Business Mastery, Mindset

The Daring Adventure Of Business

The Arizona temperature finally decreased to a pleasant 100 degrees Fahrenheit as the sun sank in the horizon. My youngest daughter and I decided to enjoy the cooling evening by strolling around the neighborhood and going on an adventure.

After listening to her adventures in virtual school, I began sharing with her my current bottleneck in my company. I needed to go more social and had absolutely no idea how to do it.

After a long, drawn-out moment, my youngest daughter, eleven years old, said, “Mom, you remember the other night when you asked me how we could connect more?”
 
She was at that age where friends were becoming more important than mothers, and her earpiece drew her into a world that older adults couldn’t follow.
 
I was extremely curious about what she would say. “Yes?”
 
“I could do an Instagram account for you. If we do some behind the scenes stuff, people like watching that and will start following …”
 
My first thought was no, we couldn’t do that. I wanted her to be a kid, and I didn’t want to put adult responsibilities on her.

She looked over at me with such a hopeful face. I saw she wanted me to believe in her. She wanted on my business team like her older sister had been for the past five months.
 
“Sure, baby.”
 
We walked through the front door and she rushed me to my office. We looked up YouTube videos on how to do effective lighting. Two seconds into the video, I remembered a businessperson had graciously sent me a greenscreen oh … a year ago. I hadn’t even pulled everything from the box because I was overwhelmed with how to put it all together.
 
                                        
 
We spent the next couple of hours assembling the greenscreen. No, really me taking the plastic off things and her putting it together. I did google the name brand of the greenscreen when we had no idea how the lights were assembled.
 
Again, my daughter ultimately figured out that one of the fabric lights had a hole in it, so your hand could slip into the fabric thingy to be able to turn off the light without burning your hand. Who knew?


After a long day of work, I was exhausted and ready for bed, but instead of sleep, she insisted we keep going as she signed me up for an Instagram account.
 
I did ask if it could wait until tomorrow. Her response? “No.”
 
There you go. No putting anything off until later. She was jumping right in without hesitation, full of passion.

Later that night, when I hopped on her bed to kiss her good night, I thanked her, then asked, “Do you know how to edit the videos?”

She sat up straighter in her bed. “Give me a couple days to watch YouTube, then I’ll be able to do it.”

What an amazing attitude! “Give me a couple of days, and of course, I’ll be able to figure it out.”

How many of us would do better in our businesses if we had her youthful can-do attitude that just jumps in and believes they will figure it out as they go?

Many of us business owners and entrepreneurs let bottlenecks stop our businesses. We feel we can’t burst through these blocks. Often, we’re searching for not only the right answer, the formula button, but we’re also searching for THE right answer.
 
Perhaps we are hoping that if we can come up with the answer, we can reduce risk. It reminds me of the wisdom of Helen Keller, who said, “Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

My daughter looked at creating an Instagram account for her mom, learning how to edit the videos, and using a greenscreen as a daring adventure.

I looked at it as a technological challenge that was bound to give me headaches.

I challenge all of us to adapt more of my daughter’s attitude and look at our challenges as grand adventures.
 
PS My daughter kept me up the next night LATE, talking me into buying the editing software she wanted to use versus the software recommended by my friend, who, by the way, was going to be my backup plan when we couldn’t figure something out.
 
My daughter won. 
 
You can see our first attempt at shooting videos at Grit Academy on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMUYUQXRDss&t=5s

My eleven-year-old did the header, the intro, and outro, and the greenscreen. My eleven-year-old and fourteen-year-old are still debating if I should dress more professionally and be more scripted… I am debating how many takes we should do before we declare it good enough.
 
I am also researching how to manage a team. Two sisters, two very different personalities (free spirit meets OCD), one business … We are definitely on a daring adventure.