The question was posed to me by a member of mine on one of my recent team trainings.
I chose not to respond to her then and there because I thought it was an intelligent question that deserved not a glib but an intelligent, well thought-out answer.
Later, having mulled it over for a few minutes, I realized that my reply would in fact depend on my consultant’s answer to this question: “Why are you building your business?”
Now, the way I see it, that can only be answered one of two ways.
The first is that you’re doing it for past-time.
If this is your response, if your business is simply a “hobby”, well, then clearly, it’s not significant what speed you are building at. Just like it’s not important whether you build model airplanes slowly or quickly.
But — and here’s something to really think about — if your business is a “hobby”, why would you believe you would ever make it as a business owner? This is a dog-eat-dog industry. Only the strong survive.
The other option is you’re building your business to save your life. (Or at the very least, your sanity.)
And if you’re hiding from debt collectors, if you’re four months behind on your mortgage, if your little girl cries herself to sleep at night because she doesn’t get to go to Disney Land like all the other kids because her mommy can’t afford it, if stress is eating you up on the inside or killing your marriage – in other words, if your “why” is big enough, you’ll naturally move fast.
Then, in fact, you can’t seem to move fast enough. You will want to move as fast as you can to escape your current predicament. And your “why” will conquer everything that gets in your path, propelling you toward your goals.
“Slow” won’t be an option. “Slow”, in fact, will be the enemy.
See the difference?
So, I think, the question that needs to be asked is not, “Is it wrong to build your business slowly?”, but rather, “Why are you building a business?”
That’s the real question here.
And if you find, from your answer to that question, that your why isn’t big enough, then perhaps you had better look for a different hobby. One less costly. Less exhausting.
So there you have it. That’s my take on it…
Successfully,
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Mindset. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.