Starting a business isn’t hard. As with anything in life, we tend to make things more complicated than they need to be.
I remember when I was a journalist in 2005, financial expert Dave Ramsey held an event in our local arena and I was assigned to cover it. It was the first time that I got to meet him, doing some backstage work for him as well. The event, for more than 8,000 people, was to be a three-hour event. Ramsey walked on stage and said something that surprised everyone in attendance.
“I’ll say everything you need to hear tonight in just a few seconds. And then you can go home.” Ramsey declared.
The audience responded with nervous laughter and confusion.
“Are you ready for it?” Ramsey asked. The crowd yelled out that they were.
“Okay, here it is! Live on less than you make. That’s it. Have a great night!” Ramsey announced.
He walked off stage, and for a moment, the crowd was stunned. Before he got to the curtain, Ramsey turned around, laughed loudly, turned back and started to teach all of his concepts for the rest of the evening. Even though there is a lot to learn, the idea is easy.
It’s the same with business. If it were me on stage doing the same bit, I would have said this before walking off stage.
“Find a need and fill it. Thank you, goodnight!”
But when I say how easy it can be, people often roll their eyes. They then say, ‘maybe for you, but I’m not wired that way.”
I often ask them to show me the wires that they are talking about. They chuckle, and often go on to explain past trauma that they experienced in attempting to start a business in their past. With legitimate pain, they go on to describe how it all went wrong in a past experience. After that failure, they (or their spouse) can’t get past the disappointment that had taken place.
Maybe they just aren’t cut out for business, they think to themselves. They had already tried that and it went so poorly. One of the aspects of my business is business coaching, and I was hired by someone recently who struggled to get beyond their past failures.
In this situation, he tried his own business about a decade ago. Everything went to crap, he made some big mistakes that put his family into a financial hole, and this person had no choice but to go back to a job that he didn’t want to take. But, that entrepreneurial bug stayed inside of him. And each new venture that he thought of- that got him excited- was met with the reality of a spouse that was just too afraid to go through what they went through before. For years, he has been stuck in this job doing work that he doesn’t want to do for the safety and security of a paycheck.
As we unpacked the idea that he had been stewing on, the conversation kept boomeranging back to what went on in the past. Not long after, I noticed a text from my wife. I thought about her, daydreamed for a second and then told him a little story.
“I have to tell you, I’ve been happily married for more than twenty years,” I explained. He looked as confused by that statement as Dave Ramsey’s crowd looked at the beginning of his event. I let the silence sit, and waited for his response.
“Why did you tell me that?” he asked.
“Because I just thought about my wife- the life we have been able to create, our children…all of it.” I explained. “And I thought back to what it was like before I met Elizabeth. I took a moment to remember all of the bad dates that I had been on. The failed relationships. The mistakes that I made and that others made that I learned from.”
“One time, my brother set me up on a blind date. The next morning, he called asking what was wrong with me. I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘You dropped her off and didn’t walk her to the door. You drove away before she even got into the house!’ he said.
I had no idea that was even a bad thing. Nobody taught me any of this! Imagine, after all of those screw-ups, if I said, ‘forget this. I’m just not good at dating or relationships. I’ve failed in the past, so there’s no way I’m trying this again in the future!’
“If I did,” I told my client, “the most important part of the life I live- my wife, our three sons, and everything around our family- wouldn’t exist today. I’d hate for the same thing to happen to your career.”
He thought not just about his career, but about his family as well. Both him and his spouse went through dating horrors before finally meeting each other. The first person we date is usually not the person we marry. We need to learn, make mistakes, and grow up. If I met Elizabeth as a teenager and she was the first person I dated, I can guarantee you I would have screwed it up royally.
Our past mistakes are there to guide us and teach us- not disable us. And often, we learn that the things we thought were so complicated are actually very simple. He learned this too.
He is in the process of finding a need- and filling it. And with each success, he realizes that the past is there for a reason. As is his spouse. And my hope for them is that in twenty years, those past mistakes will lead to a career that fulfills the life that he desired for his family, just as my past relationship mistakes led to a family that fulfilled all of my desires.
Have an AMAZING day!
Vincent
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