by Nathan Coumbe

What if you HAD to start your own business?

I clicked the “Random” button on Seth Godin’s blog yesterday and landed on an old post from 2002.

One passage punched me so hard in the gut that I had to share it with you today in its entirety. 

“Imagine for a second that you just lost your job. Further, imagine that the industry in which you’ve been trained and are working in has just disappeared.

What are you going to do? Are you going to go out and look for another job?

What if there were no choice… what if you had to start something? Anything. What would it be?“

Here’s the thing: your current job is crazy, risky, and unstable, probably more so than any entrepreneurial venture you might start. Why? 

Because you could be fired at any time and lose your sole source of income.

He continues:

“Is it scary? Well, just for a second, consider the alternative. You could work for Motorola or Adelphia or even AT&T, always wondering when the company was going to downsize you at the same time you were busy doing whatever the boss asked just to be sure you’d be the last to be fired…

Sounds to me like running a tiny business is totally safe in comparison.”

You don’t have to mortgage your house or get $500,000 in venture capital to start a small business… 

You can build a tiny business, one that makes a difference for a small group of customers or clients at the same time it secures your income. You don’t even have to quit your job today to get started.

So I repeat the question:

What would you start if you had to?

by Nathan Coumbe

Denis Waitley was wildly optimistic…

Denis Waitley was wildly optimistic about the future when he recorded “The Psychology of Winning” in the 1990s.

Here are just some of those predictions:

  • Hydrogen-powered cars that cleaned the air as we drove them by 2010.
  • 100% online, virtual education for all students everywhere. No need to drive to classes anymore when you can just access everything online.
  • Supersonic and hypersonic planes used as our normal mode of transportation. Any major city within a three-hour flight no matter where you are on the planet. 
  • High school seniors flying to Hong Kong for their senior prom in two hours. Don’t sneak over to Australia for the afterparty—and make sure you’re home by 1am!

Denis also predicted that by the year 2000, women would have equal pay with men and be equally represented in business schools, law schools, and entrepreneurial startups.

Like I said, wildly optimistic. It might even seem laughable, like something out of a futuristic 80s movie.

And yet…

We are so busy trying to get back to normal after this pandemic, we’ve somehow lost all the opportunity to actually make these happen.

Because of COVID-19, we already did 100% online, virtual education for a year and a half. It wasn’t perfect (far from it). But it worked. It’s been shown to be possible. 

But we were so busy being focused on “getting back to normal,” we seemed to have missed the opportunity to push it further and make it better.

I don’t know the first thing about hydrogen scrubbing and powered cars. But I do know we have the technology for all-electric vehicles that don’t pump pollution and toxins into the air on a daily basis (multiple companies have this tech). 

But instead, we’re buying bigger, badder, less efficient, gas-guzzling, pollution-admitting, tank-like vehicles, all in an effort to make a statement about our political views or our masculinity.

And here we are, 22 past after the year 2000… And women are still fighting for equal pay, equal representation, and control over their own bodies, not to mention all the other genders and races fighting for the same things.

So yes, Dennis was wildly optimistic. But it’s understandable why.

Because even back then the technology was coming online, the possibilities were there, and he saw them and thought, “Surely the world will embrace all of this—right?”

Yet here we are. Rejecting all of it out of hand. 

Yes—some of these wonderful possibilities were forced on us by a horrible situation… Yet they were still wonderful opportunities. 

But we were so desperate to go back to normal that we looked them in the face and said, “No thank you.” 

We’re operating with 21st-century technology and possibilities while trying to stay in a 20th-century world. Why?

Because it’s the world we know. It’s the status quo. It’s “the regular kind.”

I feel like we missed a big opportunity here. And now I’m worried it may be years or decades before what’s possible actually comes to fruition.

by Nathan Coumbe

“That’s not the right way to do that…”

Have you ever looked at someone and said to yourself, “That’s not the right way to do that…”

Maybe you were watching someone do an exercise at the gym. And you just couldn’t figure out why their pushup form was so different from yours.

Your first thought probably goes to their ignorance: “They just don’t know the right way to do it. I could show them how…”

The thing is… You have your own lens through which you look at the world. You have your own experiences, education, and biases that dictate the “right” and “wrong” way for you. 

And they have theirs too. 

Even when it comes to something as simple as a pushup. And even when there might be an objectively “right” way to do something.

But there might be a specific reason they’re doing their pushups in that way. 

Maybe they have an injury that prevents them from using “proper” form.

Or maybe they read a new study that taught a different way of doing it—one that helps them meet a different need.

Or maybe it really is simply ignorance of what’s right. 

But the fact remains, you don’t know why they’re doing it. 

Perhaps a better thing to do, instead of jumping to conclusions about right and wrong, would be to change the statement to a question.

“I wonder why they’re doing it that way?”

At that point, you have the basis for empathy and understanding.

And those qualities give you a much more stable platform to engage in dialogue… Or even enact change.

by Nathan Coumbe

Is your work artistic?

Do you have to be skilled with words, a paintbrush, or a musical instrument before you can call yourself an artist?

What about our work in the business world? Can marketing, sales, or leadership be artistic endeavors? It depends on your definition of art. 

Art is the act of creation. What you create doesn’t determine whether or not you’re artistic. 

Seth Godin defines art as “creating change in another person for the better.” 

