#3: Onwards!
Let the challenge commence
“Coincidences mean you’re on the right path.”
Simon Van Booy
Listen to this, this is weird: the day after I wrote the first article relaunching The600Project, we got an all-staff e-mail at work from the Managing Partner of the firm bringing good news to all before the weekend — all staff were to get a £1,000 pre-tax bonus as the firm has had better than expected annual results. When you take into account the tax deduction, that works out roughly as, yep, you guessed it — £600!
Coincidence or what?!? I don’t think so!
This was a sign!
I was meant to be doing this!
What the hell am I doing?
This is a really daft idea isn’t it?
It’s probably not even achievable and, to top it all off, I have no entrepreneurial experience whatsoever. All I’ve known these past 11 years is the four walls of my law firm.
I’m reminded of that bit from the Shawshank Redemption — the bit where Red is telling everyone that Brooks has been institutionalised:
Red: Would you knock it off? Brooks ain’t no bug. He’s just…just institutionalized.
Heywood: Institutionalized, my ass.
Red: The man’s been in here fifty years, Heywood. Fifty years! This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man. He’s an educated man. Outside, he’s nothin’! Just a used up con with arthritis in both hands. couldn’t even get a library card if he applied. You see what I’m saying?
Floyd: Red, I do believe you’re talking out of your ass.
Red: Believe what you want. These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.
How am I supposed to follow my heart and do what I love when the only thing I’ve done since leaving school is practice law and be averse to risk? Whilst I know that I’m not passionate about drafting contracts, sadly, it’s all I know (or, at least, all I think I know). What if its the only thing I’m good at? What if outside the office I’m… nothin’?!
My inner voice of fear and “reason” was hurling insults at me: “Imposter! Who are you to try this cunning challenge? There’s no chance you can double your profits at each stage! Stop being a tit, get your head down at your proper job and go for the promotion”
I was starting to become very conscious of the fact that I was setting myself up to spectacularly fail. Worse that that, not only was I setting myself up to spectularly fail, but to spectacularly fail in public! And worse still, I was setting myself up to spectacularly fail in front of my children.
Last weekend we took the kids to a theme park. We’d been walking over to one of the rides when a dad and his small daughter came walking towards us in the other direction. The daughter was positively beaming, awkwardly carrying a massive furry teddy bear. I nervously looked at Millie. Millie, now also positively beaming, looked at me. She wanted one. We walked towards the stall… you had to knock down 6 tin cans perched atop of each other with two happy-sack like balls. Millie was already imagining how the teady bear was going to look in her toy corner back home. The pressure was getting to me. I dont think so much has ridden on being accurate with two squishy leather balls. Anyway, I failed to hit a single tin can. Not. Even. One. Millie looked at me with watery eyes with a mixture of disappointment and almost resignation as if she had finally concluded “yep, my dad’s a dickhead”.
It’s a heart crushing moment when your 7 year old daughter finally discovers you are not a superhero. Like the time I had to tell her that no, I wouldn’t win the London Marathon. And now I would be compounding this paternal disappointment even further by failing to turn my £600 into £1.2m as I was setting out to do.
All of these fears no doubt race through the minds of all would-be entrepreneurs. The fear of being an imposter, of not having the experience. The fear of failure, of letting the family down. I started Googling quotes about fears and fear of failure to try and get some inspiration to get me out of my funk, and hit jackpot:
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” — Jack Canfield
A lot of successes I was reading about were preceded by a series of failures: Thomas Edison took 10,000 attempts to create a working light bulb. 10,000. Imagine that. If Edison only managed one attempt a day that would have been 27 years of having failed, every day. Similarly, James Dyson took 5,126 attempts to invent his bagless vacuum cleaner. Through that ongoing process no doubt they refined, fine tuned, tweaked here, tweaked there, and learnt from their mistakes. And then they refined some more. It seemed no great success was ever achieved without failure. The key however was that they all tried. And they persevered. They pushed on. If the last 2 years since mum’s death have taught me anything its that I’m a resilient sod. I can push on. I can push through these fears. I can push on through failure. So ultimately, failure wasn’t such a bad thing after all. If anything, it was a doorway to a better place — I just needed to start pushing
“Hey, I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.” — Dicky Fox (Jerry McGuire)
[I know, I know, another Dicky Fox reference on this blog! But c/mon — the guy’s a legend!]
