Danielle pierson ~ If I ONLY had …
“If I only had more XY, then I could ZY.” is one of the biggest self-sabotaging sentences you can think.
What is true: If I had 1 dollar for every time I’ve heard this sentence in my mentoring, I could buy a Porsche with this money alone. No joke.
We so often fool ourselves into thinking we don’t have what we need to achieve what we desire, and that there are a specific set of resources in mind, which we believe is necessary to bring about a certain outcome.
But this is not true. Not having all the resources, you need - resp. you want - can be blessing.
(Disclaimer: unless you only pretend to want what you want – what I mean by that you can read in this article “Shell games or deep transformation”.)
Let’s come back to the situation where you really want the outcome but what you have in mind as necessary resources are not available right now.
It’s a blessing – because: It forces you to be creative and laser-focused on achieving the outcome you want with the means and materials you already have. You learn to think in different, creative, and maybe unusual ways.
This may lead to unexpected journeys…
…. and furthermore, to unexpected outcomes.
The most impressive role model in this respect for me is Daniella Pierson – the founder of the Newsletter-Company “The Newsette.”
She started the newsletter at only 19 years old with no resources but her time and, huge passion for writing, and an immense fear that she would be unemployed after university because of her bad grades.
Three years into this project, she earned 25K by selling her first advertising, and she decided to move to NYC and find an investor to grow her company.
But every single investor she met almost laughed her out of the room. They didn’t believe in her business model and of course didn’t give her one penny. She often tells in interviews that one very well-known investor laughed during her presentation and said that Danielle reminded him of his granddaughter who would also talk too fast and is very unsuccessful with her projects.
On the way home she burst into tears. She decided to stop looking for an investor and to do it her way. This meant finding more companies for ads to finance her company.
This is surely the harder way to get her first 1 million dollars… but her persistence and resourcefulness made her resilient and robust.
It definitely took her longer to be successful, as she had to consider financial decisions more cautiously. But this meant she also couldn’t burn too much money on her way up of the ladder of success; when an idea failed, it failed smaller, as she also points out in an interview.
The unexpected outcome today: she owns 100% of her 200-million valuated company. This makes her the youngest Latin-American self-made women. Her true destiny.
And she is robust and confident now because she made her own success happen – A fact that not all startups can claim.
Her most valuable resource - as she says - is stubbornness.
(Disclaimer again: this is not an argument against VC founding. It’s an argument against excuses if you don’t get a founding.)
It’s your choice whether to continue being stubborn and unhappy and thinking there is only one specific way to your goal, thereby delaying your intended outcome to have it your way.
Or maybe you could consider that you are being stubborn around the outcome, and you can turn around and decide to be open to unexpected new ways to get there… and meet your true destiny…
You co-create with the given situation…
How? You do the next obvious step… not what you project in the far future when you have XYZ and the sky is full of sparkles… no, what is the step you can take right now given the resources at hand?