The Real Danger Isn’t Failure. It’s Standing Still.

Sick and tired of business colleagues not moving forward, I started playing a game.

When people kept answering “what’s new?” with “my sneakers,” I knew we had a problem.

So I started playing a game.

At networking events, I’d ask other entrepreneurs, What’s new?

They would look down at their feet, mumble something while they searched for an answer, then say, “my sneakers,” and laugh at their own joke.

Sometimes, I’d follow up with something more specific, “Didn’t you start a new marketing campaign last month? How is it going?”

Too often, they’d admit it never got off the ground.

I believe that’s one of the main reasons I started coaching business owners. I was tired of watching smart, capable people stuck in place—unhappy, and often broke, if not broken.

The real danger here isn’t failure.

It’s staying the same.

As my friend and colleague Jerry Keszka from Plus 50 Forward so aptly says:

“That’s a real danger—waking up 5, 10, or 20 years from now in the exact same place, wondering what could have been.”

Is that our legacy?

Claiming a legacy wasn’t on my radar until I considered giving up my desert container gardening educational platform.

I wondered: Am I done?

And where might you already be moving forward, even if it doesn’t look dramatic from the outside?