Years

~ This article first appeared in the Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

There’s a word circulating throughout the advice community that’s causing destruction to those who hear it.  It’s like a computer virus sneaking around undetected; we can see the effects but rarely connect them to the cause.  We’re tricked because the word sounds so harmless that no alarm goes off to warn our minds when it’s heard or read.

The word is “years”.

I’ve listened to enough speakers and read enough books that I can, looking back with new perspective, recollect innumerable times I’ve completely overlooked the word “years” and later suffered the consequences.

A year, broken down into individual daily tasks, is an awfully long time.  For example, you’ll fill up the water bucket in the dead cold of winter.  You’ll still be filling the water bucket during the muddy season of spring.  The same bucket will need filling in the stifling heat of summer.  You’ll be standing there filling it on the one nice day in the fall.  And there you’ll be filling the water bucket when wet, slushy snow is falling and the promise of another dead cold winter comes in on the wind.  And you’ll fill the bucket every single day in between.  That’s a long, grinding year of repetition.

By contrast, we can talk about a year in less than a second.  Many years can be piled together and uttered in a breath so fleeting that a stopwatch would struggle to measure the moment.  Similarly, the word can be read even faster than it can be spoken.

I believe the impact of “years” is lost.  There was a businesswoman presenting for a class I attended and she mentioned that her company was struggling with a crippling problem for years and then they had a breakthrough that turned out to be a remarkable success.  This is the trajectory of almost every book and speech we who are learning will study: Trouble followed by SUCCESS!

Let’s dissect her statement a little more: She explained in plain language that her company experienced a problem much longer than it enjoyed the solution.  Represented as a pie chart the image would look like Pac-man, primarily “problem” with a little sliver of a “solution” for the mouth.  If the audience was polled at that moment, however, I bet they were all thinking of the solution and the success.

I know I didn’t drive home thinking “Wow, I have the opportunity to spend every single day enduring hopeless aggravation that will impact all of my relationships and drive me to the brink of insanity.”  Considering my age when the speech was attended I was probably driving home thinking about which Corvette I would pick off the showroom floor after I flawlessly replicated the success steps taken by this wonderful entrepreneur and her team.

Despair sets in for start-up businesses within about four years and abandonment within about six.  The first two years are exciting and the business owner will gladly accept any aggravation as a status symbol marking their membership in the highfalutin business life.  The next two years feel a little less shiny because the aggravations are still there and have become a disadvantage instead of a status symbol.  Statistically the final two years mark the end of most start-up businesses because the owners feel hopeless when they wake up to the same old nagging, hurtful, stressful, immovable problem.

I don’t think there is one person who has abandoned their business as a result of persistent problems that hasn’t been told repeatedly and in plain English that the problems would be there persistently.  When I wake up and see the same stupid issue I’ve looked at every day previously I am stunned by its existence.  But it is no surprise.  I’ve been warned and my alarm did not go off.

Too bad we cannot more accurately convey the passage of time with language, written or spoken.  If I ever have the chance to speak in front of people wishing to create a business I will make a fool of myself stressing the significance of “years”.  Perhaps stage antics will cement the message that problems are the norm and the business is not failing because of them.  There is a solution to everything, but you probably won’t find it for – say it with me – YEARS!