The Daring Adventure of Business
Posted on January 21, 2021 by Lisa J MacDonald, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
Going from dread doing my business to being on fire ... a surprising source of inspiration.
The Arizona temperature finally decreased to the pleasant 100 Fahrenheit degrees as the sun sunk in the horizon. My youngest daughter and I decided to enjoy the cooling evening by strolling around the neighborhood.
After listening to her adventures in virtual school, I began sharing with her my current bottleneck in my company. I needed to go more social and had absolutely no idea how to do it.
After a long, drawn-out moment, my youngest daughter said, “Mom, you remember the other night when you asked me how we could connect more?”
She was at that age where friends were becoming more important than mother’s, and listening to her earpiece drew her into a world that older adults couldn’t follow.
I was extremely curious about what she would say. “Yes?”
“I could do an Instagram account for you. If we do some behind the scenes stuff, people like that watching that and will start following …”
My first thought was no, we couldn’t do that. I wanted her to be a kid, and I didn’t want to put adult responsibilities on her.
She looked over at me with such a hopeful face. I saw she wanted me to believe in her. She wanted on my business team like her older sister has been for the past five months.
“Sure, baby.”
From the moment we walked through the front door, she rushed me to my office. We looked up YouTube videos on how to do effective lighting. Two seconds into the video, I remembered a business person had graciously sent me a green screen oh … a year ago. I hadn’t even pulled everything from the box because I was overwhelmed with how to put it all together.
We spent the next couple of hours assembling the greenscreen. No, really me taking the plastic off things and her putting it together. I did google the name brand of the greenscreen when we had no idea how the lights were put assembled.
Again, she ultimately figured out that one of the fabric lights had a hole in it, so your hand could slip into the fabric thingy to be able to turn off the light without burning your hand. Who knew?
After a long day of work, I was exhausted and ready for bed, but instead of sleep, she insisted we keep going as she signed me up for an Instagram account.
I did ask if it could wait until tomorrow, she said, “No.”
There you go. No putting anything off until later. She was jumping right in without hesitation, full of passion.
Later that night, when I hopped on her bed to kiss her good night, I thanked her, then asked, “Do you know how to edit the videos?”
She sat up, straighter in her bed. “Give me a couple days to watch YouTube, then I’ll be able to do it.”
What an amazing attitude! “Give me a couple of days, and of course, I’ll be able to figure it out.”
How many of us would do better in our businesses if we had her youthful can-do- attitude that just jumps in and believes they will figure it out as they go?
Many of us business owners and entrepreneurs get stuck in our businesses with bottlenecks. We feel like we can’t burst through these blocks. Often times we’re searching for not only the right answer, the formula button, but we’re also searching for THE right answer.
Perhaps we are hoping that if we can come up with the answer, we can reduce risk. It reminds me of the wisdom that we can glean from Helen Keller, who said, “Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
My daughter looked at creating an Instagram account for her mom, learning how to edit the videos, and using a greenscreen as a daring adventure.
I looked at it as a technological challenge that was going to give me headaches.
I challenge all of us to adapt more to my daughter’s attitude and look at our challenges as a grand adventure.
PS My daughter kept me up the next night LATE, talking me into buying the editing software she wanted to use versus the software recommended by my friend, who, by the way, was going to be my backup plan to turn to when we couldn’t figure something out.
She won.