If that’s our definition of art, then marketing, sales, leadership, customer service, and every other potential job we have is artistic…

But only if we take the leap and use our work to make people better.  

You are already an artist. Focus on creating change rather than your medium. 

by Nathan Coumbe

You have more than one shot

50 years ago, you had to stage a grand opening to the masses to your event or business. 

If you wanted to open a store, you banked a lot of money (usually borrowed), on the fact that you had to get a lot of customers right away, or you’d go bust.

So you’d hype everyone up. You’d send out mailers, run TV commercials, tell everyone you knew to spread the word to your friends. 

Hype, hype, hype!

Then you’d hold the grand opening with those big scissors and red tape (metaphorical or otherwise). And it would either succeed—you’d make the money you needed to stay afloat.

Or it would fail, and you’d potentially go bankrupt. 

We still have that “one-shot” mentality today. Whether it’s starting a business, writing a song, publishing a book, whatever—we still feel like we’ve got one shot to succeed. 

That everything hinges on one big moment where either everyone hears about it…or they don’t and you fail. 

The reality is, the internet has made the grand opening both unnecessary and obsolete. 

If you write something that doesn’t perform well, so what?! You can show up and do it again tomorrow… and do it better. 

If you start a business, but don’t get any traction, so what? The stakes for failing in a digital business are minuscule compared to what it used to be. 

You don’t need grand openings anymore. You don’t need hundreds or thousands of customers and followers right away to be successful. 

You now have unlimited chances to attract the people you want to serve. Failing is often free. 

Start small, serve well, and let it grow over time. That’s the key to succeeding in the modern age. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Deeply important

by Nathan Coumbe

Creativity and permission

I was walking at the park near my house this afternoon. And when I crossed the bridge, walking the well-known paths I’ve memorized, I saw a picnic table next to the river where no table had ever been before. 

It’s at the perfect place where you can hear the water splashing over the tiny spillway under the bridge—a light, pleasant gurgling and rushing sound that’s quite pleasing to the ears.

From the looks of it, somebody went out and bought treated pine from a home improvement store, built it themselves, and set it up in this spot. 

They didn’t ask permission. They simply thought that this little neck of the woods would benefit from having a place for people to sit… A place to gather and eat next to the water with family and friends in peace and near-quiet.

This was a small, brave, creative act. They didn’t ask permission from the Parks Department to let them do it. They saw a way to make something a little better for other people, and they did it. 

They took a small creative risk. That’s what we were asked to do on a daily basis. 

No one ever gives us permission to be creative. No one will ever give us permission to make things better. 

Because the way things are right now is the status quo. And people don’t want the status quo to change. So we have to create—to make things better—without asking if it’s okay. 

It takes a little bit of courage, the tiniest amount of risk, and the will to act.

by Nathan Coumbe

Build integrity like a muscle

Integrity simply means keeping promises you make—both to yourself and others. 

It’s almost like a muscle, something that must be stretched and strained so that it can grow bigger and stronger over time. 

The best way to develop integrity is to start making tiny promises to yourself, then follow through with them. 

Every time you schedule or write down a task…

  • Writing a blog post
  • Taking a 20-minute walk
  • Eating a serving of vegetables with dinner

…you’re giving yourself the potential to build your integrity muscle. 

Then, when you follow through on those tiny commitments, your sense of integrity gets stronger. 

Soon you’ll be able to make bigger and bigger promises to yourself and others.

But most importantly, you’ll have trained yourself to follow through. 

That’s how you become a person of integrity: one tiny promise at a time.

What’s one small thing can you promise yourself today?

by Nathan Coumbe

Are you flip-flopping? Good.

This is the primary sign of being a mature, well-balanced adult:

The ability—AND WILLINGNESS—to change your mind about something you believe or hold dear in the face of new information.

You’ll be ridiculed for it. You’ll be called a “flip-flopper“. But so what?

You’re growing and learning, adapting and changing. That’s all that matters.

by Nathan Coumbe

The inauthentic hero

The people we admire most are the ones who act the most inauthentic in the moment. 

Being authentic: the idea that you should do or say whatever it is you’re thinking or feeling in the moment. This is what we glorify. 

Vs.

Being inauthentic: doing things we’d rather not. Doing them because we promised we would. Doing things regardless of how we feel in the moment.

War heroes, the type of people we admire for their bravery and selfless acts, are those who act decidedly inauthentic in the moment. 

If they were being authentic—when the rounds cracked overhead or the grenade dropped in the middle of their buddies—they’d run as fast and far away as they could. 

But instead, they make a conscious decision to act despite how they feel in the moment. They run towards the sound of battle, or throw themselves on the grenade to save their friends. 

They do these things despite feeling terrified, exhausted, or pained. And we admire them for that. 

We admire the same traits in people from all walks of life: athletes, leaders, writers, musicians.

We want them to do what they signed up to do. Imagine going to a concert where the musician didn’t play because “they just didn’t feel like it” when they got on stage.

So, in fact, we don’t want authenticity. We want professionalism, decency, integrity—for people to keep the promises they make… To do the things that need doing regardless of how they’re feeling in the moment. 

In terms of behavior, authenticity leads to tantrums and inaction. 

Inauthenticity, on the other hand, leads to professionalism. 

(H/t to Seth Godin for inspiring this post.)