Muscles

If you’re thinking about starting your own business, writing a book, or making a big change,  you might wonder how to make your idea actually happen. Especially if the change is something that none of your friends or family are doing. You might want to just shrug it off as a foolish dream, or worse, get frustrated with yourself for being so darn different. 

The most early beginnings of my passion for entrepreneurship started on paper as a business plan when I was about 25 years old. If things went as planned, I’d be leaning back on a Herman Miller office chair, fingers entwined behind my head, with my feet on my desk, staring at the biggest computer screen Apple could offer while the money rolled in. 

Without me having to do anything, really. 

I’d have meetings with important people, I’d be recognized for my brilliance, and did I mention….money would be non-stop falling from the clouds above me all the time. 

The first idea I dreamed up was a bottled water manufacturing plant. I must have spent a year perfecting that plan. Forecasting the size of the bottled water market, researching the suppliers I would buy from, and figuring out how to sell my water. The potential of what the future held for me, as the owner of a water bottling facility, was exciting!

But hope and optimism wasn’t enough to put the shovel in the ground. I COULD NOT give up my pay cheque no matter how bright that future looked.

So I enrolled in an MBA program. If I had my Master’s degree in business, then I’d be “qualified” to do the thing that I really wanted to do. If somebody else said I was a “Master of Business”, then it would be so.

Four years later, that degree didn’t work like the magic wand I thought it would either! What? How could it not? I was officially accredited and credentialed to administer business. 

I decided that If I couldn’t have my bottled water plant, I would at least make more money. It didn’t take long to find the new job in a new city that paid more money. I moved from Rainy River to Thunder Bay to start a career with a shiny title. The next rung on the ladder. My mom was so proud! 

Within six months of moving to Thunder Bay, I hated my new job, broke my ankle, got rear ended, and cried somewhere on Algonquin Avenue  after missing the turn off Balmoral onto John Street for the 80th time. 

Rock Bottomsville. 

Was the universe telling me I was on the wrong path? Or was it asking me to show it what I had? This is a common place to be for people like you and me. Facing obstacles, and having to choose what to do about them. Having to believe in yourself and what you’re doing, even when everything in the outside world suggests you shouldn’t. 

I wrote that business plan in 2002. I was crying in my Honda Element in 2008, and if I knew it would take another 12 years before I got any traction as an entrepreneur, I would have done exactly what I did. Took one step at a time, while never letting the dream die. 

And I highly recommend that you do too. You have to move through the time anyway, so don’t ever let that dream die!