How WAITing Ruined My Business
It was a beautiful September night and the sounds of crickets ricocheted through the trees with soft winds rustling the leaves. My wife and I sat on the sofa with the aroma of incense and the soft glow of votive candles. This was our romantic night of brainstorming where we put our minds together to think creatively!
“This is the perfect idea!” I said while we developed product and service ideas. “This will be a good one too” I said as the ideas were really beginning to flow.
With a pen in hand, I wrote down each specific idea that we developed. Eventually, the page was filled with an assortment of creative projects and random phrases of inspiration. This was a very energetic brainstorming session and, after generating so many different ideas, I was shocked at the variety of ideas we came up with.
But what is an idea without action?
Of course none of the ideas we brainstormed will manifest without work. The page I wrote on was filled with great ideas but without taking the steps to bring them to life the entire list can easily transform from a nursery to a cemetery. In other words, action gives birth to our ideas; inaction brings death to our ideas. Activity is vital. And as we came up with ideas we made sure to remind ourselves of this fact.
There’s a deeper concern than just action.
But do you know the evil culprit that tiptoes under the guise of activity? It can sneak into any of the ideas you undertake. It is so sneaky that it can sneak into well-intentioned and even well-planned activity. In fact, it thrives on activity. Simply put, it breaks in the moment you decide to… wait.
And I don’t mean “wait” as it is used in the typical sense of inactivity where a person is on standby for the next step in a sequence of events. Instead, I am referring to when a person is engaged in activity, even vigorous activity. I’ve found that waiting, as I define it, can be detrimental to any of the ideas my wife and I are taking action on. Here is what wait really means…
Wasted Invaluable Time (WA.I.T)
In this sense, to wait does not mean that you are being inactive. It means that you may be taking action all the while. Therefore, you can actually be busy and be… waiting. You can have a full schedule lined up for yourself and still be… waiting. You may be thinking, how is that possible? It doesn’t make sense? If I’m taking action then I’m not waiting at all!
Let me explain: whenever you take action steps that are contrary to the action steps you need to be doing… you are waiting. We often fill our agendas with activities that make us feel like we’re accomplishing our goals but they actually are not. They are illusory steps that keep our schedules occupied in order to dodge the real action steps we need to be doing. We wait by creating a mirage of activity that is meaningless.
How I Waited
As a visual artist, I’ve had quite a few years experience drawing. All of my art was merely for my own private viewing and not intended for marketing. I just wasn’t interested in marketing my work. But with my mother, brother, uncle and aunt’s encouragement I decided to do some marketing. I figured here’s an opportunity; why not give it a shot?
So I pulled the trigger and started my business selling my motivational artworks. Ready, fire, aim was my approach! With this approach, I was vending and selling my art but I lacked a plan. My efforts lacked niche-market specificity and it was solely premised on face-to-face transactions. It also did not harness the leverage of other people’s time, other people’s money, or available technology. I was setting myself up for a setback! The effort to sell my artwork became very costly and laborious. I decided I needed to make some changes if I wanted to continue so I started brainstorming. I came up with two great ideas:
- Research niche-markets for the product
- Automate the sales process so that it does not require my presence
In a few days, I compiled a long list of potential customers in the niche-market. Before long, I also found a way to automate the sales process. I’ve got the niche-market and I have an automated system that can get them the products. Excellent! Now I’ve just got to contact the list of potential customers and coordinate.
But, hold on… wait.
Even though I had a sufficient list of potential customers, I told myself that I needed to do more research to find more customers before contacting any of them. I also figured it might be a good idea to create more products just in case the customers want more products than I had to offer. So I got busy doing more research and creating more products… waiting. Wasted invaluable time (wait) continued passing by as I preoccupied myself with useless activity.
Although it may appear that additional market research and product generation were necessary, they were not. They were illusory steps that kept my schedule fully occupied in order to dodge the real action steps I needed to take. What I really needed to be doing was calling the list of customers I already had, not researching more as a prerequisite for contacting any. What I really needed to be doing was marketing the products I already had, not creating more products as its prerequisite. These actions were contrary to what I needed to be doing. I was waiting… and waiting… and waiting…
What were the consequences of this?
