You Need To Enjoy What You Are Doing

One Of The Greatest Lessons You Can Ever Learn Is That

you should not be doing

anything you do not enjoy.
In fact, your job and your en1re life should be one big
bowl of monkeys full of excitement and enjoyment.
You should enjoy ge=ng up for your job each day. You
should like the work you do and be so interested in it
you think about it at night. You should like the people
around you and you should never be doing anything
you do not truly love and enjoy. There is nothing wrong
with suering through certain classes when you are in
school and there is nothing wrong with doing certain
types of grunt work; however, you really should not be
doing something you do not enjoy.

Nothing good ever happens and

nothing good will ever come to you
when you are doing tasks and jobs
that do not interest you. So many
people go through their lives doing
things they do not enjoy. This is
totally unnecessary.

Somewhere Inside Of You I Am Sure You Know What You Love

You need to nd that. I love when I go into
small businesses around the United States. For
example, if you go into a skateboard store you
may nd a guy in his 40s who loved
skateboarding as a kid and s1ll does. He has
made skateboarding his passion by opening up
a skateboarding store. The people he works
with typically love skateboarding as well. In
my house I have a saltwater aquarium and
every few weeks someone comes to service it,
par1ally drain it out and replace some of
the salt water.

He loves sh and so do the people

he works with.

Fish Are A Passion To Them And Excite Them

In fact, some people that work with him drive from

over an hour away, because they want to work with a
guy who has passion for his work. It is a wonderful
thing when we like what we are doing. There is
nothing more important than loving our jobs and
what we spend our days doing. You should avoid
doing at all costs what you do not like doing. If you
do not choose to do what you enjoy doing, someone
else will decide for you what you should be doing.
This is never a good thing. Then you will end up
doing what you do not enjoy doing.

Regardless Of How Stupid You Think What You Enjoy Is

The chances are you can make a very good living doing it if you
really get passionate about it. If you like saunas (which I do)
you could make a great living doing something with those (I
know of a guy who did this). If you like clear air, you can do the
same. If you like roses, you can do the same. If you love
killing bugs, you can do the same. In fact, I know a guy who
had a big CPA practice and quit it to start a bug killing business.

He Could Not Believe How High The Margins Were For

One of his clients that was in the business and walked

away from a big CPA prac1ce to start driving around
with some bug spray, se=ng people up on bug
killing service plans. Hes never been happier. You
can do whatever the heck you want to and should if it
makes you happy.

In My Job, I Work With People Who Absolutely Love And Enjoy

What They Are Doing!

I have people working with me who are up early each

morning and go to bed late each night, the en1re 1me
loving what they are doing. These fortunate souls are
living lives of sa1sfac1on where they are excited
daily about what they are doing. They send me press
clippings of themselves in the news all the 1me. They
seem to do bePer and bePer each year. They improve
at what they are doing all the 1me. When you meet
them and talk to them, you too get enthusias1c about
whatever it is they are talking about. They just simply
love their jobs. This is how it should be. People who
like what they are doing never fail to improve and
they see more as well.

This is the person you want to be.

Conversely, There Are People Out There Who Really Dislike Their
Jobs

ORen 1mes, these people can con their way into a job by saying the right
things in an interview. Addi1onally, many employers make the mistake of
hiring them. These pour souls are doing work that does not interest them.
They are always leaving early, asking if they can take an extra day o all
the 1me, planning vaca1ons and 1me away from work every chance they
get. Most of these people are not too happy doing what they are doing
and it shows up in the results of their careers and lives.

If they just did what they liked and

enjoyed, everything could change
for them. There is no need to
spend 1me doing stu you are not
enjoying. This is a waste of your
1me and eort. You should be
excited about your job and excited
all the 1me.

I Remember Several Years Ago

When I was studying for the Bar Exam, I had ordered a class that came
in a big box with tapes and books so I could study at home while
working. I remember being bored to tears with what I was studying
each night. I mean this stu was boring, boring, boring! I got so bored
that I called the school I had bought the course from:

How many hours

should I be studying
a day? I asked
them.

I Was Studying This Stuff In A Really Bad Way

Mainly because I could not stay awake and kept thinking that I would
rather be watchingGomer Pyle reruns than study for the exam late into
the night. For me, studying this gibberish was a complete nightmare.

At least eight, the school told me.

Eight hours?
Yep, eight hours.

That was almost too much for me

to handle.

I Knew Right Then And There That I Would Not Be An Attorney For
Long

Who the hell wants to study eight hours a day

for a complete month?






I simply did not like what I was studying enough. There are people out

there who really do like what they are studying when they are preparing
for the Bar Exam. They really get into it. It is fun for them. The material
interests them not just a liPle, but a great deal. These are the people
who did the right thing going to law school and becoming aPorneys. No
doubt about it, if you like something you want to do it all the 1me.

