Entrepreneurship is not a spectator sport. One of the main activities that entrepreneurs engage in is building. They build to solve problems on the way to achieving a goal.

One goal I finished addressing today was winterizing my green house. A section of the plastic on the roof ripped open in a windstorm so I eventually ended up replacing the full roof with hard plastic Tuftex panels - transparent on the south facing side, white on the north facing side (mostly because the cost of the transparent panels was double the cost of the opaque panels). These hard plastic panels added some needed rigidity to the building and I added gussets and braces to the worst walls to strengthen the walls and help ensure they don't flex and wander as much in the wind.

The green house winterizing project didn't end with the roof project as I had to figure out what to do with the screen window I leave open during the summer and fall (so it doesn't overheat). It is now time to close the window area in. Usually, I use plastic but this year I decided to re-purpose an old window and make it so that it is easier to open and close the window on an as-needed basis. Here is what I ended up building.

The purpose of this blog is to give a simple concrete example of what I mean by building value. Something similar has to be done on an ongoing basis to build anything of any value. As you keep building, the value of what you build keeps increasing and you may find yourself investing even more time, energy and capital into building value. Or you may just say it is good enough which is where I am at now on my greenhouse winterizing goal. Time to move onto solving the next problem.

Building is how entrepreneurs solve problems and add value. They build their way out of problems. I've heard several investors say that the reason they wouldn't invest in a project is because the entrepreneur was "not a builder".

Building isn't always about building something new. Most of my building has been fixing up something that currently exists so it looks or functions better. Building new stuff is more exciting, but fixing old stuff may be equally if not more important. Unfortunately, new stuff doesn't stay new for long.