Staying Flexible to Stretch Toward Goals

I’m not a physically flexible person. I’m not always mentally flexible.

Must be time to stretch.

Warm-up stretches for business

Warm-up stretches before physical activity can enhance performance and reduce the possibility of injury.

This is what I see the Start-Up Institute at Central Wyoming College being. I’m warming up my ideas. My business muscles. ”

Mark Wilcox

The warmer I get the less likely that I’ll strain something on the business circuit. Get injured.

Currently I have to stretch. I wrote last week about needing to take apart preconceived notions to build my business. I’m also finding that I’m insanely close to my ideas – so much so that they’re not translating well to people. I’m trying to convey small portions of my long-term vision and not even getting the basics across.

This is weird for me as a professional communicator.

I don’t think I’d be seeing this problem as quickly if I weren’t in this class. I’m figuring out how to vary my warm-up stretches – my pitches, my messaging and even my differentiation. 

While many in the class see the Start-Up Institute as a low risk, in my mind it’s almost financial suicide. But I saw it as important enough to justify anyway. It’s what will stretch me, after all.  

Post-workout stretching for business
After I give my pitch and get a blank stare. Or hear that someone I’m trying to meet with has no idea what I’m doing. Or otherwise realize my stretches didn’t warm me up enough, it becomes obvious I need to do some post-workout stretches.

Stretching after a workout allows a person to use momentum to reduce muscle fatigue and recover faster.

That’s where I’m at now. I’m fatigued in some categories and need to stretch to figure out exactly where.

It’s how I’ll recover from the shortcomings in my business model and my presentation of it.

The remainder of this class will be a way to stretch and dig into the problems that are there but I can’t quite identify. Hopefully that gives my business muscles the juice they need to recover from early failures and succeed.

Stretch.

 

This article is the 7th in a series to be published about the Start-Up Institute the way Jackson native Mark Wilcox experiences it in April through June of 2016.