The other day I told you a personal story about my entrepreneurial journey.
Read that post here. Here’s a summarized version:
Went to a hokey and goofy, yet useful, business seminar at the age of 17.
Ran a window cleaning franchise from the age of 18-22. I was a high-performing franchisee.
Promoted to General Manager upon graduating university. Yay!
Laid off 1.5 years later. Boo :(
Started Calgary Language Nerds at the age of 23.
Wanted to make $40,000 a year. This was to prove to myself that I could earn a living wage running a business in a field I’m passionate about, without the support or structure of a franchise.
Only made $23,000 a year for the first 3 years. I was upset.
Told myself I had 1 more year before shutting my business down.
Business doubled in year 4. Woo-hoo!
Business continued to grow steadily for the next 3 years.
I’ve achieved my goal.
As I wrote earlier, I wanted to prove to myself that I could earn a living wage running my own business in a field I’m passionate about, without the support or structure of a franchise. I’ve done that for 4 years in a row. I feel confident that I could sustain this business for the foreseeable future and even repeat these results in a new business, if I ever were to start one.
And yet, at some level I’m disappointed in myself. I guess I thought that my business would be much bigger after 7 years.
Here’s the thing: big goals scare me.
What if I miss them? That would sure be a blow to my ego. Because of that, I prefer to think small. That’s likely a limiting factor in my business.
However, over the past 3 months I’ve adopted a new set of principles to live by:
Tell deep truths. Trust that the outcome I get is indeed the best possible outcome, even if it is an outcome I don’t want.
A deep truth is different from a surface-level truth. This gets highly philosophical - maybe I’ll elaborate further in a blog post.
Explore and embrace my vulnerabilities.
Be daring. Take risks.
Be more decisive and prioritize output.
Be less pensive.
Learn. Open my mind. Let go of old beliefs that aren’t true.
Use simple and direct language.
With these new principles installed in my mind, I have a new, more ambitious professional vision.
This might be the most bonkers-ridiculous-crazy-unbelievable thing I’ve ever thought of professionally and it intimidates me. I’m scared to share it publicly. What if I change my mind? What if I fail? What if I’m delusional?
Over the next 40+ years of my career, here’s what I would like to accomplish.
Side note: I can feel an old part of myself protesting against writing this down and a new part of myself dragging him forward. I don’t know which one is right, but intuitively I feel the one being dragged is in the wrong.
Calgary Language Nerds (my current project)
Become fluent in any language we offer…guaranteed
CLN Revitalization
Offer classes for languages with a dwindling number of speakers
Fund and direct the creation of media (songs, shows, podcasts, etc) for those languages to revitalize the culture
Create learning materials for languages that don’t have many resources
CLN Entertainment
Tell compelling stories in the form of movies, short films, TV shows, songs,and written stories
CLN Communications
Offer training to individuals and corporations on soft-skills such as:
Sales and marketing
Recruiting and hiring
Onboarding and training employees
Managing teams
Conflict resolution
Let’s see how this goes.
I have no idea what will happen next.
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Keep going, you are on the right path. I'm following your journey with great interest.