Skip The Beat Down

Fellow entrepreneurs, do you get tired of hearing steroidal rhetoric like “go big or go home” or “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing“? Ever feel guilty that your best wasn’t rocketing you to the top of the bestseller list or the front page of the business section?

There’s definitely a lot of people who feel that if you aren’t number one, you’re a loser. (Reminds me of a bumper sticker from my childhood that read “If You Ain’t Country, You Ain’t Shit.” Okaaaaaay… so does that mean that if you indeed are “country” that also means you are in actuality “shit“? Just wondering.) While I appreciate that we should always strive for greatness, all too often those “inspirational” quotes amount to nothing more than a beat down.

I earn enough beat downs from life. I don’t need silly axioms from the wide world of sports to make me feel like a loser ’cause I don’t earn Zuckerberg-size coin. How about you?

Perhaps there are other success yardsticks worth considering?

Are you doing what you love? (Specifically: Are you making a decent living? Serving your customers to the best of your ability? Employing people? If you said yes to most of those questions, I’d say you’re doing something pretty special). You’re following your bliss. You’re not working for the man. You’re creating something that’s yours.

I enjoy writing fiction and have a novel out there twisting in the winds of the indie book circuit. It was a labor of love to write the book, rewrite it about five times, have it edited, get a cover made and push the work out there for all to see.

Occasionally some people hear about the book and give me a (unintentionally patronizing) smile and say “Don’t quit your day job.” Who said I was going to? I write because I enjoy it. Illusions of being rich and famous were shattered 20 years ago with my first fifty rejection slips. I’m just blessed and happy to have a solid group of readers who enjoy my work. I feel the same way about running my PR firm.

I filed paperwork to found the company a year ago and started working part time on it in March of 2010, then full time in mid-July. I signed several clients immediately and have gained seriously great ground since. However, I’m not “number one.” (Heck, I’m not even a number.) I am, however, making a living and growing steadily as I work with some pretty great clients.

Do I hope to be a “big deal” someday? You bet. But I don’t get caught up in that. I try not let it get me down when I consider that it will be a long road of hard work with no guarantees of “big” success.

Seth Godin captured the way I feel about being a writer and entrepreneur perfectly:

“…you should play the game for the thrill of playing it, for the benefits of playing it to a normal conclusion, not because you think you have any shot at all of winning the grand prize.”

via Seth’s Blog.

So skip the beat down. Play the game for the thrill of playing it. You may find that by doing that very thing you’ll end up a winner.