Inaction is Still Action

I have been chewing on this idea of inaction being action.

Often times the fear of failure, looking unimpressive in the beginning, or not knowing how to start keeps us from taking action. We think we are "playing it safe" by not taking action, when really our inaction is actually action. And the hard truth is that inaction may be the one action keeping you from stepping into God's true calling on your life.

The Most Valuable Real Estate

I heard a quote on a podcast a couple of weeks ago that has really stuck with me. It said "the most valuable piece of real estate is graveyards, because there are billions of genius ideas laying in the dirt that were never acted upon." The second I heard that quote I knew I did not want to be someone that took inaction to the grave on ideas I had a deep conviction on. Hence the start of Runway Media Co.

For years I had felt a conviction that I was supposed to help young people who weren't fortunate enough to grow up in the pro-business environment I did learn how to start, navigate, and grow businesses. I just never knew what that looked like until God got ahold of my heart one night at 3am in early July.

Truthfully, fear and imposter syndrome had been keeping me from taking this step of faith. I didn't believe I was qualified to start a company built around providing valuable content since I didn't have the "skins" on the wall. I am a 23 year old kid who hasn't had the multimillion dollar exit, scaled a company into multiple states with hundreds of employees, or had the kind of business success that people I look up to and listen to have accomplished.

But that night at 3am, God got ahold of my heart and said, "why are you going to trust 'success' and liquid capital from a healthy exit more than you'll trust me to open the doors and guide you into your calling instead?" That conviction hit me like a train. The very next day, I started laying the groundwork for what was at the time just "this content company."

Fear Gives Bad Advice

One thing I learned from these last few weeks is fear gives bad advice. Everyone has an unimpressive beginning, and you never get to where successful people are if you never have the faith to begin that company or idea in the first place. The fundamental difference between you and the most successful people in the world is they had the faith to take a risk you didn't.

Don't read that and think taking the first step is the only key to success, because there is a lot more to it than that. But you can never succeed if you don't begin.

Unimpressive Beginnings

One of my biggest holdbacks in starting anything new hasn't really been fear. If I'm honest with myself, it's been pride. Pride that I'd have to have an unimpressive beginning at all. Specifically with Runway, putting myself out there and creating content that maybe one person, if I'm lucky, watches the podcast or reads this posting.

There's a fear of judgment tangled up in that too. Will I look like an idiot? Will everyone point and laugh and say "that guy thinks he knows something, what a loser"? Will I look like a 15 year old with an unreasonable entrepreneurial dream, thinking business owners will pay him large sums of money to do their marketing because he took one online marketing course? (I was that 15 year old, by the way.) But underneath the fear of judgment was something more prideful: I didn't want to start small. I wanted to skip straight to hundreds of thousands of followers and an eye-popping, recognizable brand, and my pride is what kept me from starting in the first place.

One thing that gave me peace on this was hearing John Maxwell, the most recognized name in leadership, say he started in a hotel conference room with 10 people listening to him speak on leadership as a 25 year old. If John Maxwell had an unimpressive beginning, then I of all people can swallow my pride, let go of needing to look impressive right out of the gate, and learn to be okay with an unimpressive beginning too. Trust God to go before me and prepare the path for where He wants me to be.

Unimpressive beginnings are going to happen. Starting anything new, you will mess up, you will fall short, and you will look like an idiot. What matters is having the humility and wisdom to understand you will fall short, and to "fail forward," in the famous words of John Maxwell.

The Bill of Regret

Another quote I have been chewing on is "you think the bill of winning is too high? Wait until you get the bill of regret." I love that quote because it applies to every aspect of life.

You think asking out the girl you've been eyeing in class for the last four months is scary? Wait until you see her with another guy who had the courage to do what you didn't.

Does studying for that big exam seem like too much? How is it going to feel when you bomb it and make a 45?

You think firing that bad employee is hard? Wait until they ruin your culture and you don't even recognize the company you built anymore.

You think starting the company is scary? What happens in five years when you hate your job, but now you have other things going in life that make starting that company even scarier?

Why do I bring up all those circumstances? Because I have lived in every one of them. And while the bill of regret doesn't always come, when it does, it is always higher than the cost of taking the winning action in the first place. The truth is we have to be willing to get through the messy and ugly to get to the success, in every area of life.

Execution Gets You In The Game

The one takeaway I want you to leave with is this: while ideas are the starting point, execution is what gets you in the game. I think far too often our world is addicted to education but allergic to execution, and it's time to change that. As growing professionals, it's time we start defaulting to taking action.

If you are truly serious about something, start today. If you never start, you already know the result: nothing.

It's time to take the risk or lose the chance.