Category: Belief

Embracing the Unknown: Why Young Entrepreneurs Can Thrive

I follow a small handful of Youtubers.  Most of the channels I watch focus on small business owners in various industries, or folks who are building an independent lifestyle…mostly off-grid. 

I love to watch them create something valuable and useful out of nothing but an idea and their belief that they can do it.  Sometimes they succeed on their first try, other times they need to adjust and try again.  I admire their willingness to push themselves way outside their comfort zone in pursuit of the way they want to live.      

This past weekend, I watched as the twenty-year-old daughter of someone I follow took the plunge to start her own coffee house.  She has 1-2 years of experience being a barista and talked about how much she loved that job, her teammates, and her customers. 

She told a nice story about how her mom met her dad 20-plus years ago.  He and his band came to perform at the coffee house where her mom worked as a barista.  She said that she would be investing her life savings in this new venture. 

She started by leasing a 1,900 square-foot space that had all the bones to become a great coffee house location. She and her mom set about visualizing and planning the space, identifying the equipment she’d need, and how they’d work together to remodel the space.  They talked about where the small kitchen would go, how the prep tables would be organized, where the coffee counter and espresso machines would go, how the space would be decorated for comfort and a relaxing vibe. 

As I watched them walk around visualizing, the experienced business manager in me started thinking about all the paperwork she’d need to file.  The health code permits, the special equipment she’d need, the certifications that may be required to serve food, the creation of a business and DBA, opening bank accounts, capitalizing, and accounting for the business…sales and income tax filings. 

I wondered how many customers she’d need to serve each day to generate an adequate cash flow and profit.  Had she identified her suppliers?  Did she know the supply costs yet?  How many employees would she need to hire to cover all the shifts?  Was she ready to establish a payroll process for her new employees, establish HR systems, purchase the various insurance coverages she’d need, including worker’s compensation coverage. 

Cut to the next scene in their video, and they’re filing the DBA paperwork, and starting to file the health code paperwork and forms.  It turns out that there is a healthy server certification that she’ll need to obtain (which includes a ton of study materials and a written test). 

She was undeterred.  She plowed straight into the process, all the while renovating and remodeling the space along with the help of friends and family. It was truly a labor of love for her.  After 3-4 weeks of work, the place was starting to take shape. 

What happens next?  I’ll be tuning in next week to find out.        

There’s a prevailing stereotype that youth and inexperience are synonymous with recklessness and abandon.

How can this 20-year-old possibly know enough to successfully launch her new coffee business? 

Look more closely and it may be that her lack of experience and knowledge are the catalyst for her leap into entrepreneurship.  She knows that she doesn’t want to work for someone else, and she loved her experience being a barista.  Why not create her own coffee house?   

One of the paradoxes of entrepreneurship is that knowledge, while valuable, can sometimes become a barrier to action. Older generations, armed with years of experience and a deep understanding of the intricacies involved in starting and running a business, may find themselves paralyzed by the fear of failure, or an unwillingness to put in all the work they know lies ahead. Knowing what they know, they can easily talk themselves out of almost anything.

On the other hand, young entrepreneurs often possess an infectious optimism and a sense of invincibility that propels them forward. Unencumbered by the weight of past failures or the mounting responsibilities of adulthood, they approach new ventures with a boldness that can be both exhilarating and inspiring. Their willingness to take risks stems not from ignorance, but from a belief that they can overcome any obstacle that stands in their way.

They are adaptable, more willing to pivot and change course when facing unexpected challenges. They haven’t yet become set in their ways or entrenched in established routines, allowing them to embrace change with a sense of excitement rather than fear. They view setbacks not as roadblocks, but as opportunities for growth and learning.

Young entrepreneurs understand the value of learning by doing. They’re not afraid to dive into the nitty-gritty of running a business, knowing that experience is the best teacher.

Will any of it be easy?  No.

Will she have moments of self-doubt, and fear of failing?  Yes. 

Will she overcome the wall of worry and doubt, plus all the challenges associated with owning and running a successful business?  Maybe, but I know she has what it takes to make it successful. 