There are three basic consequences to waiting:
- Delayed Goals
- Frustration
- Quitting
My goal of contacting my niche-market and truly utilizing the automated system were pushed further back. For each day I decided to do additional research and product generation rather than active marketing, I delayed my goal. As the goal moved further away, the results I wanted traveled further with it. I started getting frustrated with my efforts and more exhausted chasing after them. Despite running as hard as I could to reach the goal it never seemed to get closer. The problem was that I was running hard at wasting invaluable time (waiting) with meaningless tasks. Eventually I began losing enthusiasm and doubted my efforts. My motivation decreased, activity slowed, and I eventually quit. Waiting ruined my business.
Why do we wait?
The real reason we waste invaluable time is because of fear. We’re scared of taking action and doing the things we know we need to do. So we create a façade of activity that makes it seem like we’re being proactive when we’re just being cowards. That’s what happened to me. I was being a coward. I hid in the comfort of being busy because I was scared to face potential rejection, scared to be uncomfortable, and paralyzed with fear.
Waiting is a losing game! Get down to business and take deliberate action on the steps that need to get done. Activity is not an end in itself. We need to stop being busy with our goals and start being productive with them.
3 Action Steps to Stop Waiting
1. Set milestones for yourself. World renowned business philosopher Jim Rohn says that we should make “measurable progress in reasonable time”. Don’t give yourself one year to do something that should take a week! Break your larger goal into smaller steps. Write those smaller steps on calendar dates leading up to the larger goal’s completion and stick to it.
2. Use Parkinson’s Law to your advantage. Compress time frames and put the pressure on. Set shorter timeframes to reach each milestone. If you give yourself less time to get it done chances are you will complete it in less time also. Test the possible.
3. Reward yourself. Positive reinforcement is critical. Give yourself healthy incentives for completing your milestones. After completing your milestone, I guarantee you will be excited, so go do something else that makes you smile!
What are you wasting invaluable time with? Do you have any methods that have helped you stop waiting?
How to Get Everything Done at Once
In August, I posted an article titled “Life, Plants and Three Principles You Should Know”. In the article I used the experiences of my friend Andy to convey three principles that I’ve discovered between life and plants. Self-Suffice – one of our readers and also an extremely talented hip-hop artist and teacher – shared a great analogy with us in the comments section.
In his analogy, he made an excellent metaphor between our focus and drops of water. He equated each water droplet to one second. After a full day we accumulate a bucket of water that we can use to water our gardens. And did you know that there are 86,400 seconds in our day? Each one of those seconds is an opportunity (drop of water) that can be invested into different areas of our lives (gardens).
It can be a serious challenge to successfully invest in all of the areas of our lives! How many of us have ever gotten overwhelmed trying to focus on everything at once? It can feel like an impossible task and, in fact… it is.
Self-Suffice stated, “If we only pour our focus into 1 or 2 gardens for too long, the others will grow weeds, rotten fruit, and dying flowers.” And he went on to ask a big question …
How can you water all of your gardens?”
It’s such a pertinent question for us all, isn’t it? I came up with four simple ideas on how you can water all of your gardens. Yes… all. Following these four basic steps will help you get everything done at once.
#1 – Eliminate unnecessary gardens
#2 – Expand your time horizon
#3 – Get a team to help you
#4 – Make compost
#1 – Eliminate Unnecessary Gardens
Cease contributing your time and focus to unfruitful activity. We often invest our time in time consuming and unfruitful endeavors that need to be uprooted from our agenda. Bottom line: if it’s not beneficial get rid of it. Check out my post “Winners Quit” for a practical exercise on how to do this.
#2 – Expand Your Time Horizon
Establish the appropriate time horizons when watering your gardens. This will help reduce the pressure to complete tasks in unrealistic timeframes. With only 24 hours in a day, there’s only so much you can do so you may need to expand your timeline to a few days or a week, for example.
Remember: all plants don’t need to be watered every day!
#3 – Get a Team to Help You
Expand your effectiveness by getting others to help you water and plant. There may be tasks you can have other people handle. By delegating tasks to other people you free time up to do the things you do best and to do the things you want to do. Plus, each additional person adds 24 more hours to your day. Getting just one additional teammate adds 24 hours; two teammates will add another 24 hours.
