4th Factor: Timing!

Imagine this:

You had an epiphany. You wake up one day and see the solution, the solution for an affordable car that everybody can drive running completely with corn (or whatever, anything like that). You have a vision now, create the first car running without any kind of carbon-fuel at a really cheap price. You plan the best way to do that and you partner with a guy expert in biodiesels and a great car designer.

You start the company and follow your mission like crazy, great hopes and putting everything in. After a year of hard work from all of you, The launch of the car launch date is coming close and you are so ready and excited. But, a few days before that you watch the news all over the world, a plague of mutated locusts is destroying every single crop of corn in United States and it's unstoppable, spreading around the world.

Timing is the last factor here because it's the only one that we do not control, we can measure, try to make projections of it, but at the end of the day, timing usually brings us back to reality. You can have the best idea in the world, the best mission and plan, and the best execution with such amazing persistence that Ray Krok would shake your hand in approval, but if it's not the right time, nothing will matter, persistence might not even help you here as some things can last over a generation. This is why most startups actually fail, some of them are ahead of their generation or the technology they want or some others are far behind as some competitors developed that in a better way before. Timing will always bring you back to earth.

I love this phrase and I don't remember who said it

"It will always take twice the time you thought it would take and twice the money".

I know what you're thinking, then why is it worth it to even try? why wasting my time thinking of what do I want to do and how to do it and then doing it, with a big chance that I might fail at the end, that it might be for nothing?

Well, yes, I constantly have the same thoughts, but then I remember why I'm doing this. Must of us start a journey with a vision in mind, we do our best to reach that vision but for those who stick to it and run or swim or row toward that vision after doing it again and again and failing and then starting again and failing again and changing a bit the vision and starting again and so and so, another thought starts to sneak in your head, what if I don't make it, what if I'm not made for this, that fear can trigger many things, complete failure, depression (you still work but sad and annoyed), quitting or actually realizing one thing: It is not about the vision, it's about enjoying the journey.

For sure I haven't reached fully that, I still get anxious when things don't go as I planned. But I hope that happens to me in the future, this guy Ryan Holiday describe it really well "It's like a leather boot that you struggle with it in the beginning but after a while, it will just fit".

Is there a 5th factor? YOu let me know

I'll wrote before about learning to enjoy the journey so check it out here: