Wednesday, July 1, 2009

You're not so smart, you just show up a lot

I've really been enjoying a series of blog posts by Steve Blank. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's been rocking my world recently. The title of this post is taken from his most recent entries. You can find his blog here.

Steve is not, as far as I can tell, a Christian. He's a successful entrepreneur that is now retired from the biz and writing it up. I don't care at all about making stacks of money... my 2008 taxable income was HALF of what I made in 2004. Yay, ministry!

What's amazing, though, is the way that Steve's description of himself could just as well describe me, although he's far more successful. Steve is an entrepreneur. That's his identity. Maybe it's mine too.

He talks a lot about what it takes to make family work when you're an entrepreneur... I stand humbled. (See here and here). He talks about faith-based vision and fact-based execution, which is an interesting distinction for something I've pondered a long time. He talks about the curse of a new building... read that post and replace "office building" with "church building." Does anything change? Not a bit. It's hugely relevant.

Mostly, though, he talks about the mind of a "founder" and how it's different from the way other people think. This is hugely impacting my thinking right now, as it categorizes a lot of the stuff that's driven me crazy about myself over the years.

I don't do a good job at the slow, steady grind. I want to, and all of the people I respect are strong there. I've always seen it as a character flaw that I wanted to go start something new instead of building up the stuff that's already there. But that life is hard for me. It's hard for me to take the thing that's established and keep working at it... I want to get it most of the way there and then start the next thing.

Maybe this is a phase. Maybe I'll grow out of it. Maybe adding more discipline will eventually fix this in me.

But maybe I'm just wired different, and the stuff that excites me is different from the stuff that excites everyone else. I'm all in on the Kingdom, and I'm not interested in building anything else in the world. But I think I'm beginning to understand what my role is... and it's probably not the one I thought it was.

1 comment:

Jonathan said...

This is why I thought you would plant a church. However, the last time I asked you about it, you said something to the effect: "Nope. I'm not worried about that right now. I'm happy to serve just where I am." I must say, I thought that was quite humbling of you (as I believed you had an aspirations otherwise).