Just because it doesn’t exist..

..doesn’t mean it’s your job to create it.

Commuting in a city gives you so many opportunities to see…stuff. You just look around and depending on the day, especially somewhere that’s not overly familiar, you notice things that you’d take for granted in more familiar environs.

For all of the chatter in the webosphere of folks who run small companies no one has ever heard of, trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again, you have tons of people in their trucks who own varying levels of small businesses. From landscapers to carpenters, underwater divers to retail sales clerks…we’re just sitting on top of a landfill of folks who are at some level doing what someone else is doing.

I couldn’t help but think of a conversation that was more prevalent when I started my first company. I used to talk to folks who wondered why I’d want to start a company by simply saying, “you know those people who sit at a community event and go “Wouldn’t it be great if someone made this?” Well, I don’t want to be one of those folks.”

Perplexed as they might have looked, they usually knew what I was talking about.

One of my mentors used to tell me that as I gained more experience, that I’d start to recognize areas within my industry that folks didn’t do as well, that I could do better and that once I found a way to get folks to pay me to do it better, that I’d settled on my first business. It wasn’t rocket science as he explained it and he never intended for it to be.

But I don’t fashion myself as an entrepreneur in the traditional sense. I don’t get much job out of creating stuff for the sake of it (in that, there has to be some value to it for me or someone else.) and I would much rather do something that would help people have those a-ha! moments as much as I can, versus say, sitting in a cubicle processing TPS reports all day or even owning that employed a bunch of people who did that.

It’s not always about pizazz, but there has to be something interesting about it. Of course, what’s interesting is merely in the eye of the beholder and the schlub willing to paying for it.

This is a scatterbrained morning post that might not really have a point, but here’s an idea that I’ve never seen anywhere and that I don’t want to do myself, but might be interesting to see. Maybe. It would be interesting to see a web site where someone chronicled the lives of people from all over the country at their jobs.

Over the past ten years, I’ve lived from the east coast to the west coast. The thing we all see to have in common, is that around the same time each day, we all get up and head to the office. Whether it’s a guy outside with a jackhammer, a woman in the principal’s office or something like that. It’s just interesting to take a macro-level view of people and to see them moving about in the pursuit of something greater than themselves.

Day after day after day. I don’t know why I find it so poignant, but it really does move me on a level. So to see people at their core, to focus in and hone in on people — it’d probably be a project that would take a good year or three to complete. But done right, it could be an interesting thing.

Why did I choose to end this post with a fleeting idea? On purpose. If you read enough periodicals, sites and other print publications, these stories are out there. You just have to search for it to get that sort of experience. And it still leaves people out, because there will always be folks left out.

Whether those left out and left behind represent a market opportunity for someone to capture or merely will remain a “part of life” is anyone’s guess.

What do you REALLY want to do?

Whenever I read Lucky or Smart, The Four Hour Work Week , The Dip or any of the other books that entrepreneurs are buzzing about, I just start to laugh.

With the except of Lucky or Smart, the other ones were effectively telling me what I already knew. The message was “What are you waiting for? Why are you waiting for tomorrow to do what you want to do now?” I used to think, “If only it were that easy…” and despite that, I just kept plugging away.

Whenever I interview for jobs, folks look at the diverse experiences I have and ask, “What do you really want to do?”

That question has propelled me to this point and time in my life. I’ve realized a lot that things change all of the time. Just when you get comfortable believing things will be a certain way, life has a way of correcting your vision through experience.

What I’ve come to appreciate over time is the fact that so long as you’re breathing, each day is a unique opportunity to test yourself and stretch your limits. It can be exhausting and the barriers put up in front of you can seem arbitrary and probably unfair at times. But when it’s time to gut check yourself, to see what you’re made of and to test your own mettle; realizing that you have what it takes to come through makes all of the difference.

Once you realize that what you want doesn’t have to pass someone else’s threshold of what’s good or right in the world — only yours — it’s as if a weight larger than a bridge has been taken off your back.

One of the things I loved about “The Dip” is that it was so motivational. It challenged you to believe that you great, that you had something to offer and that each day you sit plotting and planning the perfect way to do something is a day you’re wasting. That the world won’t wait for you and putting yourself out there isn’t a means to an end, but an opportunity to be best in the world.

No matter how large or small your world may be.

I see what’s to come as an opportunity in allowing myself to thrive. With that as the challenge in front of me, the only thing that can stop me is myself.

I accepted the challenge over a decade ago when I embarked on this path and do not plan to quit now. The next chapter is upon us, my time is now.