by Miriam Garvi
Imagine for a second that you have this beautiful Idea. A cure for breast cancer. A new solution for waste-handling. A brand of cookies made the old-fashioned way with real ingredients rather than artificial ones. Maybe your Idea was triggered by something on the evening news. Maybe it came to you as you were facing a problem, pondering on how to solve it. Maybe you were frustrated with the lack of good options available on the market. However it came to be, you’re full of excitement at the prospect of launching into business. Family and friends lend you the money for office space and you start working prospective clients.
Gradually, it all takes form. Yet it’s a slow start. After a couple of years, you’re still struggling to make ends meet, waiting for that major breakthrough that will awaken people to the beauty of your Idea.
Then someone comes along with an offer to invest in the business and a market plan that makes everything sound so simple.
Five years later, loans to family and friends have been repaid, with interest. Thanks to new resources and competent fellows on the board, the company has grown considerably and you’re working your way into the Chinese market. Sure, the journey has been slightly different than you imagined and things might have had a different outcome had you been the one making all the decisions. A new CEO has taken your place and you’re now in charge of research and development. But you’ve always considered that to be the most enjoyable part anyway!
But one day life’s not all peachy anymore. Your solution for waste-handling needs improvement but there is no patience for that. Your investors give priority to sales and marketing – but there is no way of reaching the milestones that have been set whilst pushing quality to the right level! Angry customers are calling in, they feel cheated. Employees are coming to you for advice, imploring you to resolve the situation. Fatigued and frustrated, you try raising your voice at the board meetings but you seem to be speaking a foreign, quite exotic, language. Keep pushing is the message; we’ve got a prospective buyer for the company that will move things to the next level!
And one day, when someone close to you asks you about what happened to that dream of yours, it hits you. In the effort of turning your Idea into a lucrative service, it is becoming just another one of those things that promises far more than it delivers. Where are those beautiful qualities that you could not wait to share with the world? Longing for the passion for what you once saw, you ask yourself if it is ever too late to go back to what initially sparked the desire to do something that can make a difference.
No, it isn’t.