START WITH "WHY", CLARITY & ASPIRATIONS
Ok, so you know my passion for startups, entrepreneurship and that I am looking to start my own company. If not, go and read EwalkerBlog first.
During and before all the above I was contemplating (asking myself) constantly what I wanted to do. What is my passion & love, what interests me and what drives me? Can I make money out of it somehow? What should my business model be on top of that? I can't just move or start a business without knowing this - otherwise whats the point? I gave it some thought, but not enough - I never got any clarity on it and assumed it will all come naturally.
Until I went on this course, called the Miracles of Capital by Dr. Wong. How I ended up sacrificing part of my Cape Town holiday for this course is another story - all I can say is, its a small world and it was definitely worth it.
Throughout this course Dr. Wong talked about making sure you have clarity about your aspirations. Everyday he hammered this in. Reason being if you don't know where you are going how will you get there (where?). Shooting a machine gun everywhere hoping to hit something isn't a very good way to use a machine gun. You need to know why, what, when and where to aim your ambitions. Or if a boat manages to get out of the harbor and just sails away, where will it end up without knowing what its destination should be? You need to know where you are headed so you can plan to sail straight to that destination. What is your compass (heart) telling you?
I also got the recommendation from someone at the course to read Start with Why by Simon Sinek which complemented it perfectly. Its a really cool book and a quick read. Look at Apple as an example, they go out to challenge the status quo and that's evident in all there products. That's their "Why".
Its also really important to get your branding right and goes hand in hand with why you should - Start with why?
Adii Pienaar summarizes it well in his new book about branding:
• You are your brand: your brand is your personal contribution and your professional
legacy to your chosen industry.
• You are your passion: you need to work on something you feel strongly about.
• You are your unique personality: you should incorporate your unique characteristics into your business brand.
So I got to the point where I really need to sit, write, reflect, write, reflect, sit some more and pray about what these aspirations should be. I had to get clarity. Aspiration is:
plural of as·pi·ra·tion (Noun)
Noun
A hope or ambition of achieving something: "he had nothing tangible to back up his literary aspirations".
The object of such an ambition; a goal.
Another way of looking at aspirations is to think of what my family will mention in my eulogy one day?
I started to write and created my own little diagram/method which can help you as well (its just an example and not all of it is my real aspirations):
I want to inspire others and build an empire.
I want to inspire working adults into making better life decisions and achieve work life balance.
Write down aspirations and divide it up into Business, Personal and Social e.g.
Business
My own coffee shop franchise
I want to invest in 500 companies
Do 5 IPO's
Have a networth of 1 billion
Be a motivational speaker
Write three books
Personal
Put God first
Travel everywhere with my family
Speak on TED
Write 2 books
Social
Help develop schools
Donate all my money
Now you can start to develop a road map to how to get to those aspirations. The miracles of capital course actually taught us a road-map and method of actually getting to a $100
billion valuation if you wanted to, but you need to know what your aspirations is first!
Otherwise, lets say you get to a $10 million valuation and you never wrote down or decided on your aspirations. For 99% of the people in the world it sounds like a $10 million valuation is the ultimate place to be, you can do what you want for the rest of your life. For the person with no aspirations that would still leave him feeling empty and unsuccessful. He would still be discontent and chasing the next thing. Get it?
So now you need to find a business idea that aligns with your aspirations and passion.
If you need to validate this business idea - look at this presentation from Techstars by IDEO - I found it very useful (I had to put this in its really that good).
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