Mistakes and Lessons - Start within your own means

Today's post is actually a post that I started a few weeks ago but I didn't feel that the idea was complete. But I feel that I've found the answer to what was missing and so here it is. Today's post is about starting within your own means.

Now this lesson is something that I believed in quite instinctually when I was younger and trying my luck with business. But as I got older and expanded my horizons, I realised that what I was doing was so small and insignificant to what many huge and established businesses were doing. I felt increasingly more inadequate with what I was doing, seeing others do something I couldn't hope to even begin to compare to.


It played through my mind a lot within the last couple of months as I was considering a new strategy for Gamer's Life Convention 2013. Raw encouragement from peers and attendees of the event fueled my decision to plan a second event, but in the back of my mind I couldn't help feel that I was nothing compared to Supanova and other huge events. I was so afraid that the event I organise won't be able to meet the expectations of attendees and I was so afraid of letting them down.

It wasn't until some recent soul searching that I remembered what I used to believe in. That it was fine to start off small and do something within your own means. Even if you start small, as long as you do it well, it will grow. Someday you might even be able to compare or compete against other players in the industry. I realised that there is no perfect opportunity or situation. We can only do the best that we can, pick ourselves up from any falls and learn from our mistakes.

So this is applicable in several ways. Firstly, it helped me with my blog. I've literally left several posts as unfinished drafts because I didn't feel it was the "perfect" time or that it wasn't a neat self-contained story. Maybe it's the best we can do at the time, but we can always revisit these ideas on the future and complete them. Secondly, this has helped me jump over my recent mental barrier of feeling inadequate in what I was doing. I'll be focusing less on trying make ourselves look huge and professional as the competition, and really focus more energy on using my skills and talents and give more to the people I serve, whether they are clients, the community or friends.

On an interesting side note, this recent revelation has brought back memories of a good friend I had during my senior year in high school, a good friend by the name James Gilbert. He was interested in business just like me and we used to chat about business stuff all the time. Something that he gave me that was quite memorable was an ebook called "The Bootstrapper's Bible" by Seth Godin. I remembered that it was a great read and I have recently started rereading this book. I highly suggest anyone starting off in business to have a look.

So to Summarise today's post
- it might be daunting when starting out and seeing what established businesses do
- focus your energies on doing the best you can and serving your clients the best you can
- start within your own means,
- value your friends, the impact they have on your life is sometimes indescribable

So once again, thank you for reading my blog. Please leave a comment and subscribe using the feature on the right.