Just Start

This is the written script of Halftime, episode 34 of the Makers of Sport® podcast. Halftime was a short show on the off weeks between interviews where I wrote and read on topics in professionalism, entrepreneurship and business for creatives in sport. The episode aired April 27, 2015; the audio is on SoundCloud and the show notes live at makersofsport.com. The show's opening and closing announcements are trimmed here.

On this episode I’m going to be discussing the topic of starting. You may ask, why would I discuss such an easy topic. What does that even mean? Everyone starts at some point, you start a project, you start working out, you start eating well, you start a Netflix series, you start reading a book. But how many people quit because continuity is not easy to do? How many people don’t even start at all for fear of failure or simply due to laziness? It’s easy to develop the thinking that starting eating healthy will be something impossible to keep up with and I’m going to die one day any way so I might as eat what I want and enjoy life right? Well, right there is the reason I’m discussing this topic. No I’m not going to be your life coach and tell you need to eat better and exercise. We hear enough of that and Lord knows I need to eat better myself and get myself to the gym daily instead of just playing basketball once or twice a week or sitting in my comfortable Aeron chair Internetting all day.

But I use that metaphor in order to relate it to another area of life where we fear starting, and that is business and entrepreneurship. In executing our great ideas.

Think for a moment, about all of the times you’ve had a great idea for something. I’m not talking about having an idea as part of a creative service or your job such as a concept for a project that you have been assigned, but I’m talking more in the greater sense. Defining the project itself. Inspiration strikes as you’re doing some task and you have an idea about how to make that task more streamlined. Or you consider that if there was a certain product that solved this particular problem you are currently facing, how much easier your life would be or how much money someone could make from such an idea since there are likely many that face a similar issue or have a similar need or want.

Possibly, you have an idea for a services business, such as a sports design agency that can better serve clients than what you have seen at this point because of some differentiation point you have developed after listening to episode 30, the positioning Halftime episode.

Sometimes, you may even go to your friends or colleagues, tell them the idea and think “someone should do this. If someone pursued that, it would solve a lot of problems and they could become wealthy, because I’d buy it or use it”. Every single human being can likely identify with those feelings or sayings. Very few however, push through that thinking and decide, “you know what? I should be the person that does this”. I don’t know where to start, but I’m going to figure it out, do the research and make it happen.

You see, if over and over you are saying “someone should do that”, you are doing yourself as a creative person in the greatest time period in history as it regards to being able to start something, a great disservice. If you say that, you probably enjoy a comfortable life. And by that I mean, a steady salary, staying off the radar of haters, just grinding away in the day-to-day of sameness. The same projects are thrown your way, you do what you’ve always done and the cyclical projects come back time and time again. So you change it a little bit more because you don’t need to push yourself. You have a salary right? Someone will one day come up with that great product you want and need, you just need have a little patience. I call BS.

As someone who grew up thinking this way, that “someone should do that”, I am a case study that proves you can move outside of that thinking with just a little discomfort. You can be the person that has an idea, thinks to yourself, you should make the thing, does a little research on how to make the thing, then makes the thing. At first, it’s not going to be any good. Because you are learning. You are iterating. Trying to learn as you do something. That is the key reason why many never start in the first place. They read the books, the blog posts, do the research but never start because they are afraid of what people will say in this very judgmental and subjective Internet world we live in. What if someone sees your project and trashes it. What if some anonymous Internet troll (who probably has never quote “started” anything in their life) bad mouths your project because it isn’t executed to perfection?

These anonymous trolls, or even trolls that we know personally, are the people that keep many from starting. We are afraid of what people might think if the project fails or if it isn’t any good. It takes guts to put something in the world that isn’t perfect. It takes real gumption to start something and to keep iterating on it amongst the anonymous hate being spewed by the internally envious, the ones that will never launch something because they can’t overcome their own internal resistance. The book, The War of Art states “The critic hates most that which he would have done himself, if he had the guts”.

“The critic hates most that which he would have done himself, if he had the guts.”

In the same book, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield (who also happens to be the author of the Legend of Bagger Vance) coins the term “The Resistance” as the voices in our heads, the negative forces, that tell us that we are not good enough, that we don’t know enough about our subject matter and that we should not be the ones that are doing the thing we are thinking about doing. This kind of thinking comes from what renown marketing and business author Seth Godin simultaneously refers to as our lizard brain. It’s the part of our brains near the stem that has evolved from our animalistic days to our current brain. During prehistoric time, this part of our brain could only comprehend fear, rage and lust. And today, that is where these same feelings come from.

