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MEMORY AND OTHER FAILINGS
Friday June 7, 2019
I had a great idea the other day.
I have them all the time …
This idea was a business idea. I asked myself whether I liked it, or not, enough to commit time and effort and sweat and capital. I wondered if it could be scalable – could be made large, an idea that could spread and a business which could grow. Which begs questions about whether or not someone has thought of it already, or not, and whether my tiny status in the world could make it come to fruition.
This caused me to remember two things which I hope I never forget.
One, almost everything I’ve done well at started out as something else. An idea, venture, product or service was the beginning – and a crooked path took it somewhere else, took me somewhere else …
The other, to wonder what it was like for Harlan Sanders – KFC guy who, at age 73, must have asked himself whether anyone would care if he re-invented fried chicken. He didn’t do it to build a multi-billion dollar empire, he just wanted to save a failing dinner house restaurant with skills he’d learned in a long list of failures which – when combined with a recipe his mother taught him, led to extraordinary success. He wasn’t reinventing anything – the recipe already existed. What he did was reinvent how it was sold.
On days when things don’t go swimmingly, it’s nice to remember those two things.
I WILL have better days. We all will. Our greatest ideas may not work out at first, or ever, but they likely lead somewhere truly creative, unique and brilliant.
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