How do you know when to give up or persevere?
Scott points to a sense of conviction. What’s conviction in this context? It’s a sense of belief or knowing that you and what you’re doing will provide value to others. If you still have that, then persist. If you don’t, then it’s time to think alternatively.
Ultimately, you never will know. I think another good filtering question to ask is “am I doing this for the benefit of others or for the benefit of myself?
Scott spoke about passion and that not being a strong signal of success. He prefers entrepreneurs to possess a ton of empathy on the customer’s experience.
I liken this to pushing your agenda, your rock out to the world. This is your passion.
Or can you pull towards you what people already want. How can you hear and understand that? that’s the empathic approach.
Last night, I watched around 12 startups pitch their ideas as part of Startmate. I noticed a couple of teams mention their origin stories and suggest that they didn’t really start out to make a business. This is an peculiar origin story. They scratched their own itch but weren’t pushing it to others. But in that process, others took note and they began to want some of that too.
This aligns with the origin story of Derek Sivers and CD Baby and I believe is the sweet spot or Goldilocks zone of your passion with your empathy. The place between pushing and pulling the rock.
The rock just rolls down the hill.
It all boils down to value that you’re offering for others.
I loved Scott’s analogy for resources vs resourcefulness and I draw comparisons to overcoming the resource hurdle in Blue Ocean Strategy.
He suggested that resources are akin to carbohydrates and muscle is akin to resourcefulness.
The former is fuel that expenses and needs to be replenished while the later sticks around.
I felt a strong sense of guilt and shame mixed with optimism. I looked at my own body and thought to the muscle that I’ve developed. I made comparisons to the mental muscles too.
My body is lean and does the job. I feed it slow carbs and the bad foods rarely feature in my week.
But developing the muscle is what I’ve lacked. Interestingly, I have determination to build this capacity and I’m beginning to associate pleasure when I’m pushing the limits of my body.
So you could say that I’m just waking up to this. I can develop good muscle memory for skills like dancing, surfing, football. It feels almost effortless. When it comes to other areas like muscle itself or learning/cognition, I’ve taken a path of least resistance.
That was the old narrative as I’ve demonstrated this year that I have discipline when systems are in place to chip away at the over time.
Scott touched on the importance of a team sticking together to endure and harvest the fruits of their efforts.
He also spoke about self-awareness and realising one’s fear. I can’t recall exactly what he suggested when you become aware of this.
The strategy Im adopting is to move towards the option that’s in alignment with your identity. Choose for growth in the moment.
This is especially important when the immediate ‘hell-yeah’ responses isn’t there. You can turn it into a hell-yeah if you align the course of action with your mission or identity.
That’s how you push through a barrier of fear as it’s an opportunity for you to grow.
No baby step of action today. I’m feeling a little off so I just wanted to show up and reflect on the content.