Jude turned 19 months old this month and I’m amazed at how this tiny thing that was so dependent on me for pretty much everything has transformed into this beautiful and bratty person who has an opinion and a personality, and is now capable of making his choices and wishes pretty clear. He can’t talk yet (except for Mama and Dada), but he’s developed a sign language all of his own that even the dog understands. Amazing!
But as I watch this little person discover the world and increase his awareness of it, I find it increasingly obvious how many lessons there are to be learned from our children when it comes to businesses.
Because children haven’t yet learned to fail, it makes them immune to defeat and disappointment. These are just some of the lessons I’ve been learning about business from my son’s exploration of the world.
How many can you apply to your business today?
1. He practices. Almost obsessively
When he was a baby, we bought Jude a bag of plastic balls that fit tightly into a cloth bag with a zipper on it. Until now, he’s been fascinated by the colored balls, but last month, he turned his attention to the bag. And the zipper. And the fact that he didn’t know how to open or close the bag because he couldn’t quite grasp the concept of this zipping thing.
He brought the bag to me and pointed to the zip, so I taught him how to open and close it. For hours that evening, he sat in a corner trying to open it, then handing it to me. Then trying again and then handing to me. The next day, my husband showed him how to do it again and this time, because he’d been practicing, he managed to do it a lot quicker. By the evening, he knew how to open and close the bag.
None of us start out knowing exactly what to do and how to do it. But with enough practice, we can become experts. Whatever it is that you think you can’t do, take it bit by bit and practice. If you hate calling people, force yourself to make one phone call a day and see how you feel at the end of the month. I can promise you, you won’t hate it as much. And if you do? At least you tried and got it out of your system.
2. He learns how to do things correctly
Like most children, Jude loves playing with drawers. We knew this fascination wasn’t going to go away and we also knew that telling him he wasn’t allowed would only make him want to open and shut them even more. So when he was about six or seven months old, we taught Jude the correct way of opening and closing drawers so that his fingers wouldn’t get caught in them. Almost every time someone comes over and sees him opening up the drawer to pull out the dog leash, for instance, we get a “Don’t let him do that!” style reaction, but he’s been opening that drawer for more than a year. He knows the proper way of doing it.
When you tell someone you’re starting a business or that you’re quitting your job to freelance, most people will react the way they do when our child opens up a drawer. But the fact is, risk is easily mitigated if you learn how to do things correctly.
Business seems risky to most people, but it’s only risky if you don’t know what you’re doing. When you know the correct way to do things, they’re a lot less risky.
3. He fails repeatedly, but he’s never defeated
So the thing about drawers is that sooner or later, you will get your fingers caught in them. I mean, I still do. It’s going to happen. And it happened last week, which is why I’m writing about it. But it’s the first time it happened in over a year of him being able to get his toys out for himself.
Failures are going to happen in your business, too, even if you know what you’re doing. That’s the nature of business, of life. You can’t prepare for all of them—some of them will suddenly hit you between the eyes when you least expect them to—but you can choose the way in which you’ll react to them.
Expect failures. They will happen and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact.
4. He gets on with it
So when Jude got his finger caught in the drawer, he cried. As you do. He sulked for about five minutes, and then, even though he had a swollen finger, he just went on as if nothing happened. Later, when my husband was about to go walk the dog, Jude pulled the drawer open and took out the leash for him.
Setbacks will happen, in life and in business. Stop obsessing about them and move on to the next thing.
So those are some of my takeaways from my son’s exploration of the world. What are some of the lessons you could learn from your children that apply to your business?