New Business Ventures Feel Like Staring at a Blank Page When Writing a Blog Post
Daryl Henry
Frederick County Businesses and Social Services Organizations Seeking a Trusted Insurance Advisor: Addiction Treatment, Child Care, Schools, IDD Service Providers, Home Healthcare, Mission Sending Organizations
I talked to a colleague the other day who is new to being an insurance producer, and at the same time he’s building out a niche.? He said it’s overwhelming.? There are so many factors to consider.?
How to find a list??
Which company will insure these?
How do I get their attention?
“It feels like wandering in the dark,” I said as I nodded in agreement.? He agreed.? That’s when I knew I had the subject for a blog post. But I didn’t like the word picture of wandering in the dark.? I had a hard time keeping the theme throughout an entire post.
I thought about carving a statue.? But then I came to a solution that I understand much better: It’s the feeling I get every week when I stare at a blank page and wonder what I’m going to write.? I take notes throughout the week for ideas that will inspire me.? But the challenge of the writing process is that you never know what’s going to come out until you throw it on the page.
It’s the same thing for business ventures.
We put together outlines and plans. ?We have an idea of the high points.? Despite our best efforts to plan to the very end, all we can do is start trying and see what happens.?
Which is why I decided to use the writing process as an allegory for business venture
1.????? The Beginning of Every Venture is a Blank Page
Every week I start with an untitled document, and the cursor is blinking at me.
It’s the moment that everything is possible and impossible.? I could write 100 words.? I could write 100,000.? I could write about anything I want… if I could just come up with a good idea.
A new business venture is the same way.
It can be anything you want.? It can be big or small.? You bring can bring in a team or keep it to yourself.? You have partners.? You can sell or make anything you want.? If you could just figure out what you want to do.
The only way to break past the empty page is to start writing something.? Anything.? It can be incoherent.? It’s better than a blank slate.
The same deal applies in business.? Try something.? Anything.? Just get started.? Which leads me to my second point:
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2.????? Nothing comes out perfect the first time.
Fyodor Dostoevsky said he was a terrible writer, but he was a brilliant rewriter.? Nothing ever comes out perfect in the first draft.? I reorder my bullet points.? I rewrite sentences.? I change the imagery to suit my tastes.
The same holds true in business.? The first time selling to any type of business is an adventure.? Everything is hard.? I don’t know how to pitch the risk to my insurance companies.? I don’t know the underwriters.? I don’t know the obstacles I will encounter.? The only thing I know for certain is that the first draft will be very difficult, but I will have the opportunity to improve the second time.
This is the part that so many people miss.? You try again and refine your process.? You can rewrite the sentence.? Then you can rewrite it again if you want to.?
Keep trying.? Keep rewriting.? The truth will come out eventually.? The business will become what you want.
3.????? Study how the best did it.? Then copy them.
There is nothing new under the sun.? The best ideas are already out there.? You just need to find them.
If you want to write, you need read.? A lot.? Of all kinds of books.? Good books.? Bad books.? Biography, sci-fi, history, you name it.?
If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s critical to study other entrepreneurs.?
It’s a very simple concept, but most people don’t do it.? They say they want to make more sales.? They say they want to start a new business.? But when you ask them what they’re doing to acquire the necessary skills to accomplish those goals, the conversation gets very quiet.
Or, when you try to introduce an idea to that person; an idea that has proven to be effective in other environments; an idea that has been used by the most successful people; they are argue that it doesn’t apply to them.
It’s fun to dream about writing the great American novel, or starting a new business, or being the greatest salesperson in your company.? Figure out how someone else did it first, then copy what they did.
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4.????? Get an editor, friend, or good mentor
One thing that always fascinated me is that great artists run in packs.?
CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien smoked pipes and drank pints together.
Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Robert Duvall were roommates.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck grew up together.
The PayPal Mafia gave birth to a generation of Tech CEO’s.
No matter how much you read, or study, how hard you work, everyone needs someone to be a second set of eyes on the process.?
Lewis and Tolkien would read each other’s work and encourage the other to keep going.? I’m sure they each had moments of writer’s block and helped brainstorm through those moments.?
Actors would help each other pay rent and encouraged each other to keep going to auditions.
Community is so important.? It helps propel you forward.?
It also can be the inertia that holds you in place.? Be careful about that.
5.????? Don’t wait for inspiration.? Chase it like a crazy person.
Stephen King described this phenomenon in this book On Writing as praying to the muse.? As a writer, you pray to the muse by reading and writing every day.? The Muse ignores you for the longest time.? So long it feels like they’ll never answer, and all you’ll be left with is the blinking cursor on the page.
Similarly, Sam Walton said about Walmart “Like most overnight successes, mine was 20 years in the making”.
Waiting.? Nothing happens for the people that wait.? It’s like the Dr. Suess book Oh, The Places You’ll Go – there is page of a huge crowd of people waiting for the something.? Waiting for the phone to ring.? Waiting for the weather to change.? Waiting.
Don’t wait.? Chase it.? Pray to the muse every day.
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Conclusion
I was a creative writing major in college.? Maybe this post is a justification that that I didn’t flush all the money down the toilet to read Don Quixote and write short stories.
But I don’t think so.
I think entrepreneurial efforts require the same creative energy as writing a new story.? And I think everyone has their own style in how they approach it.
Elon Musk is not Jeff Bezos.? Neither of them is Warren Buffett.? Much in the same way that you can read JK Rowling, John Steinbeck, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, appreciate that all of them are excellent, but vastly different.
When their work is published, or their company goes public, we marvel at their achievements and gush about how they make it seem so easy.
But all of them struggled with the moment of a blank page.? They found a way to get the first word on the page, then the first sentence, then the first draft.? Then they rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote.
Twenty years later, we marvel at their overnight success.
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Commercial Account Executive at Park Insurance Services
1 个月The one thing that's missing here is the bit about knowing when to cut your losses. When you're writing, sometimes you start off with what you think is a great idea and by the time you've done a couple of hundred words you've run out of steam and realise that your great idea doesn't have that much mileage. Similarly, a business that you thought was amazing doesn't turn out to be quite so amazing. Around a year ago I closed down a business I was running because I realised that there was nothing I could do to make it viable. That's not to say that you shouldn't do it. But there's a point at which "chase it" maybe should become "stop chasing it" - although that doesn't mean giving up completely. It just means it's time to move onto something else.
Commercial P&C Insurance Professional
1 个月This may be my favorite article of yours. I love all of the writer/brilliant mind references, but this part resonates: "Maybe this post is a justification that that I didn’t flush all the money down the toilet to read Don Quixote and write short stories." Just me, over here with my unfinished English degree, paying off the last $800 of what has felt like The World's Longest Student Loan. ?? Writers have more transferable skills than most people will ever realize.
Insurance Broker ?? | Helping to implement creative insurance, risk management, & benefits solutions. ?? | Named as a 2023 & 2024 Power Broker, and Rising Star by Risk & Insurance Magazine ?? ?? |
1 个月As someone that once had the privilege of forming and running my own business, I often talk to those that don’t have similar experiences about my reasons for pursuing such an endeavor. They were simple; 1) I like and want to help people. 2) It was my creative expression of myself. I don’t draw, I don’t paint, I don’t sing, I don’t play an instrument. While I would love to do all of those things, I wasn’t gifted those natural talents or inclinations. My business was the outlet that I could creatively express my vision of the world. 3) I thought what I had to offer the public was valuable and generally of higher quality than the existing options in the marketplace.