Would I open a coffee house at this point in my life?  Nope. 

But I love that she’s pursuing her dream.  I love that her parents are there to help.  I can already see that they’re being supportive, but also letting her drive the process, take the risks, and make the decisions. 

If she were to ask for my advice, I’d tell her to consider the following (in no particular order):

  • Create or join a network of trusted allies and service providers.  Join the local Chamber of Commerce, a BNI chapter, or a group that has other business owners as members.  You’ll get to meet other entrepreneurs, compare notes with them, and many of them will provide services and expertise that you can use.
  • Focus on the customer’s experience in everything you do.  Advocate for your customers and they will advocate for you.
  • Start your marketing and awareness campaign long before the day you open your business.  While you’re remodeling the interior or your space, take the time to remodel and brand the exterior.  Put up “coming soon” signs.  Try to generate as much anticipation in your surrounding neighborhood as possible…again, long before opening day. 
  • If possible, ensure that your business has at least 3 months (or more) of operating capital in the bank at any time.  The more, the better.  You never know when something unexpected might happen…a big expense or capital investment opportunity, or maybe a cyclical downturn in your business. 
  • Remember that leaders always eat last.  This means you’ll probably have some lean times, financially.  Keeping your business healthy and paying your employees must come first.  It’s quite possible that you won’t be pulling anything that looks like a paycheck from your business for 6-12 months.  Prepare for this and realize it’s completely normal.   
  • As you hire employees, whether they’re part-time or full-time, make sure they know your values, why your coffee house is special, why they are fortunate to be part of your team and that you feel blessed and fortunate to have them on your team. 
  • Advocate for your employees, but don’t be afraid to quickly let go of employees who aren’t embracing your company culture. You need to employ believers in your mission…anything less is unacceptable.  I don’t remember who said it but hire slowly and fire fast.  Both are extremely difficult to do in practice but will pay off with amazing results if you’re able to do it. 

p/c – Nathan Lemon – Unsplash

Want to see what happens next with Belle’s coffee house?

Exiting the Tomb of Pessimism

“We must strive to exit our tomb of pessimism.”  I heard this phrase echo through the Cathedral during the Easter Vigil homily, a little over a week ago. 

As Catholics, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ every Easter…His triumphant exit from the tomb, three days after his crucifixion.

In a much smaller way, we have a daily invitation to cast off our heavy shroud of negativity.  To exit our tomb of pessimism. 

To break the shackles of hopelessness and redirect our thoughts toward a brighter horizon.    

If everything great begins with a thought or an idea, imagine channeling this power toward an optimistic future, filled with amazing possibilities. 

It’s easy to stay in this tomb of our own making, looking through the bars at all the people out there who are clearly happier, more successful, and have all the things we yearn for.    

The truth is none of them matter.  They have no impact on us…except to show us some possibilities, some ideas, and some pathways that worked for them.    

We have the power to rewrite our own narrative, to pivot our lives toward a more hopeful outlook.  The choice is ours alone. 

Escaping the tomb of pessimism demands courage and resolve. It requires us to confront our deepest fears and insecurities, to challenge the status quo of negativity that has held us captive and kept us comforted for so long.

Yet, it is only by confronting these challenges that we can find the promise of transformation.  Only through the struggle that we can discover a new sense of purpose.

Will you remain ensnared in the confines of pessimism, or will you seize the opportunity to step into the light, and walk away from your tomb of pessimism?    

The choice is yours.

Choose wisely.

p/c – Jelle de Gier – Unsplash

Aggressive Confusion

What happens when someone leads with their confusion?

It’s easy to be confused.

To be unclear about new information.

To ask for more explanations.

To need more practice.

But what happens when someone leads with their confusion, defending themselves behind a shield of doubt and uncertainty?

What if they wield their confusion like a weapon, merely to strengthen their grip on the status quo?

Is their objective to understand an idea or to avoid any responsibility for it?

Exploration (of anything) is a journey into the unknown and unexpected.  It can be overwhelming, even confusing.  It should be.  Finding our way through the confusion is how we grow.

