What we say around here (first quoted by our Courageous President) is that we are in business for three reasons:

1) To do the best work possible

2) To make a lot of money

3) And to have fun

There's no reason that you can't enjoy the work that you do AND make money, is there?

I think there are actually two different issues here. Making money *can* be fun if you are doing something you love, working from your passion; then the amount of money you make doesn't matter. But making money only (or mainly) as a means to accumulate stuff is an empty life. Materialism is like junk food -- it tastes good, it gives you some temporary pleasure, but in the end it always fails to satisfy your truest, deepest needs.

I agree with you that there are many things that are much more fun than making money.
However, in many cases, money is required in some way to do those things. Like you said, the mortgage needs to be paid.
Recommending a more profitable product is only more profitable in the long run if it serves the client best. If the client is happy with your recommendation, you will gain as well as the client. A bad recommendation (because of initial higher profit) will cause a lose in the long run. If you do not believe in the product you are selling or recommending, you need to find a better one. Then, you will have fun making money.

Interesting Post Lewis. It seems like one of the things that we need to drill down to is what is money? To some, money is freedom, to some it is happiness, to some security, others a measure of self worth...on and on. So when you ask someone is it fun to make money, maybe what they're really saying is... it's fun to know that I am a success, it's fun to feel secure, it's fun to feel happy.

Our sports world rewards teams for outstanding performance. While the individual players earn large sums of money, the reward system is based on a team performing very well. All of the happiness seems to occur when a team "wins a game", "makes the playoffs", or "wins the championship".

In business, there are too few rewards that are team oriented. Rewards happen when a business does well, and folks prosper via promotions, salary increases, bonuses, or stock options.

If our businesses celebrated job-related "wins", and created a way for that to be what was rewarded, folks might not find joy in money. I don't think we do a good job of finding job-related "wins", and we certainly don't celebrate them enough.

Holly appears to be right on - in a lot of cases money is just a means of keeping score. It is fun to do great work and realize that you are "winning" in the process.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but there is often a basic human instinct to keep score. If you go to a Little League game (under 7 yrs old) they probably don't keep score anymore; don't want to ruin anybody's self esteem. BUT if you hang around the dugout you will hear the kids discussing the score and how they are doing.

Same in work; it is fun to do a great job...and money is often a more accurate measurement than customer sat ratings.

Holly, great point- what is our reason for the pursuit of money? Money is nothing more than a conduit to something else. If we "drill down" to what we really want, we may find other (more worthy) avenues to fulfill these purposes without the entire pursuit being about money.

Lewis, good for you and your focus. I know I personally want to work with other businesses that don't think it's all about the cash in their pocket.

Lewis, thought provoking post. What's really the most fun for me is being able to make money doing something I really enjoy. The amount of money and how it is earned is of course a very personal thing.
Holly, I agree with your point that what that money buys -- freedom, luxuries, whatever -- is also a personal thing and how much is enough is also personal.
If we can help others along the way, whether other businesses or people directly, all the better.
Some of my most satisfying occupational successes have not been those that made the most money, but those that rewarded me with friendships, lessons learned or just the personal satisfaction of knowing I had created something I was proud to put my name on.
That's way more fun than making money.

I consider money a means to an end -- the end being the happiness and comfort of my family. I do enjoy the work I do, and I like putting retainer checks into the bank. But because it enables us to enjoy life, which sometimes requires money, and sometimes not. It doesn't cost anything for me and my wife to take our dog down the street to play in the woods on a nice day.

As far as my fees, I try to charge a fair amount, without gouging anyone.

I feel bad for people who let money become their sole focus in life. I have a friend like that, who hates what she does at her job, and spends a lot of her time fighting vendors, lawyers, doctorsd, retailers -- almost everyone she deals with, it seems -- to get the lowest price possible. Then she spends even more time fighting when she's not happy with the product or service she got for just barely cost. She's always angry and always fighting over money.

She has a lot more money than I do, but I wouldn't trade places with her for a second.

What a great topic - one that extends way past marketing. I agree with many comments that we do need money to do some of the fun things in life. I love to play golf, which isn't the cheapest sport to do. I also happen to love tennis, which I can play for free at the public courts. There are always going to be costly fun things as well as free ones in our lives. I think a balance of smelling the free roses and paying for fun activities is important.

I do my consulting work because I have a passion for it. Making a living that affords me a certain degree of comfort and security is a bonus.

I think all of the comments have added more to this post than I did. Just wanted to raise the subject. For me, I love what I do, I have a passion for helping my clients find solutions but I am not driven by money. If I had been, I would have remained in the corporate world, where I had risen to VP Marketing status. No rights or wrongs. Just personal decisions.

Lewis, you need to move. When I came to Barcelona to open the Prism Ltd. office here, I was struck by how differently senior execs in older European cultures viewed work, money and life.

We typically encourage partners at initial meetings to talk about what they really want in growing their companies. Over here, the answers we get are more likely to include the importance of family and maintaining a balance between work and everything else--even among young, aggressive European entrepreneurs, building emerging companies. Many of them know it is not that way in the States and they would NOT trade their lifestyle for an American salary. We work with partners at a few client firms who have turned down lucrative American job offers for the lifestyle here.
A S Prisant, COO, Prism Ltd.