Another week has passed. Bringing to you TFWL #2.
If you didn’t already know, I am embarking on a weekly series known as The Five Weekly Learnings, otherwise abbreviated as TFWL, that aims to detail my journey as an early-stage entrepreneur and beyond. The journey to making the dream a reality is not a bed of roses, and I want to paint as raw and as imperfect a picture there is. Hopefully, for aspiring dreamers or dreamers who may be situated along the same path as me, this is something you may be able to identify and empathise with. At the same time, I will love to learn from you and your equally rich experiences thus far.
Somehow or rather, a quote that speaks to me this week comes from the movie, Coach Carter. The striking scene where Timo Cruz says this is sticking with me:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
I suppose the point here is that while humility is important, we should always understand that we are special and unique individuals in our own right. Dare to think different and dream big, and don’t let others tell you otherwise. It sure is tough, but if you never try, you never know.
Now, on to my succinct learnings for the week.
My Learnings
- I learnt that empathy is a critical complement to honesty.
In my previous post, I talked about honesty and the importance of such a value in guiding a sustainable relationship- in whatever context it may be. I think one will also need to possess a sense of empathy whilst being honest. It is a fine line that has to be treaded, because one will not have 100% context of the events which may be happening or may have happened at that point in time. You may not know what the backstory might be, even if you have tried to supposedly deduce ‘all’ the possibilities or reasons. I believe it is tough to actually be able to do so, and you still need to be mentally prepared that there is another story to this and it may not have been what you thought it was. I experienced this first-hand — and while I know that it is absolutely crucial to be honest, it is also key to be sharply empathetic at that back of your mind because you don’t want to simply be crudely honest and make things even harder to manage.
Lace your honesty with genuine empathy. Communicate the fact that you do not know everything (imperfect knowledge always does exist in a relationship in some way or another) and that you are prepared to understand more. That approach, I believe, will enable the other party to actually appreciate the fact that you are being true to your feelings and not attempting to hide anything, whilst being ever so willing to put yourself in the shoes of him or her.
I believe the opportunity to improve your sense of empathy often starts from a micro setting — when you may just be dealing with a single individual — and it is great because you then have the opportunity to fine-tune and comprehend the various sensitivities from there to then deal with more people in the near future.
2. I learnt that making an uncertain (and potentially poor) decision may be better than making no decision at all.
You may have heard of the OODA concept, and I think this is perfectly applicable to various instances of running a startup. It is just full of uncertainty, and you are not sure what you decide to undertake may take you to greater heights or alternatively, cause you to crash and burn. However much we try to mitigate ‘risks’, some ideas are fundamentally untried and untested — and it is just so difficult to know how it will work out.
What if we have to make a decision now? What if it was a life-and-death decision? Imagining it this way transposes this context to the extreme, but that is exactly how OODA works. Decisions have be made in split seconds, and sometimes, intuition trumps what you might remember. I understand this in my experience as a gymnast as well, where for example, you realise you are flying out of the trampoline and you need to decide what to do on an instantaneous basis (e.g. how do I minimise the probability of breaking a leg)
I think the point that I picked up was, it takes nerves of steel to be able to commit to something because such decisions may seem to be irreversible. In the context of entrepreneurship, I believe it is necessary to understand where you are headed, believe in your strategy, and execute without taking too long to ponder about it. I am VERY guilty of overthinking and mulling over the various probabilities, and I am obsessed with being able to find the perfect solution. I am guilty of taking too long to decide, and my view is that what may make us good students may render us to be poor entrepreneurs. I think I will rather fail and learn, than to not try anything or let someone beat me to it because I took too long to decide. But of course, this does not mean I compromise common-sense and rational decision making that seeks to make this as much of a win as possible (i.e. it doesn’t kill you, it doesn’t make you break the law, and so on).
Actions create effects, and feedback. Feedback then provides very good learning points that we can then attain, and allows us to grow more rapidly than ever. All it takes, I suppose, is a brave first step.
To be honest, I am scared too myself. But I do my best to embrace the fear and move forward. You are not alone.
3. I learnt that the magic happens when you don’t feel like doing it; but you still do anyway.
This should be carefully contextualised in the realm of pushing to achieve your goals and dreams. Kobe Bryant said this:
“Those times when you get up early and you work hard. Those times you stay up late and you work hard. Those times when you don’t feel like working. You’re too tired. You don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream.”
