Fortune Favors Action Over Information
“Are cake doughnuts fried or baked?”
I was sitting in my parent’s living room and volunteered the question to my mom as she walked up a staircase nearby.
About a week earlier, I left my corporate job to go all in on my small business ownership dream. I wanted to build a craft doughnut shop from scratch.
My mom, almost out of sight going up the steps when I posed the question, slowly drifted back into view. She turned her head toward me and it looked like she’d seen a ghost.
I can only imagine what she was thinking. “He’s lost his mind! He left his stable corporate gig to start a doughnut shop…and he hasn’t the slightest clue how to…make doughnuts?!”
I was oblivious. Ignorance is bliss when you’re focused on doing something you care about even if you don’t have every answer.
Clearly, I’d never made cake doughnuts. And guess what? Making cake doughnuts is important if you’re going into the doughnut business.
There was so much to learn. But I didn’t let my ignorance get in the way of doing something I believed in. I proceeded to make my doughnut dreams a reality, and I learned an important lesson along the way:
Always act on the things you know how to do over delaying action in favor of acquiring more information.
I needed to focus on things I could do to move the business forward. It was the only way to keep the dream alive and earn an opportunity to learn more about the things I didn’t know.
I knew how to name my doughnut shop and create the business’s logo.
I knew how to design and build my shop’s website.
I knew how to reach into my soul and tell a story about why someone who knows next to nothing about making doughnuts decided to start a doughnut shop.
I knew how to tell that story on social media and build anticipation for my shop’s grand opening.
(As an aside, the best marketers tend to be the founders themselves.)
An ancient proverb says, “fortune favors those who acquire the most knowledge and information possible before acting on something they believe in.”
Actually, that’s not quite right. Let’s try it again.
An ancient proverb says, “fortune favors the bold.”
It’s one of the oldest maxims still used today, and it’s stood the test of time because it’s fundamentally true.
It turns out, you don’t need to know how to make cake doughnuts in order to create the brand, tell its story, and move the business from a vision to a reality.
Taking action in the moment gave me the ability to fill gaps later.
I eventually figured out how to make cake doughnuts with lots of help from people who knew way more about the subject than I did.
They’re fried, not baked, in case you didn’t know. And our scratch-made cake doughnuts were absolutely delicious.
