Successful Entrepreneurs Flirt With Their Jobs. Here's What I Mean. After a successful academic run and corporate career, I left to pursue entrepreneurship — and I learned that you have to flirt with your job to be successful. But what does that even mean? Here's my explanation.
By Adam Karnama Edited by Kara McIntyre
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Flirting is the act of charming someone without being too serious — a natural start to a relationship, usually. You want to enjoy the moment and signal to your potential partner that you care about them, but you still don't want to turn them off by showing too much interest all at once.
As an entrepreneur, flirting applies to your relationship with your startup as well. Let's be honest, you need to love your startup; this is a must for success. However, maintaining a balance between being dedicated — but not so dedicated that you neglect other aspects of your life — is the key to success. Here are five advantages of "flirting with your job" as a tool for your company's success.
Related: Ask Yourself These 5 Questions to Find (or Create) a Job You Love
1. Protecting your mental health
Entrepreneurs spend long hours at work to make their businesses successful, often far more than 40 hours per week. We have seen more and more entrepreneurs fall into serious mental (or even physical) difficulties by taking their job too seriously. Growing a business and becoming successful are indeed important, and you must be extremely ambitious to have true success as an entrepreneur; however, there is a tipping point where your ambition can be counterproductive and cause mental complications for both you and your team.
In most cases, the business will not run in an efficient manner either. That's where the motto of "successful entrepreneurs flirt with their jobs" should come in. Be ambitious and do your best for success — but don't get obsessed! Plan to take meaningful time off, take breaks throughout the day and ensure you're setting the best work-life balance example for your team, too.
2. Overcoming difficult situations
There is an element of joy at work that an entrepreneur should always consider while running their startup. Entrepreneurs often choose to start their own businesses for this reason — they want to truly love what they do, rather than just go to work at a job that merely pays the bills. This doesn't mean that there are no moments of disappointment or big difficulties on the entrepreneurship journey, but in these difficult moments, the art of "flirting with the job" can help to find beauty, see the gleam of hope again and get through the tough parts a little bit easier.
3. Creating a winning company culture
A group of commonly accepted workplace beliefs, values, attitudes, standards, purposes and behaviors are called startup culture. Your startup's culture is the combination of all that you and your colleagues think, say and do as you work together. High stress, exhausting work habits, uncivilized behavior toward employees and a toxic work environment with too much politics are the outcome of entrepreneurs taking their jobs too seriously.
The "successful entrepreneurs flirt with their jobs" motto can also help a successful company culture. It is equally important for the employees of your company to enjoy their jobs while delivering on their responsibilities. This will improve overall company performance and improve the relationships at work. If you're "flirting with your job," you're more likely to remember your why, a.k.a. remembering the reason you chose entrepreneurship to begin with. This helps create a company culture of honesty, transparency, the ability to make mistakes and the support to work through those mistakes to further individual and company growth.
Related: The 5 Pillars of Building a Culture of Success in a Startup
4. Following your passion as a job
Some statistics reveal that artists exhibit significantly higher job satisfaction or happiness with their work than non-artists, because they are following their passion, even if it doesn't always pay the bills. Why don't you as an entrepreneur view your startup the same way?
Having a job that's also a passion has a direct relationship with how successful you are in your job. In other words, the more you enjoy your job, the more successful you are at it. Success is the aftermath of flirting with your job and working as if you are making an objet d'art. Your startup is your art, so you need to play like an artist running your startup and equally enjoy it.
5. Making employees feel like artists at work
Enjoying repetitive jobs like sales representatives or test engineers can be challenging and hard for some people. However, the more you give a perception to your employees to see your job as an art and a passion, the more they enjoy it — and they'll perform even better.
Duty is an ethical or lawful commitment, and it is true that all jobs are duties. But there's room for successful entrepreneurs to make it more enjoyable for their employees than just a duty they have to fulfill. This can be done by developing a culture in which the employees can individually perceive their job, by their own choice, as an art and something they're truly passionate about.
I believe all jobs have the potential to be seen as an art and there is an individual way to perform all jobs like an art. I have seen people around the world in different jobs their choice is to enjoy their job. For example, you might think that selling ice cream is a boring job or a simple one. However, you can see in this video that at least one person found an innovative way of selling ice cream as an art and enjoying it.
Related: Artists Passionate About Their Work Have Many Lessons for Entrepreneurs
To sum up, to become a successful entrepreneur, one should first develop a culture of flirting with the job herself/himself. Then, that culture can be extended to your company to improve the company's performance. Being an entrepreneur and developing a successful business is a difficult job but taking it too seriously will not make it any easier for you and your employees. Maybe, you need to print the motto of "flirt with your job" on a piece of paper and stick it to a wall near to you and your employees to remind yourself and our employees to always flirt with your job!
