in front of people with power, a shrewdness for personal branding, an insane amount of optimism, a ridiculous amount of hustle and persistence, etc. If you get good enough at that whole game—every component of it—your chances of becoming an A-list movie star are actually pretty high."—Tim Urban from this article.

Now, honestly if wealth is the goal I wouldn’t recommend acting. Few fields demonstrate the concentrating power of leveraging effects more than acting does. There is a very small number of exceptionally well paid actors, and a veritable ocean of thespians barely earning a subsistence income.

Law, finance, accounting, consulting, on the other hand? A much more sensible field of play if simply providing for your family and becoming wealthy enough never to worry about money are your goal.

That said, just as there is more to the game of acting than just acting, there is more to the game of law than just law. There is more to accounting than accounting, more to consulting than consulting.

If you want to measure success in dollars (you don’t have to, by the way, but if you do), you need to add a commercial angle to your professional game.