Build A Business Worthy Of Yourself

The other basic attitude strictly and perpetually identifies the man with his business. For better or for worse he is to be judged by the work of to-day. There is no future period of atonement. It is now or never. Having adopted this attitude, it is impossible that a man should not order his business along very different and very much more commendable lines. Moreover, is it right that a man's best years should be devoted to the proposition that "business is business," and only his waning powers be dedicated to a nobler conception?

The benefits that accrue to one from a refusal to retire from business have been mentioned. In other words, to stay on the job seems to be the surest way of staying on earth. The second phase of the subject is its broader application. A man's determination to retire from business consciously or unconsciously changes his whole relations to business and the world. We come now to the third phase of this question, the importance of vacations instead of retirement.

It Helps Both You And The Business To Let It Alone Occasionally

There are many desirable activities which the utmost ingenuity cannot mesh with one's regular business. The executive at the head of a large retail store, for example, may find it difficult to include among his strictly business functions the tour of the world, upon which he has set his heart. The man who has a hobby for geological exploration may be unable to unite this with his responsibilities as head of a hardware factory. This discussion should not be interpreted as advocating that a man's activities should be limited to his purely business duties; but rather that the best solution will be found in what we may call occasional retirements. A man may leave his business for a short time and still feel that he is a part instead of apart. There is all the difference in the world in a man's feelings toward his business if he has abandoned it altogether, or if he has merely withdrawn partially and temporarily.

This policy has two-fold benefits. In the first place these little vacations have their useful reaction upon the man himself. When drawn aside from the immediate scene of his daily life, the man is enabled to view it in better perspective. His problems, perplexities, and ambitions re-apportion themselves and he returns to the job with freshened energies and clarified judgments. In the second place, these occasional recesses are helpful to the business itself. As long as a man remains in immediate contact with his organization, there is a feeling that whatever he may say to the contrary, the real responsibilities are still carried by him rather than the members of his organization.

Let Your Associates Really Drive Instead Of Just Hold The Reins

Years ago in my childhood days at Gloucester, it was the customary thing to teach a boy to drive a horse by letting him first hold only the loose ends of the reins. The next step was to let him handle the reins himself while his father or older brother still held a firm grip on the ends. The final step was to let him drive wholly alone. Then - and not until then - was he really driving. Similarly with a business, members of an organization can never fully feel that they are doing the driving until the boss has actually let go of the reins for a time. Many a going business has crumpled up when the directing head retired, simply because the organization had never been trained to run itself.

No man can serve two masters. No man can be mastered by predatory and anti-social instincts for the better part of a life-time, with the hope of a higher service at the tail-end of his career. Life must be unified. We have discredited the double standard of morality. We are beginning to doubt the double standard that permits a man to separate his business and his personal conduct, or his week day dealings and his Sabbath professions. Let all seek the abolition of this other double standard that permits a man to retire from business, as though he could thereby exonerate himself for sinful and sordid business acts.

Why Should You Retire?

Do you retire from business because you are ashamed of it? Better to build a business of which you are not ashamed.

Do you retire from business because you are unable longer to support its burdens? Better to build an organization that can share these burdens.

Do you retire from business because you want to do something for humanity? There is no better place in the world for this than right in your own business.

Desire for retirement is confession of failure. There is no reason or excuse for retiring from business, except disability or death. Moreover, business is the best possible treatment for most kinds of disability. Statistics further suggest that business - while it may not be the fountain of perpetual youth - will, if properly organized and operated - increase a man's life by many years.

Let me close this chapter with the cynical quotation describing the type of business man who is fast disappearing. This type of business man divides his career into three stages:

First: To get on.

Second: To get honor.

Third: To get honest.

This mongrel policy was the result of shaping the career with a view to eventual retirement and reformation.

It is clear that business will be immensely purified when men no longer plan to retire but stay on the job. This change of program will lead to such business house-cleaning as the world has never seen. For if we plan to live in our office all our life, we shall want our office fit to live in. Then shall we create for ourselves and families investments which will truly endure.