Know The Ledge

by Young Che on August 14, 2008

I must admit that I hate this feeling of dread that I have in my gut every morning I wake up and have to face my business. It seems like I’ve been standing at this little crossroads for over a year now. Do I continue to move at a pace much slower than I interact with the world around me just because my offline business has lost its edge? Or has it really lost its edge? Is it just me tripping again because I have delusions of grandeur featuring me running a multi-media empire? Some days the feeling hits sooner than other but most times it hits right about 7am, a couple of seconds before I potentially receive my first phone call and a half hour before I have to share my plan for the day with my team. It wasn’t always like this. There was a stretch when I took everything in stride without giving it a second thought. But recently every day seems like just another problem filled affair not worth suffering through. Unfortunately it’s not that easy to avoid life without killing yourself, not that I’ve ruled that out completely. Look what it did for the latest installment of Batman.

Just Quit. You’ll Be Happier

Yesterday I finished reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber which probably should be a good thing except I always seem to walk away from books like this with mixed messages. It was a wonderful book about righting your business. But it was also a book that encourages you to follow that spiritual path that sometimes defies the logical approach the author uses to describe why it’s necessary to implement systems for every business if you want the business to live. He rightly contends that if you do not implement systems which can exist outside of you then your business is doomed to die one way or another. At times he inspired me with the desire to really dive in and fix everything that is wrong with my business currently. Then two paragraphs later I’d be convinced that I was in the wrong business and should just quit while I was ahead.

He opened up talking about the three distinct personalities which exist within each of us as business owners. The Entrepreneur. The Manager. The Technician. In the introduction he mentioned how most of us who have lived enough life have multiple selves dwelling within us. I most certainly do. “The way I flow you’d think there were two of me, it’s more like ten of me.” – Asher Roth.

I Hate Good Advice. Unless It’s What I Wanna Hear

This morning I hooked up with Jay a little late and he let me have it again. Our exchanges are becoming more interesting with the added displays of anger we now share with one another. He asked me if I just wanted to hook up with him to vent about how unorganized my business is every day or if I really wanted him to help me straighten out my business. Jay runs a management company but he can’t help me if I’m unwilling to take my business seriously. I understand his point thoroughly but I don’t think he understands the magnitude of this next step I’m contemplating. I am really on the verge of stretching myself into the online world in a real way. Whenever I get my mind around an idea it’s hard for me to shake it until I figure out a way to give it expression. I’ve been contemplating this move to online business for some time now and I know that at least part of my future includes an online business venture or two.

Big Jay and I have been wrestling with one another for almost two years now trying to figure out how his management company could either fit into or remold the culture I’ve created with my offline business. He is dedicated to his craft, I guess. If nothing else he has paid his dues with this company and any other enterprise I should form. I’m sure he can be useful to your business or enterprise as well. He manages to put up with me on a regular basis.

The Internet Is Better If It’s Paying You

For me it just feels like I have to make this big decision about whether I should put forth the effort necessary to right my business or abandon ship and follow my passions. For some reason they just don’t seem compatible. There’s really no other way. I know that I’m destined to be in another business eventually so I may as well stop going in the direction I’m headed in because it’s obviously the wrong direction. My current business doesn’t resemble the vision of the business that I eventually want to run. No matter how many people tell me that I’m in a good business and about the growth potential it has I feel like I have to go another direction. The world of online business can definitely deliver me the type of lifestyle that I see myself living because it offers a level of freedom that offline businesses just cannot offer. I’m definitely a fan of the mobile-lifestyle and am determined to realize it for myself. In order to achieve it I have to free myself of time and location both of which are damn near impossible to do with offline businesses.

Everyone who attains high levels of success in any field had to make a definitive decision about the route they wanted to go with their life and/or career. Your life and career should be separate entities unless you are truly doing what you were brought here to do. If you have found your purpose for being you should get busy doing it. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan teaches that “Allah created nothing without an aim and purpose, and, blessed is the man or woman who discovers his or her reason for being.”

You Can Get With This Or You Can Get With That

In the September 2008 issue of Transworld Skateboarding Tony Hawk shared a little secret to his success in the world of skateboarding in his response to one of the questions.

“….When I started skating, nobody dabbled in it, did other things, and came back to it. If you wanted to skate as a serious hobby, you had to put a lot of effort into it. I realized I was hooked when I didn’t care if my neighborhood friends had stopped skating. I feel like I belonged in my community of oddballs at the skatepark. I didn’t want to leave the park for baseball or basketball practice anymore. Around that time I was also playing violin at school and getting requests to do performances outside of school functions and that was eating into my skate time, so I told my violin teacher that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had to make this formal divorce from other activities so I could follow my passion. “

Minister Farrakhan, who happens to play the violin extremely well, had to make a similar decision in a dream that he had. There were two doors; one gold with the word success over it and he could see gold and riches inside the room. He used to be a well known entertainer on the verge of getting national exposure prior to choosing the path that he is traveling now. The other door had the word Islam over it but you could not see beyond the door. My gut feeling is that I have to make this decision to give up the things that I’m not passionate about in order to truly discover myself and what I would excel the most at doing.

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