We make the choices:

  • Will we decide to push through our confusion?
  • Will we put in the effort to find new clarity?
  • Will we choose to grow?

Or, do we prefer to hide in our comfortable bubble of confusion?

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

 

The Dance of Light and Dark

I originally wrote this poem eight or nine years ago.  It was an exercise in using contrasting words, contrasting rhythms, active and passive voices, sensory symbolism, and a few other style toys that I thought would be fun to try (for a hobbyist writing nerd).

As often happens when I write, the theme I had in mind when I started was quickly overtaken by other ideas.  The words and symbolism began pointing the way.  A new theme slowly emerged.

Then, just as I was gaining momentum, some shiny objects interrupted, and I set this poem aside.  A whole bunch of amazing life events started happening and years (eight or nine to be exact) came and went.

This poem sat on the hard drive of what would become my “old” computer.  When I moved over to the new computer, somehow all the data didn’t get transferred properly to the new computer (or to any of the cloud storage locations I use today).

I forgot about the poem until a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for a fictional story I’d written.  After some searching, I realized the only place it could be was on that old computer that we hadn’t turned on in years (and that we kept for some reason).  Imagine my surprise when I was able to boot it up and look around on the hard drive for some of my old (nearly lost) work.

I found that fictional story I was looking for (maybe I’ll publish it in some form in the future), along with a bunch of other work I had forgotten…including this poem.  Again, shiny objects intervened, and I didn’t get around to re-reading this poem until today.  The toys I’d been playing with so many years ago were just lying about where this big kid had left them.

I picked up my writing toys and continued playing with the words, the styles, and the symbols.  The theme that was there so many years ago was showing itself but in a new way that I hadn’t quite seen in the past.  Again, the words and symbols pointed the way (just like Mr. Cox told us in eleventh grade English class).

I hope you enjoy it.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

 

The Dance of Light and Dark

Lengthening shadows descend across the forest floor.

The perpetual dance as day gives way to night.

Glorious palettes of color and light,

Surrendering to shadows in the growing darkness.

 

The air grows cold with the smell of decay.

Death wins a battle in its forever war on life.

 

Your heartbeat echoes behind your ears.

A quiet rhythm of life.

You hear the mournful wail of a distant companion, howling for a moon not yet risen.

 

Stars shine like pinholes through a curtain.

The moon rises in the distance, casting new light in the dark.

 

While creatures of the night toil in the shadows,

Hunting and evading, hiding and pouncing, dying and surviving.

They don’t know what their future holds.

Pain or comfort.

Life or death.

 

Trees moan quietly as they sway against the wind’s unending assault.

Each is alone in the crowd to persevere as they must.

These trees know without knowing that morning will come.

A distant dream in the long cold night that’s just beginning.

 

Morning brings new light.

An eternity of hope.

Wistful breezes carry the freshness of this glorious day.

The sun lends its brilliant glow to all that it touches.

 

A new day, with promises to make.

Promises to fulfill.

Promises of life, of love, of laughter, and joy.

 

This dance of light and dark,

Of hope and despair,

Of life and death.

An eternity before,

An eternity after.

This dance is our journey.

This dance is each of us.

 

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

 

 

No Matter What

What’s on your no matter what list?

  • “I’m going to do this, no matter what.”
  • “I’ll be there by 5pm, no matter what.”
  • “We’re having this party, no matter what.”
  • “We’ll finish this project by the deadline, no matter what.”
  • “We will hit our quarterly numbers, no matter what.”
  • “My family will always come first, no matter what.”
  • “My career will always come first, no matter what.”

No matter what doesn’t compromise.

No matter what won’t be distracted.

No matter what knows its priorities.

No matter what gathers allies but has the power to alienate.

No matter what takes no prisoners in pursuit of its objectives.

No matter whats are easy when we’re young, protected, and naïve; but hard to uphold in the wilds of real life.

No matter whats morph, adapt, and may even be forgotten as time passes.  But some remain unchanged for our entire life.

What’s on your no matter what list?

How many no matter whats do you say out loud?  Which ones do you keep to yourself?

