I never met a person who followed a dream and regretted it

In the late 80s I worked in the TV business selling the rights to music shows and events to broadcasters around the world.

I missed the creativity I’d had in the stage design business, of having an original idea and seeing it come to fruition. I was just a dealmaker for other peoples’ work, but I was earning good money so felt trapped.

I started writing down ideas for what I could do as an original business. It felt scary to walk away from something safe and face the possibility of losing everything, even if it was potentially very lucrative. As I worked more on the possibilities, I started to realise that actually it was even more scary to stay where I was and become unhappy and frustrated and not to fulfil what I thought was my potential.

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I was creating more and more leverage on myself so that I had to move on. Finally I burnt my bridges by selling a property I had so that I had cash to live on and could give up my remaining consulting work.

The pressure was on… I had money to last a year. I cut my expenses right down and got on with it. Eventually it turned into two years. I survived and despite the financial uncertainty it became an incredibly happy and fulfilling time.

The trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Erica Jong

Everyone I have ever met who had the courage to do what they really wanted, believed in hindsight that they had made the right decision. What flows from that decision is an optimism and energy often unimagined and a capacity to work hard.

I am fundamentally lazy and I suspect most people are, but when I am doing something I really enjoy I can’t stop. Starting a business or making a big life change requires long hours and I can do that when I am loving it.

The hard bit is finding what it is that you love.

  • Take Away

    Finding the way

  • What would you do if it could be guaranteed that whatever you did would succeed spectacularly?

  • What would you do if you were given just a year of healthy life to live? Scary but focussing.

  • Keep a notebook of all your ideas – yes, even the stupid, or fleeting ones. Become obsessed with getting them down.

  • Consider that often the path lies very close by, and that you need only the skills and knowledge you already have, or those skills with a simple twist.

  • Practise removing “I don’t know” from your vocabulary. Ask yourself instead, “If I did know the answer, what would it be?”

  • Talk about it … constantly.