I've met lots of people in the last few weeks who’ve started their own business. Some came up with an idea for a new product or a service, and they made it happen. Others had a dream about quitting their jobs and setting up their own business. They too, made it happen. Each of the businesses has a different story but inevitably success was about being both talented and tenacious, and not giving up in the face of adversity. Like most of us in business, most of their journeys involved a bumpy ride.
But, they did it.
But of course, thousands of business ideas remain ideas. They never go beyond the chat in the pub, the scribble in the note pad, or the random conversation on a flight. For whatever reason(s), the owner of the idea doesn’t suceed in taking it to market.
There’s an obsession with measuring business success by financial indicators; of saying a new business is only successful if they’ve got a certain profit (how about ‘any’ profit?) or a majority percentage market share. But how about another metric? How about the fact that someone came up with a random idea, and that they turned it into reality? That they scribbled an idea on a beer mat in a pub three years ago, that they raised funding and now the resulting company is here today?
I think ‘did you make it happen?’ is a great metric and we should celebrate more the stories of those people who turned their ideas into reality.
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