River of Consistency: An Entrepreneurial Must
This is a picture I took on my first day in Toulouse, France. I was there in the summer of 2017 completing my Horton International Engineering Fellowship experience. It was the first time I’d traveled outside the United States alone.
To get to work everyday, I crossed the Garonne river on foot over the Pont des Catalans. This river is what started my day. Whether it was sunny, rainy, windy or cloudy, my routine started here.
Taking the path of entrepreneurship requires consistent output. In the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, he compares the process of starting up a business to spinning a giant flywheel — building momentum until it gets easier and easier to spin.
I’ve found that I need to be the river that spins this wheel. According to the Philosophy of Water masterfully presented by Raymond Tang in his TED Talk, water is Humble, Harmonious, and Open (H2O, if you didn’t catch that).
Humble means being a tranquil, constant source of life in the ecosystem. Harmonious means that water slowly but surely chips away at obstacles — smoothing the rocks that bar its passage. Lastly, Open means taking the path of least resistance and being open to change.
Following the Philosophy of Water works extremely well in a startup environment. Since everyone is surrounded by risk and uncertainty, people take comfort in sources of consistency. I’ve learned that, by being a source of consistency among my teammates, we can keep chipping away at the challenges we face together.
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