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At the beginning of every football season, I remember the famous quote attributed to Vince Lombardi in which he would gather his team together, hold up a football and say, “men this is a football.” You can’t get much more basic than that can you? But every year these big, strong, professionals would hear Coach Lombardi remind them that he was holding up a football.
Today, I want to start a series about building your dream business. And, in the spirit of Coach Lombardi, I want to start at the beginning by saying, “A dream business starts with a dream.”
Remember when you were a kid, you had no inhibitions about dreaming. You and your friends would lay around in the summer sun and talk about what you were going to “be” when you grew up. Those dreams were usually pretty extravagant and unlimited in both scope and nature. Some would even say that they were unrealistic, but they were your dreams.
Now, fast forward 40 years or so. You are now ready to “retire” but like so many you see that supplementing your retirement income is either a necessity or something that you want to do to remain active and productive. The only question is “what do I want to do?”
My suggestion: Re-start that same “dream machine” that you used on that hot summer day so many years ago. Find a quiet place (I like the outside seating at my favorite coffee house), take a brand new blank journal, and just start dreaming again!
Ask yourself questions like: “What really makes me happy?” or “How can I turn my favorite thing to do into a profitable business?” Don’t forget to ask, “How can I create a business model that lets me live the retirement life that I want to live?”
Keep asking questions and writing down your thoughts and expanding them with little care for time, the amount of stuff you write, or what other people might think about your dream business. (There will be plenty of time for other people to shoot down your dream!) Right now you are just dreaming; just letting your mind and your essence create. Time to let your thoughts and your dreams mold something out of nothing. Time to start at the beginning. Time to ask, “what would I do if ….”
When you have dreamed all you can dream for one day, shut your journal and start your “normal” day. But, take the journal with you and add to it anytime thought about building your dream business comes to you. Before long that business will begin to leap off the pages of your journal and begin to make sense.
When it does, you will be ready for step 2 … evaluating your dream!
