April 3, 2009

I believe in karma. When I was starting out as a first time entrepreneur a bunch of experienced people helped me, gave me advice, and just spent time with me with no particular expectations on their part, except to be helpful. Iíve never forgotten that and want to pass it on. I have no idea what will come of this conversation, but if Iím helpful to you, you can pay me back by being helpful to another first time entrepreneur after your become successful.

It’s a great lesson — and one that’s definitely worth remembering in tough times (it’s worth remembering in the good times too, but that’s not where we are right now). However, I’d like to add to it a bit, and note that good entrepreneurs don’t just believe in karma — they make their own karma. That is, they don’t just take meetings when the opportunity comes to them — they go out there proactively and try to help others.

When you’re so focused on your own business, it’s often difficult to even think of taking the time to go help others out as well — but it’s an incredibly uplifting experience, even if there’s no immediate benefit for you. Even if it just gets your brain working in a different way — thinking about someone else’s challenges for a bit, you may find that the “distraction” helps you deal with some of your own challenges.

For example, on a recent trip, I got to speaking to a young entrepreneur, who was working in a totally different business. But he was facing some interesting challenges. His business was growing, but not fast enough. A few enterpreneurs were all sitting around a table and we started hashing out different ideas to build on his early success. That was lots of fun, but the next day, just in thinking back to what happened, suddenly an idea clicked for me as well on something I could improve in my own business — something that I’m now currently working on implementing. I probably never would have come up with the idea if not for that totally “unrelated” conversation.

So it’s not even about “waiting” for karma to come back and have someone do you a favor in the future. It can just be about giving yourself a different perspective while helping someone else out.