Baby Steps and Baltimore

Currently in sunny Baltimore, east coast US – see pic for the view from the hotel of Baltimore’s ‘Inner Harbor’, nice area (not the clearest photo, taken through a window) – for an info-marketing conference, listening to the likes of Alex Mandossian (boy, does he yell …   a lot!), MaryEllen Tribby of ‘Early to Rise’ fame, Dan Kennedy (is he following me?), and others.

It’s always a very focused time, away from home and the distractions that brings with it, time to focus purely on the business, rubbing shoulders with people who inspire and make you think outside the box … time to step back and gain some perspective on what I’m doing and why, and to plan, think ahead and focus, rather than just being in the thick of business and of normal life.

It’s also interesting being surrounded by people who have failed. Not once, but several times, and continue to do so. But their lack of fear of failure means they also succeed many times too, and succeed far more than those held down by fear of failure who never try anything.

Of relevance to this, one speaker … embarrassingly can’t remember who … brought up the following quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

In fact, a lot can be learned from children, especially infants. When they learn to walk, it’s only through their failure to walk that they learn to do so. You have to fall over a certain number of times in order to eventually be able to stride forward confidently, head held high. There’s no other way to do it.

A couple weeks back, my one year old son, Pip, took his first step. Since then he’s taken his ‘first step’ several times, never quite getting to a second. But each time he falls over on trying to move his other foot ahead, his brain learns a new lesson. Each ‘failure’ is, excuse the pun, one more step towards his success. And he doesn’t let the falling over stop him, his determination to succeed is too strong.

A great book on this is Susan Jeffers’, ‘Feel the Fear, and Do It Anyway’, if you haven’t read it, get it now and do so.

Sometimes you just got to stride ahead, get out of your own way, and ‘do it anyway’ even though it may feel uncomfortable or alien. Eventually the discomfort will ease, and what feels uncomfortable today will feel natural tomorrow and will become part of who you are and ‘what you do’. You will have grown.

And that for me is a large part of the joy of running a business. It’s not the destination, which however far you get is always some way off, as bigger and brighter goals inevitably get set. It’s the journey of growth and discovery along the way.