If you’re bad at math, take a look at this: your 24 hours + 1st Teammate’s 24 hours + 2nd Teammate’s 24 hours = 72 hours in one day. Wow! How many teammates would you like to have?
#4 – Make Compost
Turn the negatives into positives. Use the weeds, rotting fruit, and dying flowers to make compost. All of the plants and fruit that withered away can help foster conditions for other (better) things to grow. Try not to worry too much about lost crops and make the best of your current conditions. In the plant world, our failures are biodegradable!
I’m Taking Over the World!
Why would anyone want to take over the world? After all, that is not what caring, compassionate, and unselfish people do, is it? That type of activity is reserved for fascists and dictators or for the arrogant and egotistical, right?
Wrong.
Kind, loving, and respectful people are constantly taking over the world and I’ll prove it to you.
What Does It Mean to Take Over the World?
Someone who is aiming to take over the world has a goal of having an abundant and seemingly limitless amount of power, control, and influence. Once accomplished, this person will have the power to direct resources as needed to accomplish any given task at any given time. If you manage to do this you have completely taken over the world.
How do we go about accomplishing this? Before we answer that, let’s first answer…
Where Is the World?
Contrary to popular dogma, the world does not exist outside of you. Instead, it actually exists within you. Yes, within you. By taking over the world within you will be able to have power over your thoughts and ideas, control over your habits and attitude, and be a greater positive influence in your society.
How Is This So?
Our brains function as data processors, taking in information from our surrounding environment. It then processes this environmental information producing an output that we know as our experience, perception, or reality.
Just like our personal computers we have an operating system. The operating system that we use to process information is our belief system. Our belief system processes all of our environmental stimuli (input) and creates our experiences, shapes our perceptions, and forms our realities (output).
Our experiences are a product of how we interpret our environment. This is why two people in the “same” environment can react in opposite ways. For example, one person sees challenges, the other sees opportunities. One person sees poverty, the other sees riches. One man sees trash while the other sees treasure.
Understand? This is why our world is created from within us. We can control our output by changing our belief system.
How Do We Change Our Belief System?
We can change our belief system by increasing our education. This will renew our ideas, stretch our imaginations, and expand our worldview. We must learn! And we can learn from a myriad of things whether it be from a conversation, other people’s experiences, a book, etc. The list is endless. But no matter what form the opportunity to learn comes, you have to take responsibility for using it to reshape your reality.
On the Quest for Domination
A single mother of two working a full time job decides to go back to school and get her Master’s degree to: (1) demonstrate to her children the importance of education; (2) increase her earning potential and raise the quality of life for her children; and (3) prove to her children that there is indeed nothing you can’t do if you want to badly enough! She is creating her future.
Fed up with his negative life circumstances, a man changes his entire philosophy from one of criminality and deception to one of legality and honesty. Instead of continuing to blame everyone else for his mistakes he realizes that he must take responsibility for his life because no one else will. Despite his past life blunders he refuses to let those obstacles restrict him from achieving his newfound dreams of becoming an author, publisher, and public speaker to inspire the lives of youth and adults alike. He is changing his reality.
A business man, earning $500,000/yr is striving to double his income in the next 2 years. Not because he doesn’t think $500,000/yr is a lot of money, not because he needs a new car, and not because his house isn’t big enough; but because he firmly believes that he is actually worth $1M and $500,000 is merely half of his earning capacity. Why should he settle for half a million? He alters his philosophy.
These people have one thing in common: they are all taking responsibility. They are changing how they process their life experiences. They are changing their realities and creating their own circumstances. And most importantly, they are all taking over their world!
Don’t Change Other People Change You
Some people are out to change the world by changing everyone else. This is a short path to frustration. Instead of trying to change other people, change you. We can influence other people but we won’t change them. Each of us has to take over our own world. I’ve seen so many people who are waiting for their boss, their spouse, their friend, the President, or whoever, to change their world. Don’t count on it. The best thing about changing you is that you don’t have to wait on anybody. You can take over your own world right now.
Pop Quiz…
Where does your world exist? (Hint: Answer B is wrong)
(A) Within You
(B) Outside of You
Now that you’ve passed that difficult quiz, let me give you …
One Major Reason Why You Must Take Over Your World
It’s your responsibility.
Go dominate!
