Success is just as much about clinging onto ideas as much as it is letting them die.
When your friends tell you it will never work, it’s time to cling.
When you’re terrified to see how the market is going to react, it’s time to cling.
When someone flippantly says, “It can’t succeed. No one has done it before,” it’s surely time to cling.
But not all ideas are good ones. Not all ideas should be clung to forever.
When a customer buys once and never buys again, it’s time to let the idea die.
When your marketing efforts amplify, yet your consumer base shrinks, it’s time let the idea die.
When you hate what you do, even if it is selling, it’s time to let the idea die.
When an idea doesn’t work you need to let it die, so you can spark new ones. This is actually the harder action for most entrepreneurs. After fighting for an idea for so long, we feel it is our duty to fight for it forever, no matter how shitty the idea is. It takes courage to admit the idea was wrong.
It’s not just about fighting for it forever. Sometimes, we think there must be something wrong with us, or that we just haven’t found the right way to make it work. Which, if we were paying attention to ourselves, we’d know that “making” anything work is a lot more work than it’s worth.