Step by Step
“With patience, even the grass becomes milk.”
Whether it’s learning a language, remodeling a house, or starting a business, we all have big, scary goals we want to achieve. Typically, it starts with an idea and bubbles into an obsession. This is the fun part. Then reality sets in and the doubts surface: This can’t be worth the time; there’s already too much on my plate; I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Then the enthusiasm fades and the plan becomes an afterthought, an insurmountable pipe dream.
This, for better or worse, is part of the human experience. As a kid, there was no chance you’d finish that complicated science project on time. In college, you were terrified at the thought of prepping for job interview after job interview. And now, as an adult, you can’t get started on anything without drafting pro-con lists and calculating opportunity costs. Achievement is hard.
It doesn’t help our waining motivation when we feel surrounded by fully-formed, seemingly inevitable successes: your cousin with the PhD, the packed restaurant down the street, or the shelf of best-selling fiction. They’ve reached the pinnacle, in stark contrast to the obstacle-strewn path we see ahead.
The differentiator is the realization that all success stories must have a beginning. They were once just like you, staring longingly at the mountaintop, feeling overwhelmed and insignificant. But instead of walking away, they took the first step, then the next, and another. Finally, after years of incremental growth, they became an overnight success. The world is full of examples.
If you’re reading this, you are fluent in Earth’s most popular language, English, whose name is derived from Anglia, a spit of land in a tiny region on the fringes of an insignificant continent. In the Middle Ages, invaders from Denmark made their way across the sea to Britannia, where they began settling the island and spreading their language. Over time, the people and their language came to be known as English. Even one thousand years later, English barely registered on the global scene. Fast forward through the rise (and fall) of an empire, and today 20% of the global population speaks this Germanic amalgamation.
In the 21st century, football dominates American sports culture. But in the 19th century, it was a slow and boring rugby-esque recreational activity for college students. The first official game was held on a muddy New Jersey field in 1869, unrecognizable to any football fan today: 25 frat boys trying to kick a round ball into a goal while dodging the tackles and kicks of 25 other lunatics. It was as chaotic as a kindergarten soccer match, and so dangerous that some colleges tried to ban the sport altogether. But over time, the rules were tweaked and the game steadily grew in popularity, becoming the TV-ratings juggernaut we know and love.
In 1964, a young accountant, and former long-distance runner, named Phil decided to start a shoe company with his old coach. They named it Blue Ribbon Sports and Phil started selling their track shoes out of, no joke, the trunk of his car. That first year, Blue Ribbon sold about $8,000 worth of Japanese-made shoes. As the months flew by, sales slowly increased until eventually Phil had to quit his day job. In 1971, he decided to re-name the company after an obscure Greek goddess, setting it on a path to becoming a household name. Fifty years later, Nike would generate about $45 billion in annual revenue.
Don’t worry that you’re starting small, everything and everyone does. So get out there and begin. Design the dress. Build the app. Learn the instrument. Run the marathon. Take it step by step and appreciate the grind. One day, a year or ten from now, you’ll have something great. Just do it.
Devin Faddoul, CFP® is the founder of Adda Financial | Outsource your financial life. Focus on your real life.