Retaining your human side in business

I consider money to be many things; a tool, a means to buy things but most importantly, for today's post, it's a concept with elusive meaning and rationale. Every day is a rat race to get as much of it as we can, but at the same time, balance this drive with our humanity. Finding the right balance between hunger and drive is more difficult than you can imagine, and that's probably why we see people kill, rob and do all sorts of evils in their chase for this elusive concept.

On Sunday, I had a very revealing conversation with my landlord, who, as I said earlier, is a very inspirational man that chose to be self-sufficient through his personal business. He came to this conclusion after tasting good money after spending 15 years working in the banking sector. He is a very intriguing person with traits that I would absolutely love to emulate and hopefully streamline to suit my own goals.

One of my goals for 2020 has been to establish my own business with physical assets(because I consider myself a crypto entrepreneur). It is a fascination or shall I say hunger that has been tugging at my sides for many months, and with increased earnings through crypto, I find myself in a decent position to establish a small business. The question is, what business?

Now, going back to my interesting conversation with my landlord; he talked openly about all the business endeavours that he could remember off the top of his head, and without going into too many details, he surprisingly spoke glowingly about the numerous times he had failed. According to him, he prefers talking about all the times he had failed in business because there are more lessons to be learned in those situations.

During the one hour conversation on Sunday evening, while sitting outside, he told me about his approach to business, and while not saying his approach is the best, he said it is the one approach that allows him to sleep well at night. He explained how despite having so many businesses and dealing with people with varying levels of integrity, he always maintained a human side to his business, rather than going down the cut-throat route. He acknowledged that this approach has led to numerous setbacks in his quest for financial stability but like I said, he sleeps well at night, and his family isn't doing so bad either.

This lesson I learned from this decent businessman has been reverberating in my thoughts since yesterday, and it is something I unconsciously admire. I have hunger, desire and drive to build something for myself but at the same time, I don't want to do it at the expense of my soul.

So the real conundrum is finding the right balance between business and my humanity. How do I get a grip that's both tight enough for the business to thrive and gentle enough to allow me to sleep well at night? Experience is the best teacher was the response I got from my Landlord, what do you think?