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Is There Money in It?

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: When you do what you love, the money may not necessarily follow; at least not immediately.

Is There Money in It?

When you are doing what you love, the money doesn~{!/~}t necessarily follow. You have to be doing something that people value highly enough to provide the level of income you require. If what you are doing doesn~{!/~}t produce high enough personal or economic rewards, that~{!/~}s not a judgment of you as a person. It just means you should look for situations where what you have to offer will be more highly rewarded.

Joe Dolan went into business for himself more than 80 years ago, when he was 14 years old. That~{!/~}s when he had put together enough money to acquire a small boat suitable for catching lobsters in the shallow waters near where he grew up on Long Island Sound.

As he recalled years later, he spent the first year or two working very hard and becoming a more skillful lobsterman. Then he had an insight. ~{!0~}I looked at the fellow who was the best in the harbor, and I figured that I~{!/~}d probably never get any better than him,~{!1~} he said. ~{!0~}Then I looked at how he lived~{!*~}in a not very nice house with his children wearing patched clothes, and always having to worry about whether he was going to get by.~{!1~}

At that point he decided to become a wholesaler. He kept on putting out his own traps and selling his own lobsters, but he was able to convince his fellow lobstermen that he should sell theirs for them as well. He quickly established a reputation as a shrewd but entirely reliable businessman, and his colleagues were probably better off paying him something to make their deals than they would have been on their own.

Many entrepreneurs start out doing one thing, then shift to something else for which they discover both a talent and a better possibility of material rewards. Joe did this again and again throughout a very complicated career. He eventually became a seafood retailer, a restaurateur, the owner of a small fishing fleet, a banker, a politician and a famous hunting guide~{!*~}all at the same time! Never in his life did he have to show up at an office and spend a full day there. From the time he started out on his lobster boat at 14, he kept discovering different ways to be his own man.

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Article Tags: businessman, colleagues, economic rewards, enough money, fellow, fishing fleet, hunting guide, joe dolan, judgment, lobsters, long island, long island sound, material rewards, politician, reputation, restaurateur, shallow waters, small boat, traps, wholesaler



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