…I’ve never been good at hailing cabs. Growing up in Nashville will do that to you. The only way to hail a cab in this town is to pick up the phone and tell them where to pick you up.
But regardless, I held my hand out and did the half-wave I’ve seen people do on TV as I stood on a corner in downtown Washington DC, then got into a taxi.
“Union Station, please.” I said in the most non-tourist way I could muster. And we were off.
A cab ride, a train ride, and a plane ride later, I was back in Nashville. But during those few hours of commuting, I thought, a lot. About, well, everything.
Last week I wrote about how an idea can transform into a passion, a purpose, and a religion. That in order for something to be successful, the most important component is simply giving a damn. Caring. Desire.
Last week’s post didn’t come out of nowhere – it was a direct result of the bajillion ideas swirling around my head as I commuted from Washington DC to Nashville earlier this week.
No doubt you’ve been there – with so many ideas filling your head that you don’t have a clue where to begin. How to focus. What’s worth pursuing and what will get swept under the rug, never to be spoken of again.
Tony Hsieh of Zappos has a dream of creating the perfect walkable neighborhood. On a wall in his apartment, he has a collection of colored post-its with ideas for the perfect village. “Jazz fest”, “beer garden”, “dog park”, “Yoga”. The list goes on.
This isn’t simply the way the mind of an entrepreneur works (though we are blessed and cursed with idea ADD) – it’s the way the human mind works.
We all have ideas. A bajillion ideas. Some may seem brilliant. Some may seem completely stupid. In the cab, on the train, and in the plane, I jotted down all the ideas that we’re swirling around in my mind…
“50-state-year-long-RV-trip to launch a business in every state” (that’s a lot of hyphens),“Taproom/Wine garden”, “Craft-beer/branding book/tour”, “Word-boner-ish line of products with typographic/designed song-lyrics submitted by users”, “Couch-to-marathon training-program”… The list goes on.
Some of these ideas, even now, reading back through them, don’t make a heck of a lot of sense. At all.
But I believe what’s gotten me to where I am today is that I recognize the ideas that I have and do one very important thing with them:
I give them a chance.
I’m not afraid to try and fail, as long as I’ve tried. Because you never know when an idea is going to take off. You never know when the manifesto you wrote that one morning will be purchased by millions and hung on walls all over the world. Or when a little watch will raise 8-million dollars on Kickstarter.
I’m going to continue giving my ideas a chance. And I think you should too.
Think of it this way:
If you don’t give your ideas a chance, they’ll never become successful. If you do, they just might…
Give that idea a try, and see what happens.
(This post was originally sent exclusively to Pantsless Wisdom email subscribers. If you’re not signed up, you can do that here)