Walk, Jog, Run, Sprint

Even Chipotle Was (Not) Built in a Day

This past weekend, as I took the first bite of my Chipotle burrito, I came to a remarkable realization: Chipotle is 20 years old.

Today, the fast casual chain has more than 1400 locations worldwide. They’re in 43 states. They have more than 35,000 employees. They were independent for a while—then were partially owned by McDonalds—and now they’re back on their own again. This is a company that has quite a history. And yet, even though I’ve eaten at Chipotle at least 50 times in the last 5 years, I never gave much thought to their journey as a company.

The rest of this article is going to have very little to do with Chipotle. Instead, Chipotle serves as an example of a very important notion: Even the biggest, most popular, things in our world started with a single move.

This concept is so unbelievably obvious. Even so, we are all surrounded by people who choose not to act simply because they don’t believe they have the potential to succeed. Perhaps that person is you.

Here’s the thing: Everything worth building takes effort. It takes sweat. And not just the kind of sweat that you feel while eating a Chipotle burrito doused in Tabasco sauce. Really hard work.

We seem to have collectively bought into the myth of overnight success. The internet is partially to blame for this. We view people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey as overnight successes. But if you can skip past the hype and look at their body of work, you’ll see perseverance. You’ll see that they built and worked with a community of passionate partners. They created and tested.

On launch day, Facebook didn’t have a million users. It was a dinky little social experiment used by a small group of Harvard students. Heck — Zuckerberg almost lost his place at Harvard because of what he had created.

Before we learn to walk, we crawl. Before we figure out how to speak in our native tongue, we mouth out gibberish to communicate. Everything is additive.

This doesn’t mean that you have to get started on a grand project today. But there’s merit in momentum — there’s merit in always working on something. Start by adding a trickle of value to the world. This mindset is a key differentiator between people who talk or complain and those who take action.

If you’re interested in fashion, why not start writing about it or posting your sketches online? If you want to be a marketer, start building your own brand first or see if a local business or family member needs help telling their story. The internet has provided us with an unlimited number of free platforms to get moving—and be noticed for the work that we do. There’s no excuse anymore.

It’s obvious that in order to play for the Yankees someday, you have to throw your first pitch. It’s time that we start applying that to other passions and careers.

Throw a couple of pitches each day. Just get started and see where it goes. Eventually you’re going to throw a strike.

What are you working on? Find me here → twitter.com/danhoffmann and let me know.