How did I 'take the plunge?'
How the 6P process (now the 8P) helped me launch GiFT631
My youngest daughter Lily wanted me to call my book ‘Take the Plunge.’ It’s what I did when I set up GiFT631. The decision was made in Bali but it was a few months later when it happened.
Many people thought I was crazy to leave the world I had known for so long. They would share statistics relating to the failure rate of start-ups and small businesses and say ‘I am just trying to help you’ or ‘ you have a family to think about.’ Others would plead with me asking ‘why not just play it safe for the next 5/10 years?’
To pass the ‘rocking chair’ test, I had to take the plunge and, at 50 years old, I knew I needed to take action quickly.
Through my journalling, which is a daily practice that forms a core part of my success system, a simple process emerged to ensure I had clarity about what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, why it mattered and what it would take to be successful. It started as my ‘6P Process’.
This process can work for anyone, as opposed to just those intending to make a significant career transition or start their own business. If you want to reassess what you want to achieve in life and what you need to do to move forward, think it through. Use it as a thought starter, a baseline. Change it, adapt it, take Ps out that don’t serve you, put other things in that do. The critical thing is to have some form of process. One P it does not need to be is PERFECT. It is much better to get going than seek perfection before you do anything! Once you ‘take the plunge’ you will need to learn to swim pretty quickly anyway as things are never quite as you think they are!
The six Ps were as follows:
Purpose:
How do I want to live my life?
What is my ‘why’?
What really excites me?
What difference do I want to make to others?
How do I want to be remembered and celebrated?
This is the critical first step. Once my purpose became clear, it gave me the confidence, the belief and courage to work out the rest. The other ‘Ps’ support it, practically and emotionally.
Plan:
What am I going to do?
How?
What do I love doing and why?
What do I believe are my core skills and superpowers?
How can I use these strengths daily to make a difference to others?
What are my core products and services, my winning edges and what makes me different?
Where will I find business?
How do I price/market my products and services?
How does my plan underpin my purpose?
Whose help do I need to make it happen?
Problem: Quite simply,
What problems am I solving for others?
How do I build my life and business around the difference it will make and the value it will add to people, teams, and businesses?
Note - These first three Ps are about the set up - the purpose, the plan and the problems I am solving. The second set is about staying on the journey, given the good and challenging times to be faced.
Passion: People can ‘smell’ passion and positivity. To live life to our true potential we need to develop a "champion’s mindset” - one that is positive, optimistic, action orientated and oozes passion in all we do. An old friend and mentor, Jim Brandon, says that ‘positive thinking is like an infectious disease - it spreads’. Energy attracts energy. Positive energy is a magnet and people are drawn to it.
Patience: Major success and mastery of our chosen activity takes time. I am impatient with myself, operating with speed and urgency, setting big SMUUT goals and taking continuous action AND patient with GiFT631. This is a critical distinction. I have witnessed others give up close to what I felt was the breakthrough point. I use the Frank Dick “Bamboo Analogy” - ‘when you plant bamboo, you can water it, feed it, pray to it, sing to it, dance around it and nothing (seems to) happen. Then one day it breaks the surface and it just can’t stop growing!!’
Perseverance: The ability to ‘hold oyur nerve’ and maintain self-belief and confidence without tangible evidence matters. The ability to keep going when times are tough and to shrug off the disappointment and criticism is crucial when you are working towards your goals. Daily winning habits and frameworks get me into my ideal performance state and, crucially, get me back there when I have been knocked down or suffered a disappointment. If you want it, I can share my winners checklist, which I added to
Within12 months of taking the plunge, I added a seventh P. This was before Covid which forced an even more significant pivot:
Pivot:
How do I become more international and ‘go global’?
How do I scale GiFT631? The answers led to more questions.
How do I use technology ever better?
How do I create time-leverage and additional/alternative income streams?
How do I future-proof the business?
Who do I collaborate and partner with?
How do I adapt to the changing environment?
One of my mantras became #pivot2win - finding ways to grow, expand, add new services whilst staying relevant and adapting to changing conditions, economic turbulence, and disruption.
As you grow, your ideas need to grow too. You need to start to innovate and do things differently. Standing still breeds complacency that can easily become the first step to failure!
On reflection, I soon realised an 8th P was missing. In fact it was a double P. I needed to be surrounded by Positive People who believed in me and would be the wind beneath my wings to help me soar in the direction of my own potential.
Andy - my "plunge" was retiring "early" to focus on wife and child and writing a book. I did not need anyone else to tell me, "Play it safe, you don't want to fail at this and then you can't feed your family," because I told myself that, over and over. It locked me up. Finally, my wife asked me, "What's the worst than can happen?" After a few more rounds of questions, my answer was, "I go back to doing what I was before. That door will not close." Not a bad consequence. It was this answer that pushed me over the edge, and I gave my notice the next day. I have absolutely no regrets.