Actually, selling your idea once it matured is an exit strategy :) – you see, exit strategy doesn’t have to be a bad thing, i.e. selling an ailing business.

Selling 100 times your initial investment is a more desired exit strategy :)

About blind faith – that is actually what make or break, doesn’t it? No faith, no success. Period.

Thanks for sharing, David :)

Nice post and interesting discussion (thanks Ed) :)

Re: the post, I agree with an “exit strategy”. I am just starting out on an idea with some websites of mine and I have no idea if they’ll be successful so it seems a bit preemptive to think of an exit strategy but…the reason I do it 1) to sell my “idea” once its matured because I think there’s a market and 2) It means I have a bit of confidence in what I’m doing.

I agree with Ed in that failure is more familiar to EVERYONE until we achieve enough times that “failure is not an option”. But, that takes a bit of blind faith to get the positive experience of success.

Cheers! Thanks for the interesting discussion :D

Ed

To comment on goals being stepping stones to greater things – I agree that goals are best viewed as milestones.

I love sports – and to an extent, business is just like sports.

In endurance practice, you set to run 5 miles today. Once you achieve that, you raise your bar to 6 miles tomorrow, 7 miles the day after tomorrow, and so on. When the time comes – i.e. the London marathon :) – you are prepared to achieve great things, because you constantly challenge yourself to reach new milestones.

Yes, it is sad to see small biz treats the goal as an end. That’s why small biz remains, well, small :) – unless you planned to keep it small, of course – but, again like you said, Ed – why do we challenge ourselves so modestly?

Interesting discussion, indeed :)

Many people see the goal as an end where as we should be seeing the goal as the beginning to greater things. If we strive to surpass our goals, we are all now striving to be great.

(interesting discussion, eh?) I guess to, that going back to fear of success – we could use goals as a form of therapy to getting over that fear. Goals being stepping stones to greater things. So, long as the goal is not seen as an end but perpetually set, rising the bar each time.

The sad thing with most small businesses is they see view the goal as an end. What to do when the goal is met? Repeat it again next year, with a few points added. Why do we challenge ourselves so modestly?

That’s, unfortunately, true all the way.

We often stop challenging ourselves, thinking that we are already successful – we are not – success is not the end goal, it’s the path we walk.

If we felt comfortable with the way we are right now (in our familiar territory – failure – like you’ve said) what exactly kind of path we walk right now?

Thanks for sharing your valuable insight, Ed! :)