Get out of the garage.
My friend Alan Wyngarden has done some adventure travel and says: “The hardest thing about climbing a mountain is just getting out of the garage.” Huh? Actually, it’s pure genius.
A year ago I shared a business concept with Alan around building intimate assisted living homes that I had heard about.
I didn’t have the inclination to do anything with it but wanted to see if others I knew might benefit from running with it. I shared it with a number of people who loved the idea, but only Alan gave birth to it.
Yesterday I attended the open house for his first home. It is gorgeous and Alan has the best people in the industry working for him, creating a unique, honoring and beautiful environment for those who need a little assistance at an advanced age. It even has raiaed gardens for them to plant without bending over – great stuff.
I chatted with Alan about this last summer and within a week he was moving on the idea, with the full dream realized yesterday, only a few months later. The others who thought it was a great idea never moved on it. Alan is thinking he’ll have five of these homes up and serving the elderly in the next year or so.
Building a business is really very simple. You just need to get out of the garage. As with climbing a mountain, the training isn’t the problem. It’s leaving the garage to DO the training that hangs us up. GETTING STARTED stops us more than any other thing in business. If we would just get started the rest of it would fall together for us.
But we wait. We research, we talk, we think, we plan, we collect data. We believe we need to get it all figured out before we move. But neither life nor business works that way.
Planning never creates movement, but movement can create a great plan.
Alan had no experience in the industry when he started moving. He just got out of the garage and started looking for a property, then started sniffing around to find those who might be able to help him build an expert team.
By the accounts of others who have been in the industry for years and who own many of these types of homes, he’s hit a home run with both his facility and his team. He didn’t get there by reading. He got out of his garage. And that movement created a marvelous plan.
Building a business is really quite simple. We just need to get out of the garage.
Speed of Execution is so important to success. What great idea are you sitting on that you just need to get out of your garage and get started
