2-3-4 Friday
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
Jason Fried, the cofounder of project management software Basecamp loves saying,
start-ups are easy,
stay-ups are hard.
As a company, we’ve been alive for 4 years. Since 5 June 2020, when
we first incorporated ourselves, we’ve been trying this and that to survive.
Can you imagine? When I first started, I was doing things like IT support, supporting trainers on Zoom with sharing slides, answering responses in the chat, and trying to get $150 that day to survive.
I was facilitating focus group discussions. Writing, training, speaking,
counselling.
So it’s a miracle that we are still alive today, because I’ve not proceeded with any sort of a real plan.
It also begs the question,
are we alive because we were intentional,
or were we just lucky?
As you look back at your year, let me ask you that same question.
Looking back at your year and what you’re most proud of,
were you intentional, or were you lucky?
Now now, I’m not going to go Rhonda Bryne on you and tell you the power of intention, or why you need to
manifest your success.
But intention sets the tone, and action sets the stage.
There’s always a big gap between action and intention though.
And that’s where people fail.
Our biggest achievement this year is that we managed to start
deliberately selling design as a service.
This year, we’ve
- Designed MINDS Yearbook
- Designed Allkin’s book on
Anticipatory Grief (read this to understand why we need to grief before losing someone, rather than after losing someone).
- Designed OakPlus’ Annual Report
I don’t say this to boast or to show you that we’ve done well…
But to say
this.
If you don’t know how to do something, you can always learn it.
1 talk
… Knowing how to learn is incredibly important because there's just so much in the world you're not going to know.
So then you just have to have a
prepared mind to go figure it out.
And in start-up land, a lot of people want to index on credentials or experience, but the fact of the matter is if it's a start-up, either you're inventing a new market, or you have a different approach.
The team that learns and implements the fastest will win, not the team that started off with the most experience or the most
capital, necessarily.
- Shiyan Koh
1 tip
Many of us reinvent ourselves after it is necessary, rather than before.
- I didn’t take a formal degree as a designer. Nor a writer. Nor a speaker.
- Nor did I study a degree in organisational psychology that allowed me to facilitate or organise strategic retreats.
But the most important thing that changed the course of my life over the past 4 years was the profound experience of being rejected for jobs
for 3 years.
If I, an overseas scholar with a fully-funded university degree could not get a job, there was something wrong with me.
Not the organisation.
It was me.
And I had to take
responsibility.
Learning to learn was an experience that brought me face to face with the cold hard facts, that whatever skills I thought I had, were not good enough for the market to accept.
I was lucky that when I was still employed, I started
- Taking online courses in digital marketing and
copywriting
- Taking workshops in process facilitation in Sep 2021
- Got my first client in July 2021, 3 months before I left my full time job
I kept poking my nose in everyone’s inbox, asking if I could do this and that for them, even if it was free.
I was like a cockroach. You wouldn’t have wanted me anywhere near your inbox.
Back to you. You’re in a good place.
You’ve not been sacked. You’re trudging on. Heck, you might even be climbing in the organisation. But as quickly as you’ve gotten there, you might end up being at the tail end.
That’s how fast cycles turn.
Humans are alive today because some have mastered the art of cockroach-ing. You stamp on them, you slap them, and they still scurry around.
There’s this fierce desire to live, no matter what you throw at them.
So two questions for you
today:
- If things are good, what are you doing to learn?
- If things are bad, what are you still waiting for?
Learn to learn, and do what you learn.
Even before you’re ready.
John
Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love
Think others might benefit? I’m counting on you. Forward this on.