Three Ways to Think Big and Start Small

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From katerha via flickr

Taking the plunge into entrepreneurship is simultaneously exhilarating and paralyzing. If you’re like most entrepreneurs you’ve been living and breathing your business idea for what feels like forever, growing its potential in your head with each passing moment. And despite the anticipation and excitement, when the time comes for action, you feel stuck. Where do you even begin? How do you go about building an empire, changing an industry, or creating a legendary business?

The key to success for most entrepreneurs is learning to toggle back and forth between thinking big and moving things forward, which often requires taking small manageable steps. Here are three ways to make some progress.

1. Get in the Right Frame of Mind Entrepreneurship is a marathon not a sprint. It’s easy to succumb to the feeling of urgency to do everything now. But burnout and entrepreneurial fatigue can mean sabotage for your business as well as your personal life. Prioritize longevity and keep one eye on the horizon. Think about what pace you need to set now to maintain your stamina and enthusiasm for years to come.
   
   Establishing good habits and resisting bad ones go a long way to preventing burnout. I have several strategies for staying refreshed: setting and sticking to my work/life boundaries; making space for creative thinking time; and taking vacations. When I don’t practice these habits, I feel compromised and overwhelmed. When I do, I am optimistic, creative and energized.
   
   


2. Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment Think about the big questions that drive your business. What challenges are you trying to solve? What changes are you going to make to your industry? How will you know when you’ve succeeded? While these questions can help to keep the big picture in mind and your mission in focus, they don’t exactly inspire a neat step-by-process. And the truth is that there may be multiple, viable alternatives instead of one clear “right” answer.
   
   Instead of pre-determining a hypothetical outcome, get clarity by experimenting with various strategies. Experimentation will help you get more information, test the market, and build momentum for the big master plan. It will also help you get products into the marketplace faster and help you resist the inclination to be a perfectionist. For example you can test retail concepts with a pop-up store, improve products with focus groups, and test services with pilot participants. Consider the biggest question facing your business and what experiments might yield the necessary data.
   
   


3. Brush Up on Your History Lessons What businesses or entrepreneurs to you look to for inspiration. Its important to identify businesses you want to be like when you grow up. But remember, these entrepreneurial superheros had beginnings too. Do some research to find out their early days were like. Learn from their lessons and take note of their milestones and decisions points. Seeing their journey helps to demystify the process and makes your business heroes human. It’s helpful to know that all business heroes had doubts and doubters of their own.
   
   It’s also important to dismantle your own myths of the overnight success. For example, few people realize that Hanky Panky, the famed lingerie company, had already been in business for 27 years before they scored the front-page Wall Street Journal article that made them a household name. Instead of focusing on their impressive brand recognition or their significant market share, see what insight you can glean from Hanky Panky’s recent decision to build a robust e-commerce site after being exclusively wholesale or their recent introduction of several new product lines. What can your business learn from this example and the examples of the giants in your industry?

Keeping your focus on building long term momentum, establishing good habits and taking small steps can help build momentum that will take you closer to your business goals.

Courtesy of Y.E.C. 

Adelaide Lancaster is co-founder of In Good Company, a collaborative workspace for women business owners in NYC. In addition, she consults to small business owners helping them to create and grow businesses that meet their needs and goals. Adelaide regularly teaches, speaks, and writes on topics relating to women and entrepreneurshi

via Y.E.C.

Co-Founded by Natalie MacNeil and Scott Gerber, Y.E.C. Women is an initiative of the Young Entrepreneur Council (Y.E.C.), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country’s most promising young entrepreneurs. The Y.E.C promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

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What Great Entrepreneurs Have In Common?

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By Drew Hansen Prime Movers

Image via Wikipedia What does it take to be a great artist?

Richard Russo evokes this question near the end of his 2007 novel, Bridge of Sighs. In it, he chronicles Lou Lynch, Jr. (Lucy) and his friend Bobby Marconi, who grew up together in a small town in upstate New York. The two friends couldn’t be more different. In sixty years, Lucy has never left his hometown, but Bobby on the other hand, leaves as soon as he graduates high school, fleeing Thomaston never to return. He eventually becomes a world-famous artist and lives the rest of his life in Venice. After Bobby passes away, a reporter interviews Lucy to learn more about his friend’s childhood.

On Saturdays, the two friends took turns surfing in the back of Lou Sr.’s milk truck. The thrill came when the truck, turning unexpectedly, caused one or the other to lose his balance and crash into the side.  Unlike Lucy, who braced himself before turns, Bobby let go and even shut his eyes. In Lucy’s words, “Bobby wanted what was coming down the road to be a surprise, even if it meant he got hurt.”

In my previous post, I explained that entrepreneurs are similar to artists because they’re outsiders. In my opinion, Bobby’s behavior represents a willingness to be vulnerable, another trait that entrepreneurs and artists have in common.



Anthony Tjan, founder of the VC firm Cue Ball, calls vulnerability the defining trait of great entrepreneurs. He describes it this way:

Active vulnerability comes from engaging in a contemplated risk that considers and hopes for the payoff, financial or otherwise, that will be worth the effort. Active vulnerability is in essence proactive and informed risk-taking.

I describe entrepreneurial vulnerability differently.

An entrepreneur’s work, like that of an artist, is a form of self-expression. When painting, an artist injects her canvas with her beliefs and values — knowingly or unknowingly — and the completed painting becomes an extension of herself. Likewise, when an entrepreneur founds a company, she imbues it with her opinion of how the world ought to be. It, too, springs from her deepest yearnings, making it unique and personal. There is no guarantee that the audience or market will accept her work. Vulnerability, then, is the willingness to reveal one’s true self and risk misunderstanding, ridicule, and even rejection.

At the core of human experience is a longing to be accepted. Some people, to satisfy this innate desire, conform to the norms around them, but in the process, compromise a part of themselves. Other people, the misfits, resist the temptation to fit in and remain true to themselves. As exhausting and demoralizing as it can be, the misfits’ willingness to defy norms gives life its nuance and beauty.

Dan Pallotta explains where this strength comes from:

To embrace the misfit in oneself is to be vulnerable. It is to forsake the easy acceptance that comes with fitting in and to instead be fortified by a kind of love, really. A love of life, a love of wonder, and, ultimately, a sustaining love for oneself. Far from egoism, that love for oneself is a measure of one’s love for others, for humanity. And it is only from love that great ideas can be born.

The greatest artists, entrepreneurs, and leaders don’t seek acceptance. Instead, their love and compassion fuel a yearning to make a ding in the universe and persevere despite rejection.

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