You Don’t Need a 10-Year Vision. You Need to Start Hanging Lights.

Almost everybody that's come to our house this past week has stopped as soon as they've walked in and said holy shit. And it's because my wife has the house completely decked out for Christmas and like she's insanely crafty, she's insanely creative and one of the many benefits we get from that in in our house is that come Christmas time we are going to have a badass completely decked out house and I and I love it. Um she spends weeks doing this. These aren't things it's not like she goes to the store and buys all these decorations and hangs 'em, she goes and buys like individual wreaths and individual ornaments individual strands of lights and then builds everything that you can see in our house and I on the podcast I can't do it justice and and show you but it's it's all completely custom. And every year it gets bigger and every year it's different and the themes are are different in each room. I love it. The boys love it. But anyway as as she was doing this for for the past couple of weeks I asked her the other day I said hey babe I'm curious how much of this do you know what it's gonna look like before you get started. Like how how clear is the vision of the outcome in a particular room before you get going. And she was like none of it. And I said what? And she said she said yeah and she goes well I I usually know like the color like the the color theme that I'm going to start with and then I just go from there. And then I you know right once I get going then I kind of look at it and say I need to change this or I need to change that and I that's when you see me pause and stop and stare at it for a while and then I go back and steal stuff from one room and you know put it over here and make changes and just keep going and at some point it's never perfect it's but at some point I got to go to the next room. Like I it's it's good enough and I'm happy with it enough that I can go to the next room even though I know it's there's still more that I could do and listening to her explain it I thought one like she just loves it like you can hear it in her voice like she just she she loves doing this it gives her energy even though there's a ton of frustration like I can see it like you know when one of the strands goes out or you know she's got all this stuff zip-tied together and then something doesn't work she's got to undo all of it like she she gets these frustrations and I can I can see those moments but overall she loves this. And as I heard her explain it I thought oh my god the metaphor for business could not be clearer to me. We glorify the idea of having a crystal clear vision to start and you know what I did too like for a long time I thought that you you needed a a crystal clear vision to get rolling because that vision would pull you forward. When you have that vision it does and I think it's awesome like so when you have that level of clarity and you can establish that clarity as a target and as a north star it really does pull you forward. It makes decision making easier it makes filtering out bad ideas easier it it makes everything easier but the reality is you know building a business is is more art than it is that level of science right. Like the vast majority of people that I know that have been wildly successful as entrepreneurs and business builders will tell you you know yeah I think I kind of knew what I was doing when I was getting going but this thing kind of took on a life of its own right. It's it's more art in the sense that like my wife with the with the decorations it's like I had a general sense and then I got going and then through the process of going it opened up more options that I couldn't have forecasted I couldn't have predicted and you know because of that you know I've got to make new choices and then you know that brings up new choices and there was just no way to to to see where this is going which is why on the one hand we we glorify the level of clarity that like Bezos had with Amazon you know where you say you know he basically almost like a prophecy like this is what Amazon's gonna be and we think that's what you're supposed to have but more often than not it's really more of like Steve Jobs who says I think it was Steve Jobs who says like you can you can really only connect the dots in hindsight. That's more often the reality you know it's more often just like my wife sitting down you've got the general theme you get going you make some choices and you you go through that process and at some and it's never done by the way just like art right like it's never perfect you you can keep going infinitely and that's actually part of part of the fun right. Um and that's why I think if you don't have absolute clarity perfectly fine you just need to love the process like my wife she doesn't she doesn't need to know exactly what it looks like in order to do it in fact that might take the fun out of it for her like it might you ruin it for her like whereas I to get going I'd be like okay where do you want this to go show me the blueprint and I'll assemble it well she doesn't want to assemble it she doesn't want to create something that is like pre-done like she she wants to figure it out and that is part of what she loves and so similarly in business if you don't have absolute clarity and you get going so long as you love the process then then it's going to be fine because the process itself is going to give you the energy that you need to keep going because make no mistake just like Christmas stuff there's going to be frustrations like strands of lights are going to go out and ornaments are going to break and things are going to change and shit is going to happen there will be obstacles there will be challenges there will be frustrations there will be problems but that is also part of the process and as long as you love it you're gonna be able to to power through those things. And I think the the only time that you really have the energy to power through those things is when you can see the future so clearly that it's that it just it it pulls you through it kind of like you know the Bezos style which is I think to me the very much the minority of time like the the of it's a small amount of time that people have that level of clarity or you have a love for the process that enables you to keep going and you know that I've got to solve this problem in order to stay in the game in order to keep doing what I want to do which is more of like the Jobs route you know which is you know frankly Jobs was more artistic right um which which makes sense. So this was just a metaphor and and watching this whole thing unfold that kind of dawned on me and I wanted to share with you because I think it's powerful for for anybody who's operating without crystal clarity and thinking that they're supposed to have it. It's all right like you don't need to perfectly fine just love the process power through and at the end of the day you probably end up with something bigger better than you could have imagined to begin with just like I'm sure my wife looks at the house and and goes yeah at some points like damn couldn't have seen all this coming together but I look at it at the end and go pretty fucking awesome. So hope it helps adios.