As business owners, we face a new set of challenges every day. It’s similar to being a child and learning how to ride a bike or play tennis.
Others have done it before us so we know it’s possible to be done. We may have watched a sister, brother, or friend ride a bike. We may have watched professional athletes participate in sports and WOW us with their accomplishments.
We know success is possible. What we don’t know is “how” to do these activities. We don’t know what it takes to pedal a bike, pitch a ball, or hit a ball. We don’t know how to swing a racket. We don’t know what to do with ourselves.
Learning how to succeed as a child involved listening, understanding, and doing. We listened to someone explain what needed to happen. Our parent or our coach explained how to hit the ball. The adult may even have shown us how to do it.
From listening, we could begin to understand the mechanics of the activity. We learned that playing the piano requires you to sit in a certain position, use your fingers to hit certain piano keys and read the music in front of us. We learned how to run and meet the soccer ball. We learned how to anticipate where the baseball would appear so that we could hit it.
After understanding the mechanics, there was only one thing left: just doing it. We couldn’t succeed from only listening or understanding. We could only succeed by doing the activity.
We sat at the piano, read the music in front of us, and hoped the sounds coming from the piano matched the music in front of us. We threw the ball in the air and attempted to catch it. We practiced kicking the ball towards the goal.
Just because you chose to start a business doesn’t mean you will automatically succeed.
Success means understanding what you need to do.
Success happens you continue to DO what you’ve chosen to do.