The hardest thing to do as a creative person, is to fight this internal battle. People that call themselves entrepreneurs are typically synonymous with beating it. But once an entrepreneurial endeavor becomes stagnant and consistent with revenue making one comfortable, it’s easy to fall back into the old practices of not innovating or starting because of these same fears. I believe that’s why you see so many entrepreneurial people doing many different things. Think about folks that have started a startup, made a ton of money by selling that startup or taking it public, then starting something else again. They don’t need the money, they can retire to a beach and play golf all day or spend weeks a time on their yacht if they want, but beating this resistance can actually be an addiction.

Seth Godin states in his book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? that “The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret to is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.” He also states that “if you are trying to secure a future that is safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely”. You see, safe is a lie. We have been brainwashed growing up that there is a such thing as a safe job. There is not. U.S. Government Post Offices, a traditionally safe job, have been closing. Universities are failing. Even your sports job at some NCAA school isn’t safe. What happens when the Power 5 leave the NCAA to being their own association?

These reasons alone should be enough to motivate us to start on that idea we’ve been hoarding. Because if you don’t start, that idea means nothing. At the very least, you should share that idea with someone with is willing to have the guts to pursue it. Many venture capital firms, investors and even services companies such as design firms are now declining signing things such as NDAs or non-disclosure agreements. Simply because the idea itself is worthless. The real value is taking the time to execute it. An idea is just a bunch of words.

I’ll use myself as an example. I can’t tell you how many people I had tell me this intersection of sports and creativity presented in podcast form is a great idea. An idea they’ve been thinking about doing or would be good for someone to do. The difference here is, they never did it. It was just a cool idea in their heads. Not useful to anyone. I faced these same fears and challenges when starting this thing. Who am I to give you advice in these Halftime episodes? I’m no millionaire. Who am I to sit on equal ground with the best of the best of this niche and bring you the discussions? Who am I to even have a podcast at all when there are people like Dan Benjamin of 5by5.tv or Leo Laporte of Twit.tv doing shows with 100s of thousands of downloads and large mainstream sponsors?

Starting this show was the hardest thing I’ve ever done professionally. Simply because there is an ignorance involved. I sat there looking at a blank screen, not knowing how to podcast, heck I've never even really written before or taken the time to compose my thoughts in a consistent blog. Why? Because I was afraid. My lizard brain told me people would judge me. People would judge my Kentucky accent, my personality. Putting myself out there in podcast form is one of the most vulnerable things one can do professionally other than videoing myself doing this. But the difference is, I started. I pushed through.

As Steven Pressfield says in his book The War of Art, “I did my work for it’s own sake, not of fortune or attention or applause”. Selfishly, this show was for me guys. That is my admission. I’m glad that you are able to take information from it and apply it for yourselves but even if only 10 people listened, I would still do it. Because it is the culmination of me starting. Winning the battle against my pre-frontal cortex. For me, it’s better to be on the court shooting an air ball on the last second game-winning shot than to be in the stands. The act of participating at all is where the glory and adrenaline comes from.

And don’t even begin to think my battle is over. Before every episode, especially these Halftime shows as I sit and think about the challenge ahead of me: the research, the writing, the preparation, the conversation (even if I’m not in the greatest of moods or feeling great), these are things I continue to have push through by starting. Looking at my blank screen and starting writing. Or starting a design. Or starting with that Skype call. But the feeling I get when it’s all over. At least for a brief time when the interview is done, when the show notes are written and the new podcast is posted, is so great. A feeling of achievement, a feeling of adrenaline. Until I face the same challenge for the very next show.

If you never start, you will never feel this. This feeling of overcoming the resistance. So I encourage you, the person that has been wanting to start their own business for a long time but is afraid or doesn’t feel they have the business acumen, the person that has an idea for some product that seems impossible to make. I encourage you to start. Sit down, begin the research and do the thing. Start. Otherwise, you will fade into obscurity like the majority of the world wishing that they would have done that one thing that one time and living with regret.

Success is not a destination, it’s a journey. And the journey will never begin if you never start.