When I first decided to get a sailboat, I don’t remember what actually came over me.
I just kind of woke up one day and said, I’m going to buy a sailboat.
This was odd because I didn’t grow up around sailboats. I’d been on one once as a passenger for a short time, I didn’t drive the boat, raise the sails, lower the sales, none of it.
So that wasn’t why I did it. I just woke up one day with the idea. And again, it was odd, but you know, I got the fever, as they say, boat fever.
So I looked around and I found an abandoned boat from an estate. The person handling it offered to give it to me for free if I planned to restore it in memory of the original owner.
I literally knew nothing. I got the title and went down to the dock.
It was a big project. It was a big summer. It was a lot of work. I went overboard, you know, in reality and metaphorically fixing it. I had no one to teach me. I looked stuff up online, watched YouTube videos.
And when it came to actually taking the boat out on the water, same thing, I was literally watching YouTube while I was learning to sail a boat.
I had met a couple people at the marina, you know casual conversation and once they figured out I didn’t know anything and I was just sailing the boat a couple of them looked at me like I was nuts, but it worked out okay, bottom line.
I just went at it. I got the idea. I went at it. I became pretty competent. Ain’t never going to win a race. But that was never my goal.
My goal was to get on the water and enjoy that sensation of having the wind push a vessel.
And it’s a business lesson.
If you’ve got the idea to do a business, because it’s going to be fun, make you money and, you know, expand what you know and what you can do, just dive in.
If you’ve got an idea right now you’re going to learn along the way, just like I did with the boat.
I certainly made a lot of mistakes on the boat. I remember I painted something that had varnish on it. So the rain washed the paint off. Um, it was funny and a bit of a mess but it didn’t break anything.
And you’re gonna make the same kind of mistakes and that’s okay. You’re going to learn by doing, and the whole thing is action.
And having that feeling of having the wind at your back it can happen in business.
We have great resources for people like you. The ones who have an idea and just decide to do it and learn as they go.
Our flagship product is Retired Writer’s Club. It’s a secret email list that goes out to people who, from time to time, say to themselves, “what did I get myself into?”
But when you have good instruction and solid advice, you will figure it out. And that’s what we’re here for.