Dreams Are Made On the Backs of Baby Steps
Your goals don’t happen to you. You happen to your goals.
It’s easy to let our minds dream without fully engaging the work to get there. It’s easy to talk big and think small. However, even though we all have dreams of things we barely believe we can do ourselves, mustering up the courage to do something about it can be really difficult; even painful.
Understand Your Why
Before setting out to conquer a goal, you have to understand where that goal is coming from. You must understand the why behind your what. You can’t have one without the other.
Sloppiness and trendy what’s never lead back to a sustainable why; they’ll always die out…because people see right through them.
Always know why you do what you’re doing.
All About The Baby Steps
Whether you’re trying to get a promotion, pay off student debt, or start your own company, the principles remain the same.
It’s all about the baby steps. You simply have to start…
In late 2015, my wife and I decided to go for it with our little online grooming company Northwest Beard Supply.
We had been playing with the idea of making a better looking, better quality beard oil than anything we were seeing in stores and online. We knew we wanted to bake a charity model into our business; one that customers could partner with us in giving back to issues we care about.
It was daunting at first, but the only way to get things going, was to just start.
We gave ourselves a launch date (roughly 2–3 months to build our company), and started making a list of everything we needed to get done before showing the world our idea. It was a scary and exciting thing!
First, we bought nwbeardsupply.com, a business license, and a few basic ingredients to start mixing our own beard oils.
We started talking with print shops to get an idea of what bottle labels would cost…
We gave our products away to friends and family (to understand more on doing research for your startup, click right below)
After doing research on many different e-commerce platforms, we decided to go with Shopify (highly suggest), and began shooting photography of our products…
These are just a few of the things we did to get started. When working towards any goal, you have to set the vision, and chop it into smaller pieces; focusing on both large and small scale.
Remember grade school, when you had to memorize all 50 States? Did you start by trying to memorize them all at once? I doubt it. That’ impossible. You probably started on one coast, and worked your way across until you knew them all, right? By breaking your goal into smaller bits and pieces, checking them off the list becomes attainable, inspiring you to do better on the next few list items.
Get To Work
Setting a goal is an amazing journey, and a necessary one for achieving the kind of results you want.
If you don’t like where you’re at in life, change it. Stop talking. Don’t give into self-doubt. Fight! Sweat! Get out of your comfort zone.
At the end of your life do you think you’ll tell yourself “at least I played it safe. At least I didn’t look like a failure in my friend’s eyes!”. I promise you won’t say that.
You’re the only person who can truly keep yourself from realizing your full potential, so if you want it, start moving towards it. No one else has that kind of influence over your actions; just you.
YOU happen TO your dreams…your dreams don’t happen to you. And at the end of the day, you’re either moving towards making your goals a reality, or you’re helping someone else achieve theirs…
Stop “dreaming”…just get to work, and make it YOUR reality.
Signup here to get my most recent posts sent to your email once a week. I enjoy talking about small business, design, people, and quick tips for those who are just starting into the world of entrepreneurship.
I’m currently a User Experience Designer at eBay, where I work on the Native (iOS+Android) Selling team out of Portland, Oregon. I’ve previously rallied onsite with design teams at Nike, Bodybuilding.com, Intel, as well as freelanced with multiple businesses since 2010. I’m the co-founder of Northwest Beard Supply LLC with my beautiful wife Megan, an avid musician, and weight training junkie.
Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or emailing me at hello@gregbecker.co –
