On Words and Business

Starting with the end in mind. It’s one of those things that makes intuitive sense when someone talks about it, or recommends you do it–for your business or for your life. Yet it’s usually elusive for most of us.

Creating long term goals, making 5 or 10 year plans, or even spending the time to try to figure out what you truly want to be doing in the future seem like pipe dreams. Oh, some make plans, write up goals, and then set them aside to gather dust. No one means to do this. It’s just that when the engame is far off in the future, or when the tasks it would take to get to where you want to be are challenging, it’s difficult to maintain focus and energy for the journey.

This is especially true for those of us with just “regular” lives, we work every day, we talk to our boss and set our yearly goals, we live our everyday lives perfectly happy. Nothing wrong with that unless you aren’t on the path you want to be on.

People do it every day–set long term goals and reach toward them. The easiest example is an athlete who trains for the Olympics. That takes years of daily dedication, focusing on the future when in the present you’d rather be doing something else. For a goal there is no guarantee of reaching.

Is your life where you want it to be? Is your business where you want it to be? If not…what are you going to do about it?

All you small business folk out there understand the challenge of setting priorities and spending your time doing the “right” thing.

Joel Spolsky talks about spending a lot of time focused on wrong things and how that plays out in business.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this study of entrepreneurs from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Among other interesting findings:

• Almost half of those surveyed (47%) had advanced degrees
• Most were married (69.9%) and/or with children (59.7%)
• Very few (4.5) cited an inability to find traditional employment as a reason for starting a company
• Almost a quarter of the respondents (23.8%) had two siblings and the most popular answer (and, as it happens, the number of siblings I have)
• In terms of birth order…42.8% were first children, 28.1% were second children (this is where I fit in the categorization), and the percentages drop off precipitously after that.

Take some time to read the report and see if you fit. Or if you are a maverick entrepreneur.