Starting your business is like going for a bike ride; there will be times when it is all smooth road but there will almost definitely be that pothole that nearly throws you off.
Let’s imagine that your business journey is a bike ride.
When you first go for a bike ride, you imagine it to be easy; you get on the bike, you push the pedals round and you go. How hard can it be?
As soon as you set off, you are faced with a big hill; suddenly not so easy, huh?
Do you give up and go back home? No! You go down a gear, you get your bum off that saddle and you work your little legs off until you get to the top. You feel on the top of the world that you got up and so you should, particularly as a newbie, it is important to celebrate every win.
You carry on for a while on the nice smooth, flat road and at this point you have forgotten about the big hill you had to work hard for at the start, you are just focused on how easy this ride is now, in this moment.
Then, you start to see the other cyclists going past; you know, the ones with all the fancy reflective Lycra. You start to wonder if you should be out on the road, you aren’t as good as them, as fast as them or as professional looking as them.
Maybe you should just go back home and put your bike back in the garage to collect some more cobwebs.
Or, maybe, just maybe, those other cyclists were in your position a year ago, one month ago or maybe even just last week. Just because they look the part on the outside, doesn’t mean they are better than you!
So, you keep going. You are exhausted by this point and you need to stop. You have failed.
Or, have you?
Do you just need to pause in order to get some more energy to carry on? If you kept going and gritted your teeth through the pain burning in your legs and the crushing feeling in your chest every time you try to take in some more oxygen, you aren’t going to make it to your destination any faster! In fact, quite the opposite, it will take you longer.
So, you take a break at the top of the mammoth hill you have just climbed. Just 2 minutes, but that is all you needed to get back on, remind yourself why you are doing it and where you need to get to.
Refreshed and raring to go, you power through the rest of your journey knowing that you have done your absolute best to reach your destination. It doesn’t matter how fast you were, how many times you had to stop or what you were wearing on your journey. What matters is that you got there.
Now imagine if you had turned around and gone home at the bottom of the first hill, or the second? What would have happened if you had got off and walked back home when you saw the ‘professionals’ on the road? Well, you certainly wouldn’t have made it to the end, you’d feel a sense of failure and you would probably have no confidence to try again.
This is what life is like in business. You take the rough with the smooth, the steep upward climbs with the joys of whizzing downhill with hardly any effort! All that matters is that you stay in that saddle. You keep going, no matter what the challenge. Forget about what other people are doing and focus on yourself and your own end goals and whatever you do, don’t forget to take a break, a deep breath and refocus.