This month I gave a talk to Nottingham Uni / Nottingham Trent Uni undergrads at Thirsty Thursday. The idea of the event is to ‘Inspire students to run their own businesses.’ I talked about our Aware Monitoring journey from finding the idea to commercialising the service. My underlying message was clear and loud – JFDI (Just Freakin’ Do It!!). But why be so abrupt..?
My JFDI pitch!
If you have an idea or a passion to do something – JFDI. Stop talking! Stop thinking!! Start doing – now!! NOW!! One of the easiest things to do in the world, is to procrastinate. A decision, even if proves to be a bad one, is still a direction. It can be learned from.
My thinking is, if these students really want to do something – they should do it now. They shouldn’t wait until they have even more excuses in life not to do it. One of my close family members urged me to start my own business when I was 19 years old but I said no. At the time it was the right decision. I did what was right for me and I was not being led by others.
In Bronnie Ware’s wonderful and touching post ‘Regrets of the Dying‘ she talks about people not fulling their dreams:
“1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way.”
If you really desire to have a startup or change something significant in your life, do it now. I take my hat to people like 23-year-old Joel Gascoigne, who gave a talk at our Nott Tuesday meetup group last week, for doing just this. He is now on his second startup project Buffer, a Twitter scheduling app. Joel is living his dream with passion, learning and persistence. He’s just getting on with it – JFDI!!
