Is There a Version of Your Business Sitting in a Someday Folder
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → Quietly Disruptive Podcast
I want to start with a question and it might be slightly uncomfortable so just bear with me. Is there a version of your business that you already know about but have not built yet? Not the one you have right now, the one that pays the bills and keeps things ticking over, but the other one. That one. You know exactly which one I mean. It is the one that feels a little like colouring outside the lines, the one you have thought about probably more than you would like to admit, the one that if you imagine a filing cabinet in your mind is almost filed under someday.
Why Saying Yes to Your Own Dreams Feels So Strange
If you do have a someday version of your business, I would like to talk about why you still have it and why you have not built it yet. When I was stuck in a business I genuinely loathed, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I could see it, I could feel it, I could describe it in detail, but I could also put it off. And not just for months but for years. The reason most of us do that, the reason those businesses stay in that someday folder for so long, is that saying yes to our own dreams feels very strange and alien. It feels self indulgent, dare I say a little bit selfish, and almost like colouring so far outside the lines that someone will tap you on the shoulder and say what are you doing.
That imagination of what could happen if we do the thing we have always wanted to do keeps us building the safe version instead. The business that makes sense on paper, the one we can explain easily, the one that does not require us to go out on a limb and say actually, no, this is what I want and this is what I am here to build.
Building the Business You Want Is the Most Honest Thing You Can Do as a Founder
What I know now, through experience of this situation and with a healthy dose of wisdom that comes from being on the other side, is that the business you actually want to build is not some wild unrealistic fantasy. It is the real version of what you are here to do. It is saying yes to who you are instead of those doubts, embracing the what ifs and finding a way instead of letting them be the reason you never try in the first place. Building the business you want is not selfish. It is the most honest thing you can do as a founder because when you build something that is genuinely so specifically yours, something that comes from what you believe and what you want to change, it has a ripple effect in everything. In how you talk about it, in how you work, in the clients you attract, in the energy you bring to it every day.
Whereas when you are in the safe version, the one that works but is not quite right, there is a cost to that. And it is not just in satisfaction or fulfilment but in energy. When I was in the safe version I would be glued to my desk for years, working all the hours, trying to get ahead, and no matter how hard I tried I still did not get to where I wanted to go. I was working hard on the wrong thing. And the thing about building the wrong thing is that it is exhausting in a very specific way because no matter how much you do, it never quite feels like enough, not because of how much you are doing but because it is just not the right thing.
The Business You Want Does Not Get Easier to Build the Longer You Leave It
The business you actually want to build does not mature with age. It does the opposite. It becomes harder, it becomes heavier, it becomes a bigger mountain to climb. Every year you spend building the safe version is a year the real one waits. And that is why I would like you to take it out sooner rather than later, look at it, think about it, because once you start to see what those first small steps could be, it gets smaller and less intimidating.
What would it actually take to move that thing out of someday and into now? Not all at once, not overnight, but to start taking it seriously as a real possibility rather than a one day I will do it idea. Maybe it is researching something, buying a domain, mapping out the key milestones on the road to making it a reality, or maybe it is something as simple as giving yourself permission to really think about it. To get lost in what it could be, what it could do, who it could help, what impact it could make. Sometimes just giving ourselves permission is the nudge we need to see what could actually happen.
So here is what I would like you to sit with. What is the someday version that has been waiting? What does it look like, what would it do, and what is the real reason you have not done it yet? Whatever your answers, bring them to the next post where I am going to name the four most common reasons that hold founders back from building the businesses they actually want. When you hear them named out loud, you might recognise one or two of them. Maybe more.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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