26 days — 26 learnings: Part twenty-two of looking back & looking beyond.
My word for today is:
Velocity
One of the biggest things in my life last year was becoming an entrepreneur. My father was his own boss, my sister has her own business and so does my brother. I knew all too well that being your own boss isn’t as fancy as it may seem to many employees, at least on certain days.
I didn’t make that decision lightly, but once I made it, it felt good. I now bring together entrepreneurs so they can help each other forward.
One of the tools we work with is a bicycle. Which in French is called a veló.
We envision every entrepreneur on its own bicycle. The front tier represents their personal vision, where they want to go as an entrepreneur and human being; whereas the back tier represents their company, the enabling entity to get to where they want to head.
We look at each of these tiers and see in what shape they are. How well equipped is the entrepreneur up in their saddle? How well, can he/she deal with headwind as well as tailwind? What’s the effort required? What’s the current speed? How could one accelerate if desired, but just as well, is there room to pause when needed?
Most importantly though we acknowledge that being an entrepreneur requires wearing a lot of different hats. The scope of things to deal with is large.
For those of you, who’ve read some of my other articles, you may have noticed I have a fable for sayings. Well, in German, there is saying called:
Die Nase vorn haben.
It literally means: To have the nose in front. Or in other words: Being just a nudge ahead.
Now for most every topic, we deal with, there is someone out there that has more expertise on the matter than we do. If we stay with our bike analogy, they are just a little ahead of us, their nose is before ours.
Wouldn’t it be awesome, if like in the picture above, this person would reach out their hand and give you a little more speed to catch up.
Of course, this works best when both entrepreneurs do not compete with each other in any way :-)
Being a starting entrepreneur, I’m most grateful, for being surrounded by other business owners, who do just that; who give each other more velocity.
It is not only knowledge we provided another, but just as well encouragement. Not every day is the same, and everyone runs low on energy once in a while.
My learning from all this is:
Whatever course we take, our stamina, and our chance for success, improves, when we surround ourselves, with people that find joy in helping each other leap forward.
My takeaway for 2018: Bless the network. Be a giver, lend a hand whenever possible, and don’t be afraid to reach out either. Together is Better.
