I recently started bullet journaling and have been writing down quotes since I began.
I wish I had done it sooner, as I have scraped through enough business, investing, and psychology books to obliterate an entire forest. Without a doubt, I have missed some damn good quotes.
Regardless, here are the five that I refer to at least on a weekly basis. On the surface, one pertains just to business, but digging deep enough, it can be related to pretty much everything in life (work, family, friends).
Take them, write them down, and use them for yourself.
- “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”-Seth Godin
- “Why should someone do business with you versus any and every other option available to them?”-Dan Kennedy
- “Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”-Farrah Gray
- “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sales. Explore. Dream. Discover.”-Mark Twain
- “Resist defeat in your own mind.”-Meg Jay
You will find that most have to do with fear and motivation.
It took me an entire year to have the nerve to commit to starting a business and everything it entails. It seemed like I was looking for every excuse not to start. I had to read one more book, listen to one more podcast, watch one more video, have the right amount of money, buy the right camera, and I definitely had to wait until after (insert BS date).
Truth is, I was just stalling because I was afraid. I was afraid to put myself out there. I was mainly afraid of failing and having my “fragile male ego” hurt, as my wife likes to call it (bless her heart).
Having a “real” job where you earn a paycheck does not help either. Even though it has enabled my wife and I to save, it also acts as a deceptive safety blanket, swaddling and protecting from the possibility of failure and humility. Getting a consistent paycheck is comfortable, predictable and “safe”. It is going to be there every two weeks, same amount, same day of the week, and you’ve really got to mess up for it not to show up.
It also doesn’t help when parents, grandparents, friends etc. have all strived for a “good” job with a “good” paycheck, and as a result, expect the same for you.
Unfortunately, monotony and a paycheck life have never suited me well. Also, the climate of my job is tense among American society right now, although it has seemed to taper off slightly (I’ll talk about my job at a later date). I have always viewed it is a job, not a career, and I definitely could not do it for a substantial period of time nor do I want to.
But even with my goal of starting a business, lack of interest in the paycheck life, and overall frustration with my job at times, the fear of failure was still enough to outweigh all of it and severely delay starting a business.
I think things started to turn around after I read “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World” by Adam Grant. In the book, Grant talks about how a lot of prosperous entrepreneurs are ironically very risk averse, and some of the most successful were very cautious before treading in the waters of entrepreneurism. According to Grant, keeping a “safe” job while starting out, instead of going all in initially, can correlate to higher success rates in start-ups.
So, one day, I just started.
Everyone tells you to write down your goals, and for the longest time, I wasn’t a believer. I thought I could just remember them, but when you do that, you don’t think about them. I wrote my goals down and took a piece from Daymond John’s book “The Power of Broke” and forced myself to read my goals twice a day, once in the morning and once at night.
Between reading my goals and having my manufacturer on me about continuing the process, I was forced to proceed.
After awhile, things started falling into place, and finally, the big day happened when I had to put a substantial deposit down for the first product.
At this point, I’m monetarily invested enough where failure is not an option. I will work harder than I ever have before on anything to ensure its success.
However, if I do fail, at least I tried. I threw off the bowlines, and I sailed away from safe harbor. It’s not the end of the world. If it fails, I’ve got the knowledge base to try something else, another business or another product.
I’m not scared anymore.
So I’ll end like this, drop the fragile ego. Write down your goals. Read them. Read them again. Work your ass off to make them happen. If you fail, who cares? Failure is the greatest teacher. Pull yourself up and start again.
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”-Michael Jordan
Thanks for reading!
-Chris