An art student asked a master teacher how she could find more time to work on her art because she works full-time and supports a family. When she does have time, she doesn’t have any energy left. Should she just put aside her love of art and wait until the kids are older when things are not so time intensive.
The master artist said to her that the mistake is to look for more time rather than look for motive. It would be better for her to look for compelling reasons to develop her art. But this implied that she needed to be honest with herself and determine what she really wanted from art. It was time to throw off the “genteel answers”. Did she want to sell her artwork in a gallery? Did she want recognition from friends and family? Was her motive to be independent and not tied to full-time employment? Was it to count for something?
The master artist said it was important to “nail down your true motive” and realise that she really needed this thing. Most probably within her time would open up for her and she would then need to bring added “structure” to her off time to complete with all the other activities in her life.
Isn’t this just the same situation when it comes to coming up with new business ideas and developing them? If you don’t have the motive, you will struggle to get things done. Let’s be honest here, coming up with a new idea for a product or service or small enterprise might sound exciting or even thrilling but when it comes to finding time and the energy to get things going, you may find that you don’t have the time or energy. Your hope of coming up with something new and different and making it work in the marketplace fades into oblivion and you have nothing to show for it.
Unless you have a compelling reason to go ahead with your promising business idea other things are going to take up time in your life and you won’t get around to doing the one thing that could be important to you later on. What is it that is important to you? Why would you want to give of your time and energy into something that may not hold return? Why would you want to sink your limited resources into a small new hobby business or entrepreneurial venture when starting small businesses can be so risky? Do you have a compelling reason to get your new business idea off the ground?
The thing is you can look at all the surface reasons but if you don’t come up with that one compelling reason you won’t really have the fire that ignites your passion and helps you overcome obstacles. It’s almost a truism that when starting anything new and particularly a new business venture that it is going to take three times longer than you planned and cost twice as much as what you initially envisaged. With such high odds you’ve got have a strong motive otherwise your enthusiasm will quickly melt away like frost on the grass when the sun comes out on a winter morning.
If you can’t find a strong motive, then your intuition is telling you something. You need to wait awhile, reflect and pickup or tune into what it is that is holding you back. If you can’t find a compelling motive, then perhaps you need to shelve your idea and wait for something else. But if you find that there is some issue or element of risk or something standing in the way that you think you can come up with a solution to get around it or solve it, then it may still be worth your while to continue.
Whatever you decide to do, have a clear motive, know the costs in both time and resources, understand and reduce the possible risks and make sure that if you are going to anything you must have your eyes wide open.
