When I talk about the idea of tap dancing to work, in the words of Warren Buffett, I’m not kidding or making a joke. You should wake up every morning and jump out of bed because you can’t wait to spend your time focusing on something that makes every part of you – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – satisfied. This is going to be different for everyone.
Building a financial net worth that allows you to live any way you wish and enjoying your life are not mutually exclusive. You can make money following your passion if you are wise and intelligent about it. There is a man working for a major ice cream company that is paid, literally, hundreds of thousands of dollars as the head ice cream taster. There are people who test roller coasters for a living. I have arranged my whole life to allow me to sit in a beautiful office, read all day, and acquire stuff because that’s what I enjoy. Something in me is satisfied when I pass a building and know I own that, or shop in a store and know I have a few thousand shares parked in some operating company somewhere that no one knows about but Aaron.
In fact, this philosophy is terrifyingly close to the one espoused by Molly throughout high school: Follow your bliss. There are people who have built fortunes making bow ties by hand and selling them from the trunk of their car (seriously). There are people who travel the world and get paid to write about it. Find your bliss. Follow it. And find a way to make it self-sustaining. Money isn’t the goal, it’s the by product.
In other words, don’t work for someone else doing something you hate so you can “someday” be financially independent. You may need to do that for a few years as you figure out the details, but instead map out a plan to make money as you do something about which you are deeply passionate.
In my office, I keep an ever-expanding collection of Monopoly collectibles to remind me that building a company, generating profit, enriching my shareholders, and creating jobs should be fun. It is a real-life version of Monopoly. If we want, we should go buy houses and rent them out to tenants. Or hotels. Or water utilities. The point is, if you focus on risk-adjusted return on capital, in an industry you love that is lucrative, and you don’t take yourself too seriously, you’re going to do well over time.
Business should be fun. Growing an empire is like a real-life game of Monopoly. If you like it, why not buy real houses or hotels? Why not acquire shares of power utilities or water companies? Don't take the game too seriously. I'm convinced that by remembering that money is an illusion - you can always get it if you provide a solution to someone - life is far less stressful. Here's a picture of some of the Monopoly collectibles on the fireplace mantel in my office to remind me of this.
