Committing to Commit

When you say yes to someone…even to yourself…how much time did you spend thinking about it? Soul searching? Weighing the pros and cons? Imagining the success ahead? The failures?

I ask because I’m right there with you…realizing that I really need to ask those questions before I commit. When we know, we know, but even when we know something looks, tastes and feels right…do we really have the commitment it takes to make that “yes” real and bankable?

As a serial entrepreneur that runs an incubator for other entrepreneurs…I meet and work with people every day who say they want a particular dream.  Yet…more often than not, I wonder how much time they thought about it before…and how much time they think about it now…that commitment it takes to make their dream an amazingly wonderful thing…and not a crippling nightmare.

You think you want to start your own business…which, by the way, means you will be balancing at least 6 or 12 hats on your already drooping head…and it means…and this is the point of all of this…that you are going to have to know what commitment truly means.

Are you going to make that call that may make the difference between having the next sale and not being able to make your next payroll? Are you going to keep that next appointment and NOT cancel because you just don’t feel like it? Are you going to respond to those emails from your teammates that you let sit for a few days (or gasp, a week) even though you are so filled with dread you wish you could crawl under your bed?

The thing is…your very credibility is on the line.

You’ve announced most likely to your friends…your family…your coworkers…your social media audience…that you are going to do this “thing.” So now…you kind of have to, right?

Right.

You do…if for no other reason you said so. Otherwise…why did you risk the public embarrassment of effectively saying…I wasn’t really committed?  I think about Steven Carse, locally famous here in Atlanta and likely famous globally before too terribly long. He’s the guy who found himself without a job at AIG, a financial services company, but with a dream of starting his own popsicle company.

Crazy right?

Yeah…not so much.

Steven was committed. Like…really committed. He came to me…circled the idea for some six months…and then plunked down his check…signed a lease and started King of Pops. His little dream is now selling in shops all over the country including that grocery concept called…um…what is that name?

Oh yeah. Whole Foods.

Every time I see Steven and his brother Nick post something I smile and scratch my head a little…and smile some more…because never once in all the time I’ve know them did I ever question that these men were committed…not just to a popsicle company, but to much much more (look ’em up to see what I mean).

Commitment is one of the toughest things for which we ever sign on. It looks so doable when we first examine it. It even looks kind of sexy, but in no time at all it becomes something else…a ball-and-chain that can make you regret ever having the creative thought to do your own thing in the first place.

Where do you think the expression, “It’s Lonely at the Top” originated?

Maybe that lonely thing is the key to all of this. Maybe…just maybe…you need to make a list of the things you need to make AND keep you commitment. For me, it was having a great partner and a great team. For you it may be something else. All I know is, as hard and as frustrating this particular day was for me… that I wouldn’t trade what I do or with whom I work for anything (and I do mean anything).

I guess that means I am committed in a really big way.

How about you?