I wrote a book once. Having known what it was going to take, care to guess if I’d do it again?
.-= Mike Schinkel´s last blog ..25 Best Practices for Meetup Organizers =-.

@David – Great point about the candle needing air. Love that.

@Mike – Thanks for dropping by! It’s a fascinating thing about entrepreneurs. We *want* to do our thing but we must be able to see the needs of others. Wonder how many people would take this plunge if they really understood that upfront?

I guess the thing that resonates with me is that I’ve seen many time over that people want to focus on what they want to sell and spend so little time thinking what their customers want to buy. I guess it’s because it takes a lot more work to uncover the latter.
.-= Mike Schinkel´s last blog ..25 Best Practices for Meetup Organizers =-.

Some fear it, because it is so deeply rooted in who they are that they worry that rejection could be catastrophically painful. Some avoid it, and obfuscate it because they’ve been taught to measure themselves by other people’s yardsticks. But there comes a point for my customers that the fear, the avoidance, the “sensible voices”, the second guessing can’t stack up to the need to light that candle and see it shine. The pain of not being seen for their best self, of not being taken seriously for their humanity, for their own unique flavor of awesome begins to outweigh the risk. But the timing is critical because that candle can burn itself out if it doesn’t get some air. The caterpillar becomes the butterfly in the cocoon, but once transformed it can’t stay in the cocoon. It has to spread its wings or it dies.

So to break it down, I guess I’m saying my customers are caterpillars who aren’t being recognized for being the butterfly that they already know they are.

(Your blog also made me imagine what a 21st century version of the Hathaway shirt man would look like. An avatar? Maybe wearing a SARS mask?)