I got hit with a pretty big curveball this week.
I discovered that something that I'm purchasing for my coaching business is 3x as much as I originally planned for ...
Ouch!
Back in the old days - as a young whippersnapper entrepreneur (21 years of age), this would have freaked me out. Heck, it would have freaked me out at any point in my 20's!
But now, I have a few gray hairs (not *that* many), and I've had my fair of sleepless nights.
As an older - and hopefully wiser - entrepreneur, I don't get too rattled by these surprises anymore.
Do I like them? Of course not! Who likes paying 3x what they
expected?
But I've been through enough ups and downs by now to know that these things happen. And if you get thrown off your game (or "on tilt", in poker terms), you're screwed.
So I step back, take a deep breath and smile at the gods of the business world. They test entrepreneurs, to see how bad you want it. To see if you're willing to hang in there despite the challenges.
One of my favourite books is "Thick Face, Black Heart" (if you've listened to my podcast, you've heard me talk about it a lot). In the book, Chin-Ning Chu said something that has always stuck with me:
"Gain and loss are the
constant human condition"
Chu advises us to expect some bad times in life - to not go through expecting it to be all rainbows, or we're setting ourselves up for disappointment.
I'm not saying that you should expect everything to go to hell in a handbasket, I'm just saying to expect some curveballs along the way.
That's not being negative, it's being realistic.
And realistic isn't a bad thing for a coach and entrepreneur to be!
Marc