The Opportunity Cost of Not Taking Yourself Seriously
8 Apr
You have ideas, right? A new way to do an old thing? A new project you’ve thought about launching? A new blog you want to get going?
You know what I’ve been wondering lately, what’s the difference between people who make change and those who don’t? Here’s something I’ve noticed over the years.
Everyone has ideas. 
Some people take their ideas seriously, some don’t.
Of those who do, some people can handle failure and course correction and some can’t.
The end.
Opportunity Cost is a key concept in economics and is defined as “the next-best choice available to someone who has chosen between several mutually exclusive choices.” In other words, opportunity cost depicts the relationship between choice and scarcity. There is no scarcity of ideas, only scarcity of ideas being taken seriously. Do you take your ideas seriously? Oh and by the way, this is not simply a conversation for entrepreneurs.
The thing about ideas is that your first thought may not be “it”, but if you follow that thought, the trajectory might lead you in a new and unanticipated direction.
Let me tell you a story.
I love Shakespeare. Not because it’s classical, but because it’s universal. Many years ago, I started my first company. It was a professional theatre company. We did Shakespeare. I always hated the fact (and still do) that Shakespeare is portrayed as a boring and irrelevant relic. Our mission was to make Shakespeare relevant to common folks like us. We decided to try to pull a coup d’etat on the world of theatre. No English accents. No leotards. No boring. We did all sorts of crazy stuff. We built a cast of passionate people who had never stepped on a stage. We performed plays in warehouse bays in the “ghetto”. We forced the audience to enter our world. We mixed original language with modern mannerisms. Every serious theatre person in our community hated us. We hated them right back. We did it our way. We made our poetry. We made exactly zero dollars and loved every single, solitary moment we were doing it. But most people, they didn’t take us too seriously.
Let me tell you another story.
I still love Shakespeare. So much so, that I have traveled to his hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, about every 6 months for the past two years. Our company does some work in London, Stratford is pretty close, so it makes this possible. When Melissa and I go, we try to get away from doing work and take some time to dream about what work could be. Some of our best ideas have come from our “dreaming” time in Stratford. Anyways, so I was there about a month ago. Somehow, I got into a conversation with a local about what I do and what my company does. He said that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust could use a company like ours. This is “The” Shakespeare Trust. They own and operate all the Shakespearean properties (ie where he was born, where he died, etc), they possess the collection of manuscripts of his plays, tons of stuff. I tell him they could definitely being doing better. Actually, I told him that “Shakespeare would be rolling over in his grave if he could see their current website”. The local tells me, “if you are confident in your idea of what they could be doing better, you should give them a call.” So I did. Seven meetings later and after having beat out about twenty other agencies, they are our newest client.
You know what they said they really love about us? That we had actually produced Shakespeare. Not many creative agencies can say that. In my final presentation, I actually included images of the old posters of the plays we had produced.
You know what I really love about them? Their new mission (as of this year) is to make Shakespeare accessible and relevant for people of every demographic the world over, and they want to use the new web to do it.
Believe this. There is an opportunity cost associated with every time that you have an idea pop in your head and don’t muster the self confidence to take it seriously.
Here’s a few tips that I hope will help you:
1. Always carry a notebook.
I use a tiny Moleskine as my idea notebook. I jot down every business idea, prospect idea, project idea, potential blog post, whatever. Every single thing my company has done can be traced to one of my notebooks.
2. Spend at least one hour a week dreaming or “sketching”.
Melissa and I travel a ton. But no matter where we are in the world, on Sunday afternoons, we shut everything off and talk about the ideas we’ve had that week. Sometimes, I’ll take the time to start sketching out or mind-mapping an idea we’ve already started playing with.
3. DO NOT seek validation.
Let me drop an ancient verity on you, “a prophet has no honor in his hometown”. In other words, most of the people around you, you’re friends and family, they are never going to take you or your ideas too seriously. Some of my friends laughed at me when I said I was starting The LaC Project. A year later, they’re not laughing anymore. It’s not that they’re bad people, its that they have constructed a neat little box containing all their presuppositions about everything you could possibly accomplish. If you seek validation from this group before moving forward, you will never go anywhere.
You have great ideas. Some of them can become something. If you’re willing to push through the ones that won’t. There is no magic to it.
At the end of the day, 9 years ago I could not create a sustainable business model around a local scrappy theatre company reintroducing the world to Shakespeare. But 14 days from today, I’m flying back to his hometown, and will help craft a creative strategy to do just that using social media and emerging technology.
Here’s the takeway:
Don’t expect anyone to take you seriously before you take yourself seriously.
So, do you take your ideas seriously?
Photo Credit: seretuaccidente
