Good Life Project - Charlie Gilkey: On Service, Hard Work and Freedom

Episode Date: April 1, 2016

Spend 3 ½ days with us at the end of August at our "summer camp for grown-ups." Drop the facade, revel in new friendships, play, create, move, relax and learn powerful strategies for work and life. Learn more now!+This week's GLP Guest Riff comes from Productive Flourishing founder and process/growth maven, Charlie Gilkey.Charlie read Jonathan's original essay, The Content Delusion, which we aired as last week's GLP Riff, and felt the need to respond. He wanted to go deeper and explore what he calls the Sustainability Thesis, while also debunking two huge myths about building a business or a career.In this provocative, philosophical and actionable riff, he dives into the idea of "scaling" your business and why, for some, that is a fantastic idea, while for others, it is a terrible one. He also explores the "dollars for hours" myth for service professionals and offers a potential defense of it as a way to build a business that is so often maligned not only in the online space, but in the community of "legitimate business" in general.It is a great compliment to last week's Content Delusion Riff and also a bit of a reset and a permission slip to elevate service over freedom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's short and sweet Good Life Project riff is a guest riff from my dear friend and colleague, Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing. And it's not a rebuttal, but a bit of a response and a tweaking and addition to the last riff about the content delusion and the idea of scaling. And I think you're going to find his contribution to this conversation really valuable and illuminating. So with that, turning it over to my buddy, Charlie Gilkey. Before I begin, I just wanted to say thanks to Jonathan for allowing me to be on the Good Life Project podcast and sharing this reaction to his post. It's a great podcast and I'm really, really honored to be here. So Jonathan's recently published The Content

Delusion, or Why You Still Need to Hustle, a post that every entrepreneur should read. Seriously, if you haven't read it, pause this podcast, get to the nearest connected device, and read it. It's just fantastic. The content delusion he's referring to is the idea that content is the end-all be-all and content done well is all you need to do. He rightly points out that content is one piece of the puzzle with hustle being the other piece. What I'd like to add a bit more to this conversation is the other fear that the content delusion plays on. Aside from the fear of getting out there in the flesh and bumping into people and sharing your ideas, which Jonathan mentions, the other side of the content delusion is that content well done is the only path to scalability.

Without content, you're going to end up in that less than space of trading time for dollars that no entrepreneur wants to be in, because real businesses are ones that can and should scale. And that's a given, right? The content delusion, then, also rides on the scalability thesis, which conjoins two premises. 1. Scalable businesses are better than non-scalable businesses. 2. Trading time for dollars isn't scalable. Therefore, 3. Trading time for dollars isn't a good business model. The thing about the first two premises is that they are both false,

which makes the argument valid, which means it follows reasoning rules, but not sound. It's not true. I'm aware that A, there needs to be a bridge premise between the second premise and the conclusion, and B, your patience with me being a philosopher and teaching logic probably isn't that high. Hey, some old habits die hard. Of course, if trading times for dollars isn't a good business model, was in fact true, then any service-based business would be a bad business model. But I've already shown why the bias against service-based businesses is myopic and rests upon placing a higher value on freedom than on service. Many of us will find our thriving as entrepreneurs and business owners in service to other people, not as free-willed people traveling the world sipping Mai Tais in Maui or Bali or wherever it's cool this year.

It's also myopic because it disregards the fact that so much of the economic bases of high-income nations comes from services, not products. It is true that scalable businesses are better for investment purposes because they create a scenario where the more money you invest, the more money you get back. In such a scenario, the most rational thing to do is to invest as much money into it as you can until that business reaches a growth plateau. Traditional economists and investors thus love scalable businesses. And that's also why we see them in ink and entrepreneur and all over the place. Some businesses exist for more reasons than to spit out cash for owners and investors, though.

Some exist to feed us creatively, spiritually, socially, and emotionally. Some exist to effect change in the world. Some exist solely to scratch a niche. Since businesses exist to accomplish certain goals, and the people who start them have different goals, before we can say that one type of business is better than another, we have to look at what the business owner's goals are. So to be clear, I love building scalable businesses and not just for the economic dynamics of them. Scalable businesses are typically able to impact more people

than non-scalable ones across all dimensions. They're able to provide jobs worth doing to more people, a place for people to get what they want and need, and a bigger tax and social footprint. But there's a place for solo shops, side hustles, weekendpreneurs, boutique micro-agencies, and other arrangements too. If it advances the goals of its owner, it's just as good a business as any other kind. Let's return to Jonathan's post. Content and hustle both matter, and both operate most effectively over different time horizons. Hustle is your now game. Content is your medium to long game with the occasional now game hit. Those are Jonathan's words. I wish I came up with them,

but I didn't. In a similar vein, building a scalable business might be your long game, but hustle is your now game. Too many entrepreneurs focus on scaling it over nailing it. And when you get into the nailing it game, it's going to be a lot of what looks suspiciously like hard work. Thus, the paradox. To create a scalable, sustainable business requires doing non-scalable, non-sustainable work, or hustling. As you nail it more, the requirements to do non-scalable, non-sustainable work lessens. I'm not sure that it ever really goes away, at least it hasn't for me, nor any of the top-notch clients and teams that I work with. The content delusion rides upon both the scalability thesis and the fear of rejection. Both foundations lure us into bypassing the hard work of facing possible rejection or trading time for dollars. What Jonathan and I are both asking in different ways is what would happen if you embraced the work

of growing your business by trading time for dollars or perhaps time for nothing sometimes, which is also known as service or getting out in front of people. Once you accept that you're always trading time for dollars and will always need to get out in front of new people, you can move on to figuring out the best ways for you to trade time for dollars and get out in front of new people. And that can be beautiful, fun, satisfying, and profitable at the same time that it's stressful, uncertain, and hard. Life and business are ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what

we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet subscribed while you're there, then make sure you hit the subscribe button while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community

who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.