Entrepreneurs, Take The Plunge! With great risk comes comes great reward.
I recently spent a weekend at the United States Naval Academy for a football game with my family and my dad. I love going to that place. Been there COUNTLESS times. But this time struck me in a new way.
As we were wandering around the Naval Academy yard showing my dad all the unique things about the school, @Clay Johnson took us to the natatorium to see the 10 meter high dive platform. I’ve seen most things on the Yard in my 14+ years of knowing Clay, but for some reason, I never had laid eyes on this platform.
Every Midshipman (student) has to jump from this platform into the pool one time at the beginning of their Plebe (freshman) year. Notice how small the people in the water are! It is HIGH, y’all! I remember that he told me about this platform, but I did not have the proper scale in mind AT ALL. When I saw it, I wondered if I would have been able to make that jump if I had gone to school there.
This next picture was taken on this same trip, shortly after visiting that high dive platform. It is of my husband and three children on the field at a Naval Academy football game. This was taken after he and some fellow fighter pilots did an F/A-18 flyover before the opening kickoff. Besides being all sorts of proud of my husband and excited for my kids to get to be a part of something really awesome and think thousands of people were cheering for them, I couldn’t help but put these two images side-by-side in my mind and apply them to my entrepreneurial journey.
Here is the metaphor: If you never do the scary plunge off of 10 meter high dive, you won’t get to return as an alum and take your kids on the football field after doing the awesome fighter jet flyover.
Starting and running my own business the last two years is by far the most difficult and uncomfortable and scary thing I’ve ever done professionally. I think that most business owners would probably agree with me. But with great risks you have the chance of great rewards.
Not every Plebe who makes that jump goes on to even graduate from the Academy for various reasons. But 100% of the ones who DON’T take that plunge (the risk) will never find themselves returning as an alum and showing off USNA to your proud father-in-law and doing a flyover for Navy’s football team (the reward). They won’t have that reward of hearing your name called out in front of thousands of people with your kids being a party to it all.
So, I’m preaching to myself as much as any of my other fellow entrepreneurs. Take the plunge, Kate! Take the plunge, y’all! Even if it is 16 years later (he made that jump in 2003), you’ll always miss the chance of the great rewards if you don’t take it.
And if you want a great strategic partner as you do all that you have to do to grown your business, give me a call and I can do your bookkeeping and advise you on your finances.