Monday, February 9, 2015

Best Advice: It's Not About Being Ahead of Your Time

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As I sit here waiting on my groceries to be delivered by Webvan, I am reminded of some advice that an old friend once gave me while riding around in his Yugo. I'm spending the time waiting on the delivery van by socially networking with my friends on Yahoo! 360 using my Go Corporation tablet device. I'm doing this while also enjoying an old episode of "Sports Night" on my WebTV. Seriously, we were actually riding around in a Yugo when he told me this.
Many years ago, my buddy Dwayne Redding and I were riding around discussing strategy for a movement that he was leading. As a 22 year old college student, he almost single-handedly forced the Georgia Board of Regents to divest from South Africa. While he wasn’t right about the Yugo becoming the next Volkswagen, he was absolutely correct when he told me that "....it's not about being ahead of your time, it's about being right on time...." Although we were separated in age by only one year, it is still one of the wisest pieces of advice that I have ever received.
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Many entrepreneurs believe that they can come up with the next big thing, if they produce an idea that is ahead of its time. The fact of the matter is that most game-changing ideas come from years of hard work in the trenches solving problems in the realm of the mundane. Companies like Apple, Facebook or Google might seem like they were the result of divine inspiration. In actually, they came about through years of analyzing, understanding and responding to consumers needs and solving everyday problems.
There's only one proven way to be right on time. It is to develop a useful product or service that adds value to people's lives right now. My buddy may not have been correct about the Yugo being the next big thing. Yet he was definitely correct that being ahead of your time is usually not as the company's tagline once touted "The Road Back to Sanity." It has proven more often than not to be the road to years of creative frustration and entrepreneurial burn-out.
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Vince Rogers is an experienced resource manager, communications strategist, change agent and thought leader; trained in economics, marketing, project management and business communication.
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Also, please read the article "Taking Initiative – When Passion Meets Purpose" to learn how to "....convert your passion into a tangible force for positive achievement....." https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140401141726-1669339-building-confidence-by-winning-small-victories