Even typing this now is a good reminder to me about how it is about choosing to not a ‘bi***’ of your mind (like what Tai Lopez said). At the very core, it is about not hitting that snooze button, and getting out of bed however tempting it may be to lie back in and snuggle in your covers. To be honest, I believe that the most important battle to be won every single day is the moment when you open your eyes. The outcome of that battle determines how your day, month, year, and life turns out.
I have been guilty of being sluggish and losing that battle this week. And I can see how that differentiates the best, and the good. Really, success is how you govern your own life, and how hard you are willing to work even when no one is watching — all starting from your dark room at 7:30am in the morning (and I am not even talking about 4am). It is about staying so intensely focused on what you want, and not letting any negativity distract you from your course. To say it is tough is an understatement. It is a battle that only a few can win. Can you do it, consistently and religiously?
We write our own stories. And I learnt that your story is written by what you do every single ticking second.
4. I learnt that it is easy to become strangely comfortable, and it can make you forget your why.
This is very much related to the third learning point. And I think there are a few ways to think about it. It is easy to first, be distracted by other irrelevant elements in your life that does not add value to what you want to achieve, or take you one step closer to the solution. Second, we are also talking about gradually being sucked into this self-believing bubble of sorts; where we think that what we are doing is so awesomely superior and that we just keep working on it & grinding it out. In a sense, we may sink into this routine of sorts — we wake up, make sure our designs are pixel-perfect, perfect our marketing copy, and then go back to sleep. Eat, sleep, rinse, repeat. My slightly counter-intuitive point is, this routine makes us strangely comfortable. Somehow or rather, I think it makes us myopic in a certain way — and lose sight on that bigger North Star. I therefore propose that we always need to strike a balance between the micro and the macro, and know what we are working for in the longer term. Where do we want to get to in 6 months? In 1 year? In 2 years? We should never lose sight of the our why. Jack Ma knew his whys, and I do recommend that you watch this very interesting documentary of his journey that laid bare his vision — here.
Also, I am reminding myself that there is always someone out there, working harder and smarter than us. He/she/they is/are grinding and hustling so hard, thinking harder than us, and innovating of ways to scale to escape the competition. What if — just what if — tomorrow, he/she/they launch the exact same product that we have been trying to create? How will it make you feel? What thoughts and emotions will be running through your head?
Personally, it is important to understand that you are not the best, and the world will not wait for you to be a winner. I tell myself not to take anything for granted, and treasure every opportunity that comes my way. And even if it does not work out, I know that there are two traits of success (according to Eric Schmidt) that we should always possess: persistence, and curiosity.
5. I learnt that entrepreneurs should be system-builders.
Just yesterday, I headed to a little cosy entrepreneurship event organised in the heartland of Singapore and Glints’ CTO Seah Ying Cong shared with us his rather interesting and inspiring entrepreneurial journey. One learning point that I gleaned, amongst others, was this: a business owner is not a business operator. An entrepreneur, more often than not, owns the business. And what a business owner does is to build a system, which becomes sustainable and scalable in itself where ordinary people can run an intelligent system. A system which can run even when you are not there. Success is not necessarily about having the best ideas, but more often than not, having a system in place that runs efficiently and smoothly — much like what McDonalds’ is able to do. Be it organisational culture or operations, it is about seeing how different pieces of the puzzle can seamlessly fit together and be self-sustaining in their own right. Definitely, at the start, everything might be conducted via a piecemeal approach (which is arguably essential to designing for an empathetically handcrafted experience before looking to scale), but we can eventually think of ways to make everything flow and feed off each other in a virtuous manner — with technology, for example.
I learnt that building a system bigger than ourselves that can provide solutions to a bigger problem is something that entrepreneurs should aspire towards. Of course, it is easier said than done. With time and experience, I am confident that we are able to aspire to a better and more refined system which can scale rapidly.
Ending Thoughts
So, this marks the end of another week which I experience with mixed emotions. In the process, I do my best to observe, learn, apply, and keep inching towards our goal. Day by day, we get further away from our comfort zone; but at the same time, we relish what each day and each conversation has to bring. The serendipity of entrepreneurship, I suppose, is something invaluable.
Once again, thanks for reading! Do let me know what you think, how have your experiences been like, and what other learning points I should take note of as a young blood in the game. I am always willing to learn and grow.
If need be, we can do coffee too. Just drop me a message and we can work something out!
Till then…stay tuned for TFWL #3. Have an awesome week of learning ahead!
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