photo credit: Amy Rachel Photography
“Beware of shifting interests!” the wizened old businessman told me as he waggled his gnarled finger at me. “Beware of making changes too quickly, of throwing in the towel before it’s time! But most of all, beware of the siren’s call of new and exciting opportunities that will cause you to neglect what’s just about to reward you!”
O.K., so it wasn’t a wizened old business man. It was a combination of learning from my mistakes and some good counsel from some successful people.
If you don’t focus and see existing opportunities through you’ll never succeed.
I have been hurt by my “shifting interests” many times in the past. Sure, there are things I’ve started that were never worth the limited time or money I invested in them. Things that had no real market or significant chance of success. But often, I’ve pursued an opportunity until I hit my first real roadblocks – and then given up and moved on to what I considered greener pastures or what was more exciting at that moment in time.
As I’ve matured as a entreprenuer I’ve come to realize this tendency and have pushed through to success in various ventures. This is a huge key to success in business but you’ve got recognize a few key things:
- Any opportunity worth pursuing will become difficult and demoralizing at some point. This is one of the greatest indicators that you’re on the right track – if it was super easy everyone would be doing it.
- Understand the size of your plate. Most of us have an unrealistic idea of how much we can handle at one time. Instead of a large plate with our tasks spread out nicely we end up with a leaning Tower Of Pisa like stack of tasks.
- Learn how to distinguish good ideas from bad ones. In a nutshell: If there’s no market, room for profit, or distribution model you’re out of luck. i.e. Candy coated ten penny nails or DIY dentistry. (As silly as these examples are, there are thousands of businesses starting up this very instant that don’t have a hope of any real success because their missing a basic but critical components of good business.)
- If you’re going to throw a few ideas or ventures against the wall to see what sticks make sure you have a incremental benchmarks to gauge future success. i.e. We’re going to offer this widget/service/book to the public in this limited fashion and create at least five sales then revaluate.) Don’t give up until you have a success/fail moment with those benchmarks.
It’s obviously important to have ideas worth pursuing to begin with – and any entrepreneurial personal soon realizes that good ideas are readily available – but once you have some lined up don’t sabotage your future success by falling prey to shifting interests. Be successful through hard work and the practice of seeing things through to some sort of measured conclusion.
How do you handle the siren’s call of new and exciting opportunities? Or, are you a die-hard unitasker who sees every opportunity to completion?
