“The best businesses come from peoples’ bad personal experiences. If you just keep your eyes open, you’re going to find something that frustrates you and then you think, ‘Well, I can maybe do it better than it’s being done and there you have a business. if you can improve people‘s lives, you have a business.”
—Sir Richard Branson
A lot of good ideas come from dissatisfaction. We find that something bothers us enough that we want to take action. Soon, we discover that other people are unhappy about the same thing as us and our solution to that problem becomes a product or a service.
Dissatisfaction is not enough to keep an idea going, however. Once the original problem is solved, there has to be more to drive us forward than simply a reaction to a problem. At some point, if we are to have longevity with our idea, we must become proactive and creative about solving newer, better problems.
Innovation may start as a creative response to something we don’t like, but that is only good enough leverage to make a beginning. It won’t sustain us. We have to dig deeper in order to keep going. We each have a unique talent or skill, and that is what we must leverage if we want to make a difference that is long-lasting.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
-Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
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