But perhaps it was also a question of framing what success and failure actually meant in the context of The600Project. Should I draw the line between success and failure by whether or not I hit the £1.2m target? Or was the journey more important than the outcome? After all, the thing that had pushed me down this path in the first place was to have an adventure, to be more entrepreneurial. In that sense, it really wasn’t about the money at all, it was about going through the process. It was about actually starting something, and seeing it through, as opposed to just thinking about it and never starting it for all of the 101 reasons that I could have come up with. If I had an adventure, if I had fun, then this crack-pot mission would be a success.
And that was it. That was probably the best value I could teach Millie — by doing this project I could show her that she wouldnt have to judge herself in the future by other people’s view of “success” — she could frame her own. And I would definitely get her involved in helping out with the challenges, she was always trying to sell stuff (including my stuff) to people walking past the front door — she would love this!
Coming up with the ideas
So, with the fears now firmly pushed to one side, I now I needed to start coming up with the ideas for the challenges.
I needed to start thinking outside the box.
If ultimately I wasn’t defining success by the money, but rather by the journey and by a sense of adventure, then the challenges couldn’t just be flogging a stash of second hand watches or DVD players at the local market. The economics of that would be pretty difficult for the challenges later down the line too, particularly when I was looking to flip £600k. Six hundred thousand of Her Majesty’s finest British pounds would certainly buy a lot of knock-off watches, which would take me years to shift. I need to move quicker than that! But more importantly, I needed to come up with business challenges that were full of adventure, and in their own right told a story that people believed in. Challenges that, if and where possible, had a positive social impact. Mind you, I didn’t want to make things too difficult — if an opportunity presented itself which sounded like it would work, I would go for it. But if I had the choice, then the challenges would not just be fun, they would somehow be life-affirming.
Good ideas however, needed a rested mind, good exercise, balanced diet and good sleep. This project was likely to last somewhere between 12 and 24 months (come on, you didnt really think I was going to commit to doing 12 challenges in 12 months did you? I’ve got a full-time job and 3 kids!!) — no, I needed to pace myself and take things easy. No more 3am blogging sessions. I would start to run to work more. I would start to eat more healthily. Yes! The600Project would be a catylyst for not only having a bit more adventure, but also a catalyst for being healthier, more focussed, more efficient. But first, first I would get a restful nights sleep.
That night:
Approx 2am — Henry (our 3 and half year old) comes into our bed at goes to sleep in the middle. Horizontally. Stirring every 5 minutes.
4:04am — Rory (our new 4 month old boy) wakes up for his milk feed.
4:52am — Henry wakes up:
Henry: “Daddy, I want to go downstairs”
Me: “hhmmph”
Henry: “DA-DEE, I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!”
(me and Henry sitting on the sofa in front of the tv)
Me: “What do you want to watch?”
Henry: “Umi-Zoomi”
Me: “I don’t think that’s working” [I know full well it works, its just that it only lasts 20 minutes and he’ll be back upstairs poking me wanting to watch something else. He needs a feature film. He needs a good long feature film, so I can go back upstairs and have another hour and a half in bed whilst he gets his early morning televisual fix]
Me: “Why don’t you watch Madagascar, you love Madagascar”
Henry: “Can I watch Peter Pan Daddy?”
[That will do. In. On. Henry is happy. I’m back upstairs to bed]
5:35 — Henry is back in the bedroom:
Henry: “Daddy….”
Me: “hhmmph”
Henry: “DA-DEE!”
Me: “What Henry?”
Henry: “Please can I watch Madagascar?”
