Investing With Sweat Equity

Sweat equity is the personal time investment we make in something or someone that does not offer an immediate return. Most often the return on our investment of sweat equity takes place over a longer period of time and it's not always tied to financial gains. Raising children is a great example of investing with sweat equity. In many ways so is personal blogging, photography, creating art or starting a home business. I'm sure you can add to this list with a dozen other examples. Sweat equity ventures are typically projects that take place after working your regular job.

Our culture demands that we justify a financial return on any significant investment made with our time. It's not acceptable to spend money and extended time on your passion without some plan of how you will be paid back fast. The goal has to be making money or it makes no sense. Share with anyone your passion for writing or show them your paintings or photographs, most often the next question that follows is; "do you sell your work?" or "are you making money with ads on your blog? It's an epidemic of faulty thinking and misguided expectations running rampant in our current culture. "If you build it, it must make money! Is that the truth?

Like raising children, the joy and passion of your investing must be focused on the process not the payoff. Otherwise you are in a for a long chain of discouragement. It's good to have a defined goal and long term strategy when you are investing your sweat equity. I am not advocating that you omit planning for success especially if you're launching a home business. Part of that planning should include starting small and thinking big. I believe that if you pour your heart into what you love the payoff comes in small doses everyday and it has the potential for a bigger payoff as it grows. The joy of doing becomes the gold standard rather than how quickly you can make money. These ventures involve investing more personal time than money but will most certainly include a chunk of ongoing cash for supplies and marketing. Raising children is not cheap, neither is web hosting, paints, canvas, printing or digital cameras over a long period of time. Does everything you invest in have to make a financial return?

I have realized that the most rewarding and valuable things in my life have come out of my committed investment of time over the long haul. You're reading this post right now because I have spent months investing sweat equity in hosting "One Man's Highway", getting my message out to the world at large. It's a message of encouragement to enjoy the process of daily life, the joy of living without fear and without walls. It's not a grand message nor is it making me any money, but over time my posts will become a collective work that will carry with them a value to others far beyond what I would have invested. That last sentence is called sunny optimism. My most recent blog Best Kisses was started as an art project with my wife Terri. It includes few words and lots of pictures. Our goal is to promote the power of love one kiss at a time. It's a simple idea that brings us great joy working together and it's now starting to gain a loyal following.

I encourage you with this, continue fervently to invest yourself in those creative ventures that bring you joy. Continue to pour sweat equity into your passion, your big ideas and most importantly the family and friends that surround you. If you paint then do it with beauty, if you take photos then express your vision wildly, if you write, write without ceasing. If you host a blog you ought to express your insight with creative abandon. If you're launching a home business, hang in there... it does get better.

Vincent Van Gogh's biography says; "he was determined to give happiness by creating beauty." What a simple yet profound goal Van Gogh kept in mind while he was painting. Van Gogh died broke and dependent on the financial support of his brother, yet all of us have experienced the beauty of his vision hundreds of years later the way he intended it to be. That was his goal. Today his paintings are sold for millions of dollars.

What's your goal when you're investing sweat equity?

Read "The Power of Creative Vision"   Read Seth Godin's "No Business Model"

Photos by Eric M. Gustafson

 

Comments

[eddie]

Succinctly put Ray. This is a topic that rolls around in my head on an almost daily basis.
I'm offering an amendment to your notion that 'right motivation' is a just reward for a given set of actions.
May I cite (and show my age) an old pop song from the 70's by 10cc. "art for art sake, money for god's sake'. The age old struggle of the artist. I prefer that 'right motivation' goes hand in hand with 'right livelihood'. Yes, doing what you love can lead to material gain. However, doing what you love and earning the respect of those you respect IS THE TRUE REWARD. The old saying 'that you can't take it with you when your gone' is a firm enough admonition. This is not to say that said efforts won't lead to profits but it should not be the sole motivator.
Steady sustained effort and nifty marketing can sometimes bring monetary gain, but it must not be the endgame. The American culture reveres 'winners' and in a Freudian way once we've elevated them to a pedestal we look for the 'chinks in their armor' so we can tear them down.
The emphasis on winning derails the wholistic nature of the pursuit. If somehow your goal in life will be fulfilled by selling 100 million widgets then by all means go for it,tis not for I to judge. It takes keen skill, imagination and creativity to achieve such a goal I'm sure..
However, there is great pleasure and satisfaction from enjoying the 'process' which leads to the real reward in accomplishing the goal.
This is what is lost sight of in the winner take all mentality that is the dominant paradigm in this country in particular.
For myself, I spend another 30 -40 hours a week beyond my 'regular' work week in my contracting business at my artistic pursuits.
I've invested thousands of dollars in gear and countless hours working at what I love. I've mounted brick and mortar art expositions, built blogs and edited and printed photos in quantity.
My return, by and large, can be summed as 'the satisfaction of working at something I love to do, respect and admiration of my peers and knowing that I'm contributing in some fashion to the continuity of the art culture as I know it.'
Anyway your post was a slam dunk for me ...keep it up Ray.