Beware the Cold Water Committee

You wake up one morning with a great idea for a new business. You jump out of bed and hurry through your morning routine full of energy and excitement. You tell your spouse all the little details that have come running into your mind. The more you think about it, the more specific the idea becomes. The more specific the details about the idea, the more convinced you are that this is going to be a great opportunity.

However, your spouse immediately talks about how you need to be careful taking too big of a risk.

You are driving for the carpool on this morning and you start to pick up the riders. You excitedly tell your idea to your friends. One by one they give you stories about other friends and family members who failed in their attempts for business projects.

At work, your tell your co-workers about the idea. Now you are hearing stories about how you don’t want to do something like that because of all the security you have at your job. Going out on your own means you might lose health insurance. Oh yeah, you are not yet fully vested in your 401(k) plan matching funds so you would lose that if you leave now. And what about the annual Christmas Party. You always buy the best gifts for the White Elephant gift exchange.

You boss seems to know business, so you decide to tell him about your idea. What you don’t know is that he has had dozens of great ideas for business but has been frozen by fear of going out on his own. He starts to tell you about all of the obstacles you will have to face before you can even put up the “OPEN” sign. He then tells you about all of the regulations which make it “impossible” to succeed if you open a new business now. And everybody knows that you don't open a business with the economy like it is right now. (No matter what the economy is like!)

By the time you get home, you are wondering why you were so excited about such a stupid, risky, dangerous business idea.

Congratulations! You have just become a new victim of the Cold Water Committee. Unknowingly, they make it their purpose to throw cold water on anything exciting or new. They become the anchor that drags others seeking to find bigger and better things for their lives.

My lesson to you today is this. There are members of the Cold Water Committee almost everywhere you turn. Family. Friends, Co-workers. Total strangers. Your best defense is knowing when you are having cold water poured on your fire of excitement. Knowing what is happening is the best way to fight. You can hear all of the negative talk and just realize it is cold water. You can change the topic. You can tune them out, which is a little rude but it works. Or you can do like I have done. Laugh at them. I laugh at them because I have learned that the better an idea is, the more likely there are to be naysayers. So when someone starts bad mouthing an idea I have had, I begin to think this might be an even better idea than I thought to begin with.

Keep Smilin’!!

© 2008 Eddy Seegers