Do you define your no matter whats, or do they define you?

Maybe it’s time to find out.

 

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Come on in, the water’s warm!

Back in the day, we used to grab our boogie boards and take the bus down to Seal Beach (in California).  It cost 25 cents each way.  Perfect for a budget-minded 6th grader and his buddies.

Side note:  nobody thought it was the least bit strange for a bunch of 6th and 7th graders to go to the beach on a public bus without their parents…my how times have changed in 40 years.

That first step into the waves was always the coldest.  It never failed that a wave would break right on shore, just as we were trying to slowly enter the water.

We always knew that the moment the water hit our stomachs, we might as well just dive in and swim out through the waves.

Within about thirty seconds, we were used to the water temperature.  We didn’t think about it for the rest of the day.  All we were thinking about was catching the next wave and buying a hot dog and a Coke for something like a dollar at lunch time.

We humans have an incredible ability to adapt.  Sure, we feel the shock of a new challenge deep in our gut at first.  We’ll wonder how in the world we’re going to deal with this new set of problems.  But, give us a little time, and we have what it takes to not only adapt, but to overcome.

The only question is whether we choose to adapt.

It’s our choice.

We decide whether we’ll dive into the cold waves and paddle out, or retreat to the warm safety of the beach.

The beach may be safe, but the waves we’re trying to catch are out in the water.

Time to dive in and start paddling.

Photo Credit:  That’s our grandson, Charlie.  He’s riding his first wave on a boogie board, at Beach 69 on the Big Island, a few weeks ago.  He turns 4 this weekend.  Cowabunga, Charlie!

 

Time for a Lens Change?

We control our settings.  We control our lenses…

Way back in junior high (in the last century), I learned about photography with 35mm SLR cameras.  These were the “real thing.”  They were a far cry from the cheap Instamatics that everyone I knew used at the time.

We learned about shutter speeds, f-stops, light meters, focus points, passive and active lighting, shadows, framing, composition, film types, and lenses.

Did we want to capture the action close-up, or in the distance?  Blur the action, or stop it?  Shadow the subject, or light it?  Black and white, or color?  Grainy or smooth?  Focus on the foreground or the background?  Capture the subject from the left, or right?

It didn’t matter if we were photographing a mountain, a flower, a person, or a can of tomatoes.  Using all the tools at our disposal, we controlled what happened in each photo.

Don’t even get me started on developing film in a darkroom.  We learned about that too.  More ways to control the image that appears in the photo.  For younger readers, darkrooms are the place where the exposed film was transformed into photos.  Using various methods, we could edit an image like you can today in your phone’s photo editor or Photoshop.

The main lesson about all this wasn’t the tools and techniques of photography. It was the realization that the camera was only a tool to capture a moment.  That moment, with all its beauty, drama, imperfections, and emotions.

More specifically, the camera captures a feeling that comes from the image and our memory of that feeling.  The image is merely a pathway to our feelings about the subject.

We capture moments and feelings every day.  Usually without a camera.  We control how these moments and feelings appear on the canvas that matters the most.  In our heart and in our mind.

If the world seems to be against you, and all you see is ugliness and despair, that’s probably because of the way you’re choosing to see the world.

If everything is amazing and perfect, that’s also a result of the way you’re choosing to see the world.

Neither view is 100% accurate.  Reality has its ups and downs.  We face challenges and triumphs, victories and defeats, every day.

The key is to understand that we have way more to do with the way these moments are captured and interpreted than anyone or anything in our world.

We control our settings.  We control our lenses.  We choose where we focus.

Ultimately, we choose how to frame our moments.  Not the other way around.

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

The Reasons We Quit…

A post about authority and responsibility…

Are usually not the real reasons.

Sure, we’ll have our story about how someone or something created the untenable situation that pushed us to quit.

We can talk about how continuing would have been a waste of our time and energy.

We can even describe how the emotional toll was so great that we needed to make the change before some type of permanent damage occurred.

All these reasons contain elements of truth.  But, not the whole truth.

The whole truth lies in the balance of authority and responsibility.

