Today I was working on my laptop in the cafe of my fitness club. I like to work there during the week (they have a nice wireless connection and the coffee is free until 10am).
As I pounded away on the keyboard, creating lessons for my upcoming Business Victory Club, the clouds turned black and the sky opened up with hard rain and hail. A tornado warning was issued and a funnel cloud was spotted not far from our location.
Just as they should have done, the gym staff jumped into action. They rounded up everybody in the place and asked us to go to the locker rooms - the safest place in the building.
But the thing is, I didn't want to go .... I was WORKING! When I've got my head down in a project, it's dangerous to bother me... (just ask my wife)
I'm a creature of numbers, and I knew I was fairly safe... Even if the funnel cloud had touched down and became a tornado, the odds of my actually getting hit by the tornado are slim.
So, don't bother me when I'm working. Especially if the odds of impending doom are slim...
But the gym staff was persistent.
So I made a phone call and sauntered into the locker room with all the other gym patrons. Some were sitting up against the wall with a terrified look on. Some were pacing back-and-forth worriedly.
Personally, I didn't want to sit around and wait for the place to fall apart, so I decided to go to the steam room. I could use a little relaxation anyway.
I was the only one in there...
You wanna know what I was thinking while sitting in the sauna, waiting for the tornado to tear the place apart?
I wasn't thinking: "I hope I don't die".
I was thinking: "Man, it will be really embarassing if the roof comes off while I'm sitting here in nothing but a towel. What if the towel is ripped away and I have to be rescued naked?"
And it wasn't until after I sat in the sauna for a while and took a shower that I walked out and the gym was vacant. Everybody but the necessary staff had gone.
The threat was over and everybody had rushed home to their family.
It was then that I realized, "that is the mindset of an entrepreneur!"
We know the risk. It's fairly calculated. The fact of the matter is: it's risky to start a business.
But we ignore that, sometimes to our own peril, and sometimes to our benefit.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense to start a business when you have slim chances for success. It doesn't make any sense to throw away your evenings and weekends for something that might be for naught.
It doesn't make any sense that I was thinking about avoiding embarrassment when I should have been thinking about my life.
But, alas, we are entrepreneurs, and the "risk" is worth the potential "reward".
Nobody said we are "right in the head". If we were, we would never be able to accomplish the things that we do!
Which reminds me of a good quote:
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." - George Bernard Shaw
Something to think about...
Travis
PS. To be fair, I WAS thinking about my family... so I'm not totally stupid. I made sure my wife and kids were in a safe place before jumping in the sauna. So, don't take this to mean that you need to be an idiot to be an entrepreneur - and don't take it to mean that you need to disregard your own life/safety to be an entrepreneur.
Don't read into it that much.
Just take from this that, to be an entrepreneur you must be comfortable taking a risk. You WILL encounter risk when starting a business. You WILL have to make some hard decisions. If you're not OK with those facts, you might want to stick to your day job.