I have often heard the saying ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, but if I am honest I have rarely found it to be so. The problem I think is that when you are in that state of panic your thinking closes down. It is not an emotional state that foster creativity. So, often you do not think of anything that you have not already thought of. So as I again find myself in a panicked search for income – this more desperate from the last. I also felt little optimism about the way out.

This time though I did two things differently that might have (unintentionally) created the ultimate game changing break-though (time will tell).

1. I asked someone else to brainstorm income generating ideas for me. I asked someone who was commercially savvy to brainstorm a range of ideas. They generated a list of 11 things. Receiving this list in my inbox had a surprising positive impact on me. Firstly it made me realise that there were lots of options out there. Even though half were not doable for a variety of reasons there were 5-6 that I had not thought of. This was quite transformational to my mindset. I felt suddenly optimistic and hopeful, was able to sleep. It lit a spark of creativity in my brain and gave me a number of paths to pursue.
2. I was brutally honest with myself and my co-founder. My co-founder and I are both optimists, we need positive emotions to keep us going. So when I sat down (after a lecture from Jordon Peterson about truth) I looked again at the cold hard facts of the start up – what was working what wasn’t. I was realising again that we had no product market fit so all the marketing meetings I was having was like banging my head on a brick wall. I faced up to the potential that we were kidding ourselves – that tweaks here and there in messaging were not going to make the difference. So I looked at who was buying us and why and formed a different view of where our product market fit might be. I then called my co-founder and told him in brutal honest fashion that I thought we were kidding ourselves and what I thought the product was that we actually had. To my surprise he was also harbouring the same fears but was trying to stay positive. We brainstormed a new direction and since then some pieces have been slotting into place quickly. I realised I had a load of customers for this revised product in my network and have been reaching out to them this week. If we are right we will gain traction very quickly indeed.

So lessons learned:

• Be brutally honest with yourself and others. Only speak the truth (is what Jordon Peterson advises https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos/videos)
• Take up all the possible opportunities given to you- you never know where they will lead but probably not in the direction you think.
• Brainstorm with someone else smart. The more you panic the less likely you will be to find the solution on your own.

I will keep you posted.