Journal of the Wantrepreneur : Just do it

Yes it's an overused brand slogan and a little Cliché, but the value in these words seems to go unheeded most of the time. We are our own biggest obstacles in everything we do.

Every task we want to accomplish is our task, not someone else's. We put in the effort, we decide where to put our foot down. We choose to begin, we choose to walk away. We create the dysfunctional fantasies that tell us we are not experienced enough or lack the technical knowhow to move forward. It's our passion and drive that moves beyond this level of thinking to take us  to the promise land. Even recruiting or collaborating with others involves us. We choose who to work with or who to delegate our tasks to and the manner in which we operate within each of these relationships.

So why do we stop ourselves from even starting and denying ourselves invaluable real world experience?

We tell ourselves we need more knowledge we need more answers so I won't fail. Again, we see failure to accomplish a task as a bad thing. No book can transmit the same quality or quantity of information as the real world can. Still, many spend countless hours reading guides as if they were their own instruction manuals that were written specifically for them. Books offer great tips on how to approach new situations. However books won't reduce the hard work you have before you. Nor should you want them to, there is no substitute for hard work and experience that you get from the world.

Books definitely have a place in any journey, but ultimately we will have to choose how to implement and use this knowledge. Book aren't going to do the work for us. What's more is that no one book can ever fully prepare you for your unique individual experience. Obtaining the answers for our unique path requires you to have gone out and find the right questions to ask.

"An approximate answer to the right question is worth far more than a precise answer to the wrong one."

-John Tuley

Don't stop asking questions, instead go out there, experience, and form questions based on the real world. As soon as you do so, your questions will be based off of more than just a few lines of text but instead, from the vast data of your mind a super computer. Your senses, you intuitions, your past experiences will offer a much greater platform to ask questions from than a chair with a book in your hand.

Now if you have no clue what you're doing, great, read a book or two, but don't expect to achieve your goals from your reading chair. The sooner you start, the sooner you get to find the right questions to ask, and the sooner you can seek a relevant answer from a book, someone with more experience or even yourself. It all begins with you though. So move beyond the self-imposed limitations, and toward a better education in you.

Practice self-reflection every step of the way. What did you do and what would you have done differently? Especially when it comes to the decisions you were most unsure of. If you keep telling yourself the future is where you need to get to in order to make the right decision, you'll never take action because an action occurs in the present, in the now. So too lies the right question, and your answer. So just do it already. 

Journal of the Wantrapreneur : Falling stars

Suddenly it happens, after overcoming obstacle after obstacle, we come falling down and hit the dirt to taste reality. Achieving our goal won't be as easy as we thought. As the dawn of reality sets in, it's easy to see why many projects seem too daunting and are left unfinished. The passion, drive, and overall enthusiasm gives way to stress, fear and sometimes depression. "Why won't this just work?!" we ask ourselves, as the world seems set on keeping us down with each added task to our list of growing to do's.

What we don't realise is that this is part of the process, and that these obstacles aren't what they seem to be, road blocks. They are in fact clear markers for navigating to what we have set out to accomplish. More like sign posts or foot holds. Looking at every journey we embark on, A-Z, we can be overwhelmed by the sheer distance we need to cover to get to our destination. What if we just look at A-B and forget the rest, what about B-C? It's all about framing and perspective, so make it work for you not against you, which is our natural tendency. Here is another question, did you ever think you could just hope straight from A directly to Z? I hope not, we need to accept that there is always going to be ground to cover to get us from where we are now to where we want to be. So be thankful if you are facing new challenges, these serve as street lamps on what would have been a very dark and arduous journey.

"Nothing worthwhile ever happens quickly and easily. You achieve only as you are determined to achieve… and as you keep at it until you have achieved"

-Robert H. Lauer

So now if we think about the difficulty of the task, and the time it will take to achieve it as a sign that what we are trying to accomplish is in fact worthwhile, how do we feel? I'm pretty excited.

Enter the 4 P's of entrepreneurship Patience, Persistence, Perseverance and Passion.

We need patience because MOST things don't happen overnight like all of the success stories in the media would have us believe. There needs to be a willingness to accept when we mess up, and to accept every added challenge we are given. Look at it more like "don't put your foot here" and "this is a possible place to put your foot" respectively. Need I remind you how many light bulbs Edison designed before getting it right?

We need persistence and perseverance because we often won't get it right the first time. Persistence and Perseverance are the equivalent of being willing to go through the process of re-evaluating our decisions and actions. It's all part of the cycle in taking that next step to our final destination. This definitely does not mean charge ahead blindly, it means learning from our mistakes and successes. We need to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Looking at our journey this way makes it a much more rewarding experience. "Look at all I have learned" instead of "look at how much I've messed up".

Finally we need that passion. It's unlikely that we will be passionate all of the time. We need to think back to the early days of our journey, our why. It helps down to write down your original vision so you don't lose track of what you're working for, and always add to it. Re-visiting this often will keep you on track and full of the grit needed. Don't just read it, visualize yourself in a world where you're living your vision. Play a song that really gets you pumped up, close your eyes and see it. What does it look like? How do you feel? How has the lives of your customers changed? How has the world changed? Who are you to stop this from happening? If you don't make this happen who will? Now look at A-B, what is it in the scheme of things now?

