I revisited a 2001 story about Crate & Barrel CEO Gordon Segal’s speech at the ICSC Spring Convention and found it a lot more inspiring and useful to read it all over again now. In 2001 I was in the early stages of my first startup that I had started with a few senior cofounder and now I am running my second startup which I am driving almost single handedly. There are lots of words of wisdom for entrepreneurs in this story and I’d recommend you read the whole thing. Here is one of Gordon’s quotes which is very valuable. 

“We didn’t know anything about retail,” Segal recalled. “I had grown up in the restaurant business, so I knew about service but not about retail. We didn’t know a market from a markdown. We didn’t know anything about importing. In fact, if we weren’t 23 and totally lacking wisdom, we would never have done this. You just go ahead with your passions, and you rush forward without a great deal of thought,” Segal reflected.

Passion is the keyword here. I have had so many of my really really smart friends stay on the sidelines waiting for the perfect idea to come along to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. They are still waiting and working at very large companies with a cushy job that is good enough. Unfortunately, they may never start their own company and may never enjoy the thrills that come with it. Thinking too much, sometimes, is not good for starting a new business. As long as you have the passion to making it work, I believe it all works out. More importantly all the planning that you may put into making sure it was a perfect idea to build a business around, usually stands true only for a short while as you learn new things, customers ask for different things from you and your strategy evolves. There are many more points that Gordon covered in this talk and I will most likely revisit it in another blog post as they are vital to any startup’s success.