STARTING SMALL, ENDING BIG

STARTING SMALL, ENDING BIG

As a little boy, I watched and assisted my dad in planting two sticks. Both of them later became mango trees. They were so tiny and small, anyone could pass them off without the slightest thought of them becoming anything, or better still see them as dead. With the euphoria that attends every child’s newly found intrigue, I would go out every morning and evening to water my sticks, because daddy said, if you water your crops, they’ll yield. This I did for God knows how long. Maybe several months until I found other intrigues that yielded other forms of pleasure to me. Eventually I forgot about them for years, or maybe the rains took over the morning and evening watering sessions from me. In all, I stopped watering.

Weeks passed and months followed, the years followed too and eventually decades. The sticks my dad brought home with about five or six leaves on each – (I didn’t actually consciously count the leaves, but they definitely couldn’t have been up to ten), those sticks that we planted, had yielded. They had become trees. It didn’t first occur to me when I visited home that there were ever such trees, until I was told the story again. We had two giant trees outside our home that provided both shelter from the sun and the rain and also produced fruit enough to even be sold. What a marvel?! Sticks turned trees! Wao!

It took years, forgotten years, but they produced at a time when we least gave heed to them. Every positive effort sown as a seed for the future pays off eventually. Most times, they pay off at times when we have even forgotten that we sowed the seeds for them. That is what the bible meant when it said to not despise the days of little beginnings. But what happens to the seeds that are not sown, and the steps that are not taken? Your guess is as good as mine. Weeks will pass, months will follow and so will years, but eventually, the passage of all those times will leave them with nothing near a desirable future.

My focus in this piece is on the need for you to start something that you have put off to an undefined future and also to start your own business. You have probably considered it over and over, prayed about it over and over and again, you have sought counsel and have sure received some. You have done all these and many more except doing that thing or starting that business. It is high time you started making frantic efforts to getting that project or business off the ground.

Every big business that you see today, started small. As a matter of fact, most of them started from a car garage or inside the founder’s bedroom or backyard. We have electricity today, but that idea was birthed in someone’s backyard which became his factory. The dormitory of Larry Page and Sergey Brim was converted to their studio, so to say, to get the popular search engine – google on its feet. A lot of people used supposedly insignificant cash to kick-start their business ideas. Frank Nneji used his NYSC allowance to rent the first office space he used for his business which later metamorphosed into the renowned ABC Transport Company. Coca-cola product was first sold as a pharmaceutical drink until eventually it was perfected and almost everyone drinks coke today. You are probably drinking one right now. Most people stop their business dreams at where they are supposed to start one, and that’s like someone who starts to read his biblical admonition from “Finally, my brethren…” 

If you don’t start, there are no chances that you’ll finish not to talk of growing. The secret to growth however is that you keep your eye on the big picture while you attend to the daily needs of the fledgling business. It is not how you appear when you start the project that matters, it is whether you will choose to remain the way you are after a considerable period of time. By keeping your eye and focus on the big picture ahead of you, you will garner the energy you need to attain that mark like the apostle Paul said.

There are principally two factors that stand in people’s way of starting their projects or businesses – Fear and Procrastination.

Fear is faith in the Devil while Faith is faith in God who can do all things. Most of the things that we fear are truly non-existent. They become real by figments of our imaginations. Because we are dwelling on the negatives, we are giving flesh to that negative and feeding it fat. You know as well as I do that, it is whatever you feed that grows. If you asked everyone that has started a business before, they will tell you that they had fears, especially about money. But that didn’t stop them, they started afraid, they started anyway. If you ask those who have not started anything but are supposed to, they will tell you their genuine fears, especially about money, and that is what has kept them down all along. The difference between the two categories is not in whether they had fears. Of course they all did, but what is more important is their response to the fear factor that they faced. The first group did it afraid, the second group is still afraid. Where do you belong?

Procrastination, oh I hate that word! You have probably heard before, is a thief of time, and methinks, a thief of life too because life is measured in times. A lot of us, by delay methods of contemplation and doubts, we have delayed our miracles and breakthroughs. There is always a tomorrow, there will always be. If tomorrow is when you are waiting for, you will never stop having one. Never, never leave till tomorrow what you can and should do today! If you should talk to someone about the possibility of a loan, and you can do it today, go ahead and do it. If you should go look at that probable office space, and you can do it today, go there and look at it. Whatever you should do today, and you can do, do it. Besides, today is what you have, yesterday is history and tomorrow may never come. Make that right decision today, and secure your tomorrow.

If you keep looking at what is wrong or at what is not ready, you will never stop seeing them. If you are looking at what is wrong today why you should not start, well, the same thing was wrong the last time you checked perhaps. You would have started several years ago but those factors that are inhibitors were there. They scared you. Maybe you would have started last year too but you checked and wished that those things were already handled. As you are reading this piece, those factors are still there. By next year, they will still be there, and the year after. They will always be there until you stand up to them.

Life does not respond to cry babies, it responds to those who place active demands on it. What do you want in life? Do you see it anywhere? Stand up to it! Make conscious, frantic efforts to get to it, else it remains an illusion.

Do you intend to start anything at all, start it small so that it doesn’t scare you. And as it grows, you’ll grow with it, and become adept at handling it. Remember the story of the sticks that became big trees, they had to be planted, and my God did they grow. They always grow. Believe in what you are starting and believe in the God that is helping you to start it, and be on the lookout for progress, growth and unusual increase. Never at any point stay away from success that appears in its embryonic form. Embrace it, do something with it. You’ll be shocked what it’ll turn out to be. Great gifts most times don’t appear in great packages, it all depends on the eye that is looking at it. Start small today, because all big things start small.

I hope to write follow-up post to this, taking you step-by-step to starting your own business. I will announce when I am ready for that. Until then, stop at nothing to make your dreams a reality.

See you.