Who are you doing it for?

I read a great blog recently about a lady who went from having a traditionally successful job to an artist (I can't find it to link to, sorry). She was reviewing the fact that when she had to update an old family friend, she was worried that she couldn't give the 'stock success' answer and wondered how many people make decisions in life based on that 5 minute conversation.
It made me consider other versions of why people do what they do and whether the people they think are important in that equation know or agree with the choice they have made.
And it is a choice. So if you are in the stressful, working all hours job that feels important and keeps you in the cage of keeping up with the Jones because you want to give your kids all that you didn't have, have you asked your kids if they would prefer happy parent vs big house, car, etc?
Then there are the businesses that forget that the reason they came to be was because they were solving a problem for a big enough segment of the community. They have a customer base who is paying them, but they have lost sight of that and continue to force these 'valued' customers through hoops so that they can cut customer service and admin costs. I went to a seminar where they actually had to explicitly tell the delegates that customers expect to be treated with courtesy and in a way that the information that has been provided previously, can be utilised to help the customer in the future.
Fancy that! Ensuring that a customer doesn't have to repeat themselves is seen as valuable insight!
The speaker than talked about how the industry is being disrupted by new companies utilising big data to provide customers with services they need rather than being bombarded by messages of services they neither want or need. I couldn't believe it, how is this new information or insight, surely this is what the business was created to achieve?
Give the customer what they want or need for a price they are willing to pay that covers your costs and leave a little behind as profit (if your business works that way). Isn't that what you are doing it for?
And to take it back to the personal, what are you doing it for? Are you doing it for the joy of long hours where you don't see your family in order to take a decent pay cheque that may run out when the company decides you are surplus to requirements now or do you want to be relaxed, happy and do something that gives you what you need to leave a purposeful life?
Previously posted on Medium. Thanks for reading!
In the simplest terms, I help people to get ready to profitably scale. What you do with a room full of people is very different to how you do it when they cross cities, continents or oceans.

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Ghilaine Chan
​Activating people to work better together and flourish. Working on interesting projects with people I like to work with, strengthening how you motivate yourself and collaborate with others.