Authority and responsibility live on opposite sides of life’s biggest equation.  When we perceive that the authority we have matches up with the responsibility we’re carrying, we feel balanced.  Satisfied.

But, get them out of whack, and our dissatisfaction begins to climb.  Left unattended, the dissatisfaction we feel (subconsciously at first) will begin to overtake our patience.  The cascade toward departure begins.

A world where we have ultimate authority and no responsibility would be nice.  The “power” to do whatever we want without any ownership of the outcomes.  Of course, this is a fantasy world.

Having authority over anything means having responsibility.

The key is the balance.

So, back to the quit or don’t quit decision:

If we stay the course, we’ll be forced to take ownership.  We’ll need to assume authority and expend a ton of emotional energy.  We can’t blame the “other.”  When we decide not to quit, we’re deciding that it’s okay to be responsible for making the situation a success (however that gets defined in our heads).

Quitting is the easy way out of this “authority-responsibility” conundrum.  It requires a lot less energy and eliminates our risk of failure.  It doesn’t matter that the act of quitting may be an admission of failure in the first place.  That’s just a sunk cost.  The key is how much emotional energy we’ll have to expend in the future.

Why does any of this matter?  We aren’t planning to quit any time soon.  It’s not in our nature.

True, but what about everyone around you?  What about the people who report to you?  What about your teammates?  What about your friends?

It turns out they’re working through this same authority-responsibility equation in their own lives.

And guess who has both the authority and responsibility to help them with balancing their equation.

You.

 

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

Letting Go

You are not what has happened to you…

“If there are pieces of your past that are weighing you down, it’s time to leave them behind.  You are not what has happened to you.  You are someone unimaginably greater than you have ever considered, and maybe it’s time to consider all the possibilities that are within you.”  –Matthew Kelly

How much baggage are you carrying from your past?

The mistakes you’ve made.  The opportunities you missed.  The disappointments.  The tragedies.  The could’ve beens and the should’ve beens.  The people you still won’t forgive.

Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting your past.  It doesn’t mean ignoring the lessons you’ve learned.

It means forgiving yourself and forgiving others.  It means loving the amazing person you’ve become and letting go of the person you or anyone else thought you should have become.

Each of us is a work-in-progress.  We have an opportunity every day to define our future.  But, it’s impossible to choose our future while burdened with all the weight of our past.

It’s time to let go.  Drop the weight.  Drop the guilt.  Drop the anger.  Drop the regrets that quietly gnaw at your core.

Let go and prepare yourself for the awesome future that you choose.

As Matthew Kelly says, “You are someone unimaginably greater than you have ever considered.”

Photo by Gianandrea Villa on Unsplash

 

My Leadership Prayer

God, please grant me,

The faith and judgment to make sound decisions, and

The courage to change those decisions when they’re wrong.

The everlasting hope that, together, our organization can and will be successful.

The fortitude to seek continuous improvement in everything we do.

 

Integrity and a just heart to do the right thing, even when no one is looking.

A charitable approach to my employees, my customers and my competitors.

The ability to focus on the vital few while ignoring the distracting many, and

The prudence to deploy our limited capital wisely.

 

Oh, loving God,

Allow me to work from a place of humility, forsaking my prideful thoughts.

Help me look to others for motivation, not as a source of jealous envy.

Give me the self-control to reject greed, striving for what is needed and nothing more.

Show me that the trappings and status of my position are temporary and undeserved.

 

Always remind me that my life’s mission is to serve others before myself,

Helping my organization grow by focusing on the growth of every team member.

Remind me to provide life-giving feedback and questions that encourage rather than belittle,

To view mistakes and failures as opportunities for learning and improvement.

Help me understand that all of us are smarter and more creative than one of us.

 

Give me the strength and endurance to persevere through times of trouble.

Give me the vision to see beyond today,

To always strive for a better tomorrow.

Help me to become a positive example for others in my thoughts, in my words, and in my actions.

I invite You into each and every minute of my life.

Grant me the peace that comes from Your eternal and infinite love, now and forever.

Amen

 

Photo by David Monje on Unsplash