For Example

If I was listening to stories told by some Southern

guy with bad grammar talking about how to sell
asphalt sealer to businesses and home owners,
how to apply asphalt sealer aRer a rain, how to
heat tar without destroying it and more eight
hours a day, I would have been enraptured. My
eyes would have perked up to the size of
soRballs and I would have listened to this guy
talk around the clock. My ance would have
yelled at me for listening to him so much. People
could be arguing two feet from me and I would
not have even known what was going on.

This Is What I Almost Did:

In my nal year at the University of

Chicago, I had been one of the few
students in my class who had been
nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship. I
cannot believe how good my grades were
at that point. One guidance counselor
told me she es1mated that I was in the
top 1% of my class, whatever that
meant. In my junior year of college the
school even asked me to co-teach a class
and I did.

I Could Not Believe All Of These Stuffy Academics!

however, I was eager to work outdoors and

start my dream job of being an asphalt
contractor.

These academics would wear the same khaki pants for

days on end and sit around reading all the 1me. The
more I thought about this situa1on, the more upset I
became. How on earth can someone sit around
reading when all around them there is asphalt in the
roads, in parking lots and driveways that needs
maintenance? In the very least they could go out and
purchase a line machine and freshen up the lines in
parking lots in their neighborhood!

Asphalt Everywhere Needs Freshening Up

I can remember driving back from seeing my
grandmother in my pick up truck with a line
machine in back. I might pull up to a convenience
store to get a Diet Coke and no1ce that its lines
were in bad shape. Id shake my head and then
walk back into the store to have a word with an
astonished cashier/owner in the middle of his 24-
hour shiR who barely spoke English.
Im sorry but your lines in the parking lot look
horrible! I might tell them. They really need to be
freshened up! I have some instant dry paint in my
line machine and I can redo your lines right now. I
would normally charge about $250 for this job but
for the sake of the neighborhood Ill do them right
now for $150.

Okay! The Cashier Would Invariably Say

Id put my Diet Coke on the hood of

my truck, pull out my line machine
and within 45 minutes Id be back on
the road with $150 more in my
pocket.
I had thought about going to law
school but by December of my senior
year of college, I had not yet taken
the Law School Admissions Test so
this looked like it was out of the
ques1on.

I Think My Guidance Counselor

At the University of Chicago had a PhD in something or another. One
of my teachers, who was the head of a department, had contacted
her about having a serious discussion with me about enrolling in the
PhD program at the school for some social sciences program. I met
with her around November and she told me that I could go study at
Chicago for free if I applied to this program and they would see
about a s1pend.

How much money are we talking about for a

sBpend? I asked.
Maybe as much as $10,000 a year.

Huh? I Thought

I could make that in a day or so if I

was a big 1me asphalt contractor.

Moreover, that last thing I wanted to do was

to spend a life1me in academia. No oense,
but these guys can get prePy serious and deep.
Believe it or not, there are a bunch of
programs in construc1on management at
schools all over the United States. There was
even a big one in pavement management at
the University of Alabama. I started asking the
guidance counselor about these programs and
she just sort of stared at me. She did not know
what to say.

I mean here I was, one of

her best students, and all I
was interested in was
construc1on
management?

She seemed absolutely
perplexed.

I Remember After That Meeting I Was A Little Depressed

Because the school was not helping me pursue my dream, but I was
not all that worried about it. I started calling the deans of the
various construc1on management schools around the United States.




Yeah, right now I have three trucks, two sprayers, a Cracko
machine and we are doing really well, but I can see this opera1on
going big 1me and ge=ng some state contracts in the next couple of
years.

What I Figured Out Later Was That

Most of these construc1on management
programs are actually part of the
engineering programs of most schools.
The programs are more engineering
programs than programs for working
guys. So the guys I was speaking with
were prePy academic as well. Instead of
dealing with PhDs in sociology, for
example, now I was dealing with PhDs in
Engineering. These guys were math
nerds!

I could not decide what was worse.

I Decided That Even A Masters Degree In

Something construc1on related and taking

a bunch of engineering classes with
guys who had pocket protectors was worse
than si=ng around pon1ca1ng about
completely useless shit with a bunch of pot
smoking, socialist intellectuals.
I ended up going to law school aRer taking
the LSAT in March. It was a huge mistake
in so many ways. I was miserable during
law school and I was miserable for the
three years that I prac1ced. That is a total
of six miserable years of my life. This
makes no sense.

Are you making a similar mistake to the one

I made? I certainly hope not. Do you enjoy
your career and life? I certainly hope so.




What I am trying to get you to understand is
that you need to do what you enjoy. You
need to spend your working Bme doing
something that lights your re. You need to
go where you feel welcome and among
people who are like you. When you do this,
your life will begin to change.