Sunday, May 24, 2015

Thoughts on Entrepreneurship & The Fear Factory



There is nothing to writing. 
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Ernest Hemingway



It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is the world’s most efficient factory. It is constantly sending out products of destruction. The machinery is silent, but it is always running, plotting, producing thoughts. No one knows how to stop it.


I call it the Fear Factory. And it operates in my mind.


I kept thinking as I crossed off my goals, more “to do’s”, held awards in my hands and saw the string of accomplishments listed on my resume, that it would slow down the factory. It has not. The factory remains operating full steam ahead.


Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, said that a level of paranoia makes a CEO great. Who wants to live in a constant state of paranoia, then again who wants to be Blockbuster? Remember that company back in 1995? They thought they were invincible, but they weren’t. Perhaps they should have had a bigger fear factory? Did they get too cocky assuming we’d always fall prey to their boxes of Junior Mints at checkout? Remember the panic you felt when you realized you were four days late returning your rental? How dare you not rewind that tape? Of course you remember. Do you know what Blockbuster did wrong? Do you know how they stood by and watched their business fall apart before their eyes?


They didn’t pivot. They weren’t agile. They were not paranoid. Their fear factory was old and senile. They didn’t pay attention and once they did it was too late.


Now, that is something to truly fear... customers who no longer want your services or products.

Be afraid of being irrelevant.


My fear factory isn’t old or senile. It is young, productive, efficient, calculating and on the worst days it is brutal.


The Fear Factory is the part of my brain that I can’t make stop. That evil enemy who keeps saying “You aren’t smart enough or prepared to do this.” “The competition will outsmart you on this one.” It is the part of me that insists I need a MBA or prep-school pedigree.

The Fear Factory is especially fired up when I set those Big Hairy Audacious Goals that Jim Collins planted in the minds of every entrepreneur that ever lived. The pistons start moving and the gears are shifting as I write down, with painstaking specificity, what I want to happen in the next three years. The Fear Factory says,  “You don’t understand the complexity of the situation and you’ll mess it up.” “Your understanding of the finance world is limited...you barely made it through statistics in college.”


And just when I think I have gotten the factory to close for the day, I open my Facebook feed.


Wait, before we go any further...
Did you know that comparison is the thief of joy?


I try to remember that as I see a competing agent’s feed full of thrilled buyers and luxury properties “SOLD”! Their update taunts me, “We closed 15 million while you brushed your teeth this morning.” “I’m in the Diamond-Onyx-Moonstone Club for my company yet again this year.” #tooblessedtostress. Uh oh, I hear the lights flick on. The factory starts again. You see, I am in an industry that makes an olympic sport out of bragging. We put our headshots everywhere, we’ll even wrap our entire vehicle in our own image. As a group we are obsessed with how we are perceived, our accomplishments and how we measure up. Our strength is also our weakness.


Want to know the truth? I don’t measure up. Who does?


You know what you can count on with 100% accuracy? There will be failures. There will be public pain. There will be epic meltdowns and frozen pizzas for dinner for days. It is even possible to let your business domain lapse and miss 20 hours of emails. (Who does that?)


The Fear Factory is partially right. I am not prepared for this...


BUT


You know what? I am doing it anyway.


You know what is brave? Trying. Taking risks. Putting yourself out there for a dream that you know deep in your soul you’ve got to chase down---with a baseball bat. Not stopping.


Here’s my new plan. When the Fear Factory turns on today I will calmly walk in and look around. I’ll survey the factory floor to make sure there isn’t anything actually important (like becoming irrelevant to our customers). Chances are everything will actually be ok. I’ll let out a sigh of relief, turn on my heel and walk right out of that place. As I leave the fear I’ll purposefully walk into a different kind of factory. A place that is full of poise and peace. A place that radiates with an unshakeable conviction that Providence is at work in all places and at all times.

Which factory will you visit?

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