Are You A Jumper Or A Leaper?
How you approach your business can make a BIG difference.
[Caution: track and field analogies ahead…]
Last summer I was at a local NH state park, camping with my family and friends for a few days. It was a great mix of downtime, friend time, chill time, and location-independent work time (who says a bathhouse isn’t a good place to do a Facebook live interview?). During a walk to said bathhouse, my 8-year-old daughter and I struck up a conversation about the difference between leaping and jumping.
Seems like the same thing, doesn’t it? Except…
As we were walking, my daughter was hopping over puddles and dancing around in that way that kids have. Out of the blue she tells me that she’s a good leaper (and demonstrated over huge puddles). She then went on to explain that she really wasn’t a very good jumper.
For a second I thought “huh?” and then she demonstrated that, from a still starting position, she can only jump a couple feet. (Her older brother did a little track & field this spring for the first time and she’d watched him practice his long jump.)
The interesting thing about this demonstration was that she was very clear as to why she’s a better leaper than a jumper. She knew that getting a few steps of momentum first let her go farther and faster than starting from a static place.
It was a huge epiphany for me.
One of those “aha” moments that become game-changers in our entrepreneurial outlook.
So many times I feel we try to jump in business, especially when we’re in a dreaming and scheming phase. We like to think we need to get everything 100% prepared, planned and logically formulated in our minds before we can get started. In reality, we do much better when we just start taking action! We’re most successful as leapers…we build on our momentum one step at a time until we’re flying.
Instead of believing that every last detail needs to be ironed out before we can even validate an idea, what if we just went out and started talking to people? What if we listened and figured out what people are really craving in our zone of genius and developed our offers accordingly? It would free up a ton of time revamping our programs once we actually roll them out and realize that we need to seriously tweak things.
So…are you thinking as a leaper?
This momentum thing is huge. Small steps built up along the way can bring astronomical changes and growth. It’s true in marketing and sales (just talk to people and see how you can help them) and in your business management. (And it ties in nicely to a recent post on how just 15 to 30 minutes a week can turn your finances from a frustrating morass of doom into a fun, easy money garden.) Little steps growing and stacking on each other to become huge outcomes.
Leaping versus jumping.