Patience Is A Skill
I read a blog article from Seth Godin today that made me think a lot. Seth’s topic was a question; ‘Is patience a skill?’ The answer was ‘Of Course It Is. You can learn to be more patient.’ I was delighted to read that because I think that I’m not patient even though some people would disagree and say the exact opposite.
On top of that I recently had a very interesting conversation with a dear friend of mine regarding being patient about business and having the patience to grow a community on social media (Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Vine). She asked me how long I am willing to continue hustling for until I see results. My reply was ‘for as long as it takes’. That doesn’t mean if a new opportunity comes I will decline it. I’m always open to new ideas, opportunities and I’m always willing to grow. However, one thing I will not change are my goals. I have certain goals that I will achieve and I will do whatever it takes to achieve them.
I think people grossly underestimate (myself included) how much work and patience it actually requires to build a community or a great brand. The reason we do that is because we read headlines like ‘The ABC Brand Made £10 million within 10 months’, ‘A 20 year old kid sold his start up for £50 billion to Google’ or other similar headlines. What we keep forgetting is that every single successful brand/person had a lot of ‘unsuccessful ’years.
In my opinion, it’s wrong to give ourselves a deadline of a year or two and then quit if nothing happens. If you are excellent at what you do you should never give up. Having said that there are two things we should always keep in mind. One is being delusional about talent and the other one is not loving what we do. Now if for 12 months we worked hard and didn’t see any progress we have to see what’s wrong. Either our product/service is not solving a problem or maybe our content is just rubbish. Whatever the case, we always have to make a few changes to improve ourselves and have the courage to try new things. We need to challenge our way of thinking. If we don’t love what we will most probably give up and it won’t last long.
We might realise at some point that we were built for something else and have that gut feeling that we need to change. If that happens, then yes we do need to change. I believe the key for all of us is to love what we do and do it because we feel it’s the right thing to do. If for example we want to drive from London to Scotland and we see no progress or we are stuck on the M25 maybe we need take a different road (but not shortcut). Maybe later we will face some challenges and we will need to change the engine’s oil or maybe drive faster or slower.
I think that the best thing to do is to go based on our gut feeling and continue pushing. Remember that Coca Cola only sold 25 bottles the first year but they kept on going. Imagine if they said to themselves that they need to sell 100 bottles or 1 million bottles and give up if they didn’t achieve their goal. We probably wouldn’t know the brand and we wouldn’t be speaking about them. Today Coke is selling 1.8 billion bottles per day.
My point is that if we love what we do so much we should keep trying for the rest of our lives whilst being self-aware enough to understand if this is our talent or skill. If patience is a skill, then we all have the same opportunities and we can all learn to be more patient. Can you imagine that your next huge client would be just a meeting away or that an influencer in the BBC or BuzzFeed will see your Snapchat Story or Instagram and promote it on their social channels? Imagine giving up and having that ‘what if’ regret for the rest of our lives…
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