I was standing in a hallway and saw a woman I recognized. I didn’t remember her name but I remembered meeting her in the same spot and having a conversation with her exactly a year ago. I was at the Be the Change Event, a gathering of entrepreneurs geared towards growing our businesses.
I went over, said hello and introduced myself. I said that I thought we met at last year’s Be the Change event and asked her how it had been going since then. She told me that when she was at the event last year she was just starting her business and that this past year she was getting all of her ducks in a row and setting herself up. Now a year later she is back and ready. We spoke for another minute or two and we both moved on.
I found our conversation depressing because despite “wanting to” she hadn’t moved at all in that year.
How many times have you waited to get everything “just right” before you take action? The truth is that it will never be perfect. If you wait until everything is just right you’ll never start.
My business has grown and changed so much. If you had told me ten years ago, when I was just starting out, what I would be doing today I would have laughed at you. In fact, the only reason my business is where it is today is because I acted and took some very imperfect action. Some of the things I did were great, others not so great. What I can say is that every step has led me and my business to this point. I also believe that my business will continue to morph. I have no idea where I will eventually end up and that’s because I’m willing to try things even though I’m not quite ready, I may be afraid or that I don’t exactly know how it will turn out.
I hope that if I run into this woman again in a year that things will have changed and that she will have taken the steps she needs to get moving. My suspicion however is that she won’t.
If I were coaching her right now I would ask her these three questions. I encourage you to answer them too to help you stop waiting and start acting. Oh and if you’d like to make sure you really will take action post your answers below and announce your intentions to the world!
1) What have actions have you been waiting for the right time to do?
2) What would happen if you just did them instead of waiting until you have all of your ducks in a row?
3) What can you DO today that you’ve been waiting to do until everything is just so?
Carrie is a speaker, trainer, coach and author of the book Chaos to Cash: An Entrepreneurs Guide to Eliminating Chaos, Overwhelm and Procrastination So you Create Ultimate Profit. Carrie is a master at cutting through the clutter and chaos that surrounds business owners so that they can stop procrastinating, take action, get more clients and make more money.
Carrie can help you create the systems and structures you need to help you stop spinning, get focused, make decisions, set your priorities and most importantly carry through so that you can get your message to the world and have a successful and profitable business.
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