In business, you need to be patiently impatient.
Or is it impatiently patient?
I’m never quite sure which way round it should be!
But I do know that building a successful business requires a healthy dose of both patience and impatience.
The problem is knowing when to apply each.
Too impatient, or too patient?
I see business owners who are so impatient for results that they’re constantly changing direction, chasing the next opportunity or trying something new before the previous thing has had a chance to work.
And I see others who are perhaps too patient. They have ambitions, they have plans, but they’re waiting for something to happen rather than making it happen.
Neither approach is particularly helpful.
Building a business takes time
Building a successful, sustainable business takes time.
- Relationships need nurturing.
- Trust needs earning.
- Reputations need building.
But that doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting.
It means taking consistent, meaningful action, making decisions and continually looking for ways to move forward.
Impatient about progress, patient about success
Be impatient about making progress, but patient about achieving success.
I think that’s the distinction.
You need the impatience to drive you forward and the patience to keep you on course.
After all, there’s no point being patient if you’re not actually doing anything.
And there’s no point being impatient if you never give anything a chance to succeed.
So perhaps the answer is to be a little bit of both.
What do you think?
Are you patiently impatient, or impatiently patient?
If you’d like help finding that balance in your own business, find out more about business mentoring, or get in touch for a chat.
