Letting the Game Come to You
Back in the heyday of the NBA I used to love watching Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. No matter what kind of game MJ was having, Phil Jackson would rest him at the end of the third quarter and for the first few minutes in the fourth. He’d come off the bench rested and ready, and go on to do the most amazing things I’d never seen basketball court, more often than not leading the Bulls to victory.
And sometime during the fourth quarter, Marv Albert would remark “he lets the game come to him.”
Sometimes as an entrepreneur you have to let the game come to you. Things don’t always move as quickly as you want. Software doesn’t get developed overnight. Search engine rankings take time. And user adoption of your product doesn’t happen overnight.
About a month ago I felt myself pressing. I was pressing too hard to get siteMighty to the next level. I was pressing too hard on my team, our partners, and our business model. I realized this one night when I literally laid in bed all night with my mind racing and unable to sleep. I was pressing too hard.
So I made the decision to step back. I let the team step forward on siteMighty, and instead of trying to press so hard to grow fast, let things take their natural course for a while. We have a fully developed product, our users like it and are finding success with it, and we have a great team behind it at supporting it.
It was an incredibly freeing moment when I realized I could take a break from siteMighty and stop pressing so hard.
So that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, I’ve been focusing my energy on building the business infrastructure for Flatsourcing which has been going incredibly well, and is something thats been waiting for my attention for a long time.
And today I realized that the game was coming to me.
A good friend of mine signed up for an account with siteMighty and gave me some great feedback on it.
I looked in on our support tickets and stats that I’ve been purposely ignoring for the last couple weeks. They’ve been handled excellently by our support team.
Today we received a revenue-share check from a partner it was literally 10x what it was last month. That means we’re growing but more importantly our users are growing. Wow, if that’s what stepping away will do, I’m heading to Panama.
Most of all, I’ve been having fun again.
Letting the game come to you feels great. Pressing too hard feels stressful. It’s a lesson in entrepreneurship and I won’t take lightly.
Thanks for the life lesson MJ.