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Stephen Hopkins

Follow the Vision & Don't Worry About Details | A Startup Journal...vol2

It all starts with a vision. Any kind of meaningful work or change or activity starts with a vision. I've had a lot of really interesting conversations with a lot of really interesting folks over the last two months. And some of them, very well meaning, have pressed me for details on our businesses about any number of things. Sometimes, I've got good, solid answers. Sometimes, I don't. Of the times I don't, sometimes, I probably need to figure out. Other times, it's not necessary.


But I think one of the things that's vital in life (regardless of how you slice it) is just how central the vision is to everything that you do. If the vision is right, the details will take care of themselves in time. If the vision is off, the details won't matter because you're going in the wrong direction.


John Maxwell had this great line where he was talking about the early days of starting his business. He never felt he had a great plan, he said. But he always had a clear vision of where he was trying to go.


I guess this is my broader observation from seeing the entrepenuerial landscape over the last two months. In many ways, the online world tuns us all into this to greater or lesser extents. Many people will push you to certainty about any number of details in life or business or whatever. In the push for certainty, the temptation will always be to copy what someone else says, does, or thinks. While it may work for a time, I'm increasingly convinced it doesn't work over the long haul. The world is full of people selling you a system to copy and implement. Again, while it may work for them, it won't work for you for long. You need to discover those things for yourself as you move toward the vision that's been placed in your heart and head.


So, to summarize, follow the vision and the details will take care of themselves. The lessons you learn along the journey will be invaluable. If you'd simply copied the details from someone else, you wouldn't have learned the lessons and you wouldn't have the capacity to handle certain problems in the future.



PS - I didn't intend this to be an ad...or a sales pitch. And since technically the thing I'm selling is free, I don't think it qualifies. But, I put a few resources over on the training tab to help with this. The "Unstuck" Course is basically two documents - a Vision & life integration worksheet and a 1-page primer on how to work backwards from your goal to your current actions. Both of these are really helpful if you're thinking about an area of change or movement in your life. And they're broadly applicable (especially the Unstuck 1-page guide) for any domain of life: physical change, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational, etc.

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