Where do you want to go today?
In November 1994 Microsoft launched a new $100 million marketing campaign. It was a simple question:
Where do you want to go today?
Fast forward.
It’s September 20, 2018 and I find myself in a tiny conference room in Tokyo, Japan meeting with the CEO of a non-insignificant video game publisher/rights holder. As the dutiful secretary brought in tea for us, a thought crossed my mind:
How did I get here?
Do I speak a single word of Japanese? No.
Have I ever done business in Japan? No.
Do I have any idea what I’m doing? No.
How did I get here? What am I doing???
It started with an idea. Wouldn’t it be cool to track down the owner of an obscure Game Boy game to see if I could get permission to make some more cartridges?
So I sent an email. It just so happened I’d be in Tokyo soon so I asked for a meeting, explaining my intention. To my shock, they replied. Less than a month later, I’d be on the other side of the world, a place I’d never been before, in this conference room with a bunch of Japanese people I’d never met before. They were all very seriously interested in what I had to discuss with them.
Maybe that seems logical to the reader, but to me, knowing me, it felt inexplicable. To this day, it’s one of the strangest and coolest experiences of my life.
My point is that you can do whatever you want, really. You can’t choose the outcome. I didn’t get what I wanted from that meeting. I got something more valuable.
You are the author of your destiny. Nothing is written. What do want to do? “Truth is stranger than fiction” and it’s true! How does someone win the Super Bowl? Sell their company for a zillion bucks? Get married? It starts the same way anything does - an idea.
“I have so many ideas, how do I know which ones are good?”
You don’t! That’s your job, to find out. When ideas are approached with this mindset, failure isn’t a possibility. You understand what knowledge gaps caused you to think something might be a good idea, and you realize now why it’s not such a good idea. So you take your “good idea turned bad” and get a new idea that might turn out to be good or bad.
Nobody is ever going to believe in you more than you should believe in yourself (exceptions may include God, Your Mom, or a spouse). You shouldn’t expect others to grasp your ideas right away. It’s not because you’re wrong, it’s because you have different ideas!
Your ideas don’t require herculean efforts, or at least they shouldn’t initially. Test the waters. How much did it cost me to send an email? A lot less than it cost me to fly to Japan.
Don’t kid yourself into thinking your ideas are so revolutionary and groundbreaking that you can’t share them. This, in my experience, is a sure-fire way to dig yourself into a giant hole of a bad idea. Good ideas are universal so others are probably thinking in similar terms. The ones that aren’t can give you insight. But let them be your critics. Not yourself.
The world is full of possibilities. So why shouldn’t you get a shot at what you want? I can tell you a lot crazier things have happened than your idea turning out to be good.
