Starting a business? Rant #3 - Pack Your Bags

With excited exertion, you struggle to lift your heavy suitcase into the car. You're finally starting the journey. You whistle "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go" as the comfort of your home shrinks into the stretching distance behind you. All that dreaming and planning (well, mostly dreaming) and at long last, it's time!

Wait! Did you forget your toothbrush?!?!

Equipment is essential when going into battle. You're about to enter the modern warfare of business. What will you take with you? What will you leave behind?

All that you have is that which you carry with you... Your ideas, your hopes, your values and principles... What will be helpful and what will be a hindrance?

Take your imagination - you'll need that! Take your perseverance, your dedication, the iron will to succeed is a heavy burden to carry, but essential on this path.

Leave behind your limitations, any belief that you will not succeed. Your inflated sense of pride and ego are just too big, they won't fit down these narrow paths.

Take your desire to learn and experiment. Take your sense of logic and accepting reality, leave your wishful thinking. (All right, bring the wishful thinking, just know how to use it and when, beachwear isn't appropriate for rainy days!)

Be sure to carry your sense of humour and personality, you'll meet many others on this trip and ultimately they'll be the ones whose help you need most!

There is always room for a sense of morality and fairness. What are the core principles you cannot bear to leave behind? Personally, I will never compromise my integrity, if it becomes too heavy to carry, then that is where I make my stand.

I carry the best tools I can, as I'm committed to quality of product and customer service. I carry a light, and a mirror, as I aim to illuminate, and a bunch of keys to empower choice (dynamite if necessary). My senses of humour and adventure are used so often I never try to pack them away. I bring boundless energy and passion, hoping to pass these along to fellow travellers at every opportunity, even if we are contesting the same race.

My backpack feels light and comfortable. It has everything I need, for now. It includes space for new ideas and innovative tools that I'm bound to acquire. As long as these tools fit in with my principles, or I believe in the new idea enough to throw out old principles, there is always space to learn and embrace new things.

I will not carry any negativity. No room for jealousy or defeatism. No complaints, bad apples will only spread rot throughout my supplies. I have taken off the ball and chain of limiting beliefs; that I'm not clever enough, that it's already been done, that it takes too much work... Every time these thoughts appear I will remember that I left them behind.

One must travel light, or carry the weight of the world upon their shoulders. Choose your possessions or have them burdened upon you.

What do you have in your luggage? What core values are you building your business and your life upon? What are you determined to let go and leave behind?

Pack your bags! It's time to go.

Adam

P.S. Be sure to bring that wonderful solve-any-problem all-in-one pocket knife! Oh, you don't have one of those? Never mind then, I guess you'll have to improvise!