The one simple characteristic that sets the greats apart from the rest is one simple word, Execution. You see, being able to talk the talk looks good, but it’s very different from walking it, The walk comes at a cost, and it’s not cheap, it requires courage, self-belief and the ability to make magic happen, essentially redesigning the world to work in your favor….on the fly. Business isn’t about ideas, it’s about the skill of bringing those ideas to life.
A lot of people spend a great deal of time talking big, trust me I’m guilty of this too, but neglect the incremental steps involved in growing something to scale. Not many see the behind-the-scenes action, where consistency and persistence are your daily bread. I just never seem to wrap my mind around the ability of many of us to say so much but do so little.
Should we not keep ourselves accountable or is the dopamine rush of feeling like you have a killer idea a lot greater than the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to bring that idea to life?
Either Way spending a honeymoon with your ideas is the illusion that leaves many left behind.
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” – Albert Einstein. You see when something is compounding, from up close it looks like incremental steps that bear no real resemblance to the bigger picture or final product. It’s the messy middle, the grey area that sits in-between black and white, and what really showcases whether or not you have the capability of this or not. Whilst entrepreneurship might be trendy in this day and age, over the next few years a lot of people will be exposed. Much like sport, there are winners and losers, there is no second place given to those who hoarded ideas out of the need for a sense of security but never actually acted on them in a meaningful way.
Business is a game of insecurity, a daily gamble of moving forward and the scorecard isn’t really about balance sheet growth alone but the determination to keep going.
Talent is cheap, skills can always be learned and it’s a dog eat dog world. You can never be a passive passenger on the trip to growth if you don’t take any initiative and eat, sleep, and breathe what you do. Who on earth are you trying to fool? For too long I’ve witnessed and experienced this spirit breaking phenomenon of having to bring people to the promised land, able-bodied men incapable of pursuing the light and as a result dragging the entire collective down like a sinking ship.
The fact of the matter is that not many of us want it as bad as we say. We’ve allowed and created this “fitting in” culture instead of a “doing” culture, this is a devastatingly tough world and we’ve come to express our ambitions more than we are actually achieving them. The reality is that only time tells all.
gobsmacking