Stay present, focus on what is directly in front of you, laugh at every challenge you're given with acceptance as you realise these are just getting you closer to your goal. Remember no mountain has ever been too tall, no ocean too wide, to stop our species from achieving our dreams. Now let me see your war face!

Journal of the Wantrapreneur : Team Assemble

Assembling your team

Once we have our vision it's time to start thinking about how much time and what sort of skills will be needed to achieve it. While it may be fun to think we can just learn up on a skill to avoid the need for asking for help, the truth is that achieving any goal is going to require you to interface at some point with another person. It is much easier to make progress by finding the right people who want to help, and recruiting them. They could be friends, family, or similarly minded people at a meetup, so long as they share you vision, have an interest in helping, and relative skills and or experience.

Before you actually invite them on board you need to ensure they are the right person for the job. People, especially myself, get caught up in the excitement of our project and end up recruiting anyone that wants to help. Unfortunately what this means, is that you run the risk of setting up obstacles for yourself in the future. Recently I had to ask my vice-president to resign from the board, we had a conflicting vision on how to move forward with the project. Asking for his resignation was a very painful process but was required for progress, and worse, it was completely avoidable! Had I calmed down during our first meeting, I would have realized the value he saw in this project was vastly different to mine and the rest of the members.

So how can you avoid this problem? Communication! While we all want progress, making sure we are progressing in the right direction is imperative. A failure to communicate properly could lead to doing a lot of backtracking. Ask potential board/committee members how they view this project, or why they think it's important and see if their views match up with yours. In addition you want people who want to help, or in a single word, have initiative. Trying to chase up everyone to see how they are going with progress should not be required unless your tasks rely on the progress made with their tasks. Our time is limited and so wasting precious hours trying to get a hold of people who don't have a keen interest in seeing things progress should not be tolerated.

Lastly, we will come across people who will want to help, have initiative but may not have the relevant skills to help you make the progress you need. This doesn't mean they can't help, but when running a company or board, less is more. There is nothing from stopping you getting them to help from time to time, but when it comes to making decisions, you want people who are either agreeing with you or are being objective about things from an experience/skills context, not because they are excited about the same things you are. That is your job as the leader to spread the excitement!

Be patient, getting things right the first time will save you a lot of pain in the future. This doesn't mean to be hesitant, follow your gut when it comes to this process and over time your intuition will evolve into a valuable asset!  

Journal of the Wantrapreneur : The Vision

We all have them; ideas, dreams, visions. After we have our grand vision like the ark for Noah, where do we go from there? We'll lets take Noah for example. He put pen to paper (Quill, charcoal, I don't know I wasn't there), and started to draw it out. Then he enlisted the help of those around them in the construction of his vision and presto, life on earth was saved!

Unfortunately, in modern times, going from vision, to planning, to execution is not as simple as badabing badaboom.

Noah didn't have to worry about validating his vision to his peers and the public.

Noah didn't have to worry about the pain of bureaucracy from his team, and other key partners

Noah didn't have to worry about raising venture capital.

Noah didn't have to....

Unfortunately we rarely hear about the trials and tribulation of the successful entrepreneur today. This can lead to people becoming disheartened after hitting the first obstacle.

I'm a serial "failer" in that I have tried and failed numerous times with a variety of projects and in life in general, but perhaps that is for another blog post.

Initially I would have a vision or a drive to complete a certain project, but unfortunately it wouldn't go much further than that. These ideas would just sit in my head, pop up in conversation and rinse and repeat until they were lost. It wasn't until I was trying to draw up dimensions for a desk I was designing did I realize the power of putting pen to paper. Even easier is using a note taking application like Evernote to quickly capture your ideas. The other great thing about writing down your ideas is that you can re-visit them and alter them. When you only use your brain, we spend so much energy recalling the idea, that we aren't able to add to them. We also run the risk of forgetting parts of the idea and this associates a negative feeling to the idea because it's now an incomplete representation of what it once was. So write them DOWN.

The other great thing about having a notebook full of your ideas, is that it empties your head of the random ideas that fill it. The first idea I had was to start selling custom electronic cigarette juices, the next idea was collapsible high heels. While there wasn't much similarity between these two projects, over time, emptying my mind of these random ideas started leaving room for new ideas that were more focused around what I am passionate about. Sharing the understanding and appreciation for life I have gained through Science to the rest of the world.

The final thing I want to talk about involving your "visions", is food for thought. Having a notebook that you can look back on, filled with your ideas is a great resource to turn to in a time of need or during a block. Often the obstacle that we face in a current project only requires a change in perception to overcome, observing the problem in a different way. Having a notebook with your ideas in it will link you back to the need that inspired those ideas as well as any headway you made on them. It is doubtful that we would think of all of our projects that we have under the same emotional and mental state. Linking back to these states through past ideas can help get you out of the current emotional and mental state. It may remind you of someone who could have insight into how to solve your problem. Or it could give rise to a completely different idea altogether. To each their own.