Closed off from a universe of opportunities

January 25, 2017 12:41 PM

The fastest way to go out of business is to be religious about how you make your money.

And I mean that in a strategic sense, not a spiritual one.

It has nothing to do with god and everything to do with growth. After all, the word religion literally means to link back. It’s the one thing in your life that everything else in your life links back to.

And so, when growing your business, religion can be the death of you. Because it leads to the fatal temptation of defining your value, your market and your future too narrowly. Closing yourself off from a universe of opportunities.

I have a pastor friend who said it best:

Certainty is boring. It’s against new information. It’s orthodoxy and fundamentalism and dogmatism, which operate on a pure state of perfection that existed sometime in the past, convincing us that if we could just get back there, everything would be fine.

And believe it or not, that’s how a lot people approach their businesses. They move toward their safe, proven target like an arrow, completely ignoring all the beautiful air rushing by. Air that could become oxygen to fuel their growth in a new direction.

I’m guilty of this sin myself. After fifteen years of entrepreneurship, the story I’ve been telling myself is that my talents only have one or two or three ways of being used by the marketplace.

But clearly, that’s just the religious fundamentalist in me trying to mitigate risk and growth and change. Trying to trap my talent in a box for fear of what other gods might be around the corner.

And if I could just stop being so damn religious about how I make my money, perhaps I could stumble upon a new path of working that I haven’t tried yet.

One that frees me to create new kinds of value for new kinds of markets in new kinds of ways.

One that give your little economic engine every possible advantage in the current postmodern landscape.

And all the businesspeople shall answer and say, amen.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you willing to give up your models of the path as you travel it?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]