Part Two – Innovation: Inside the Driving Factor Behind Your Company’s Success

Lately I’ve been talking a lot about the concept of solopreneurship, and I’m all over it for a number of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because I really, truly, in my heart of hearts believe our economy will continue to sputter until we find a way to get all of this knowledge capital back in the marketplace. I’ve talked before about how the hiring model has changed. Businesses really do not want to hire people at “full freight” any more, but they are willing to hire a piece of them, just like fractional ownership of a jet plane. Very few people can afford to own a jet plane, but many people can afford fractional ownership. I think that until we get the people who are rich in knowledge capital back into the marketplace, the economy is going to sputter for quite some time. It just fascinates me why so many of us with absolutely fabulous resumes are afraid to adjust to what’s really going on.

I met a gentleman the other day who's been looking for a job for two years. He’s exhausted his savings, but refuses the thought of doing anything different besides literally every day doing the exact same thing over and over again -- you know the old adage, ‘What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.’ -- why is he so hesitant to trade job ‘A’ for project B, C, D, E and F? The book I mentioned last week, Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden, talks a lot about why we sabotage ourselves, and that fear is one of our biggest hurdles. As an example, he explains how many pop performers have fear when it comes to performing, but they really don’t have to work very hard to overcome it – they just feel the fear and do it anyway. I mean they have it, they understand it, they realize it and then they just move forward anyway.

I find it fascinating how we put these roadblocks in our own way. I’ve often thought that courage is a number of things. Not only the obvious thing of reacting under challenging circumstances, but I also think courage (or at least the kind I most admire) is where you actually have a moment to process what’s going on. I have this huge respect for people in situations where the accident is a mile away, yet they are still going to jump into the burning car and pull somebody out. They had time to think about it. They had time to realize what these consequences might be and acted anyway.

A lot of business people out there need to act, and I think solopreneurs are the people who have huge amounts of experience, but are still sitting on the sidelines. We need to act, and I think it’s important for everyone to remember that you really have to see it, meaning you have to be able to see what it’s going to feel like.  So, if you are stuck either in a business or a personal situation, take some time to look at it and say to yourself, “Okay, three years from today with all the constraints removed and everything is going perfectly, what would it look like if I were able to do ‘X’?”

If you were able to adjust your business to ‘X,’ what would it look like? Or if you were able to stop trying to find job ‘A’ and look for projects 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E' and 'F', what might that look like? I often think that change is like forgiveness – “It’s a great concept for others.” You know forgiveness is a wonderful thing as long as we don’t have something to forgive, and change is a great concept until we are the ones that need to do the changing.

I think it’s important that we think about that and we all should remember to -- like the Nike commercial says – ‘Just Do It!’

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