The Sweet Fantasy of The Pipe Dream
written by Allan on August 13, 2012
We enter into most of life’s chapters naive of what to expect. We deny our naivety with a pipe dream of how we expect it will be.
Freshly out of college, my little sister wants to buy a local coffee shop. Her expectation of running a coffee shop is chatting with customers, baking sweet treats and pouring coffee. Smiles, coffee, sweet treats and the money starts coming in!
Waking up early to bake and serve coffee is the reality. The reality is ordering supplies, cleaning bathrooms, hiring and firing employees plus dealing with health inspections. If she knew the reality, she wouldn’t want to actually “run” a coffee shop. She’s naive.
I’m guilty of believing a fantasy. We launched LessAccounting.com in early 2007 with 700 people signed up for the beta. Our belief was riches were so close we could taste the caviar and champagne dreams! The reality was two years after launch the app was only making us $4000 per month.
But maybe an entrepreneur needs a healthy dose of naivety. Maybe they need to be ignorant of how hard running a business will be…or they need to be brave.
Coffee anyone?
When has being naive of what to expect worked out well for you? I'd love to hear examples.
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Allan loves his family more than breathing. He lives in Panama City, Florida & grew up washing cars at his family's car washes. Oh and Allan hasn't worn underwear since 2004.
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Being naive? I only thought I knew the reality of:
having children, having LOTS of children, getting investment licensing, moving to GA, moving to FL…learning Rails.
All of these have turned out to be more amazing than I could have imagined but they were very, very hard. I would have missed out on so much if I knew the harsher realities of each example. No regrets – life is about wanting what you have or making what you want a reality. Great post, Allan.