Sometimes we stir the pot and, later on, feel we would have been better off not taking that particular action. We did this at Impact Hub when we opened our pop-up location in March 2014. We lost a lot of money that year.
But there’s a caveat. The caveat is that we had no idea where we’d be if we hadn’t taken that action. The creation of our pop-up location sustained our buzz from the crowdfunding campaign. How many partnerships would we have never made? We definitely signed up members that year who, later on, leased offices from us; would they have otherwise? We can’t know what would have happened and that’s why we can’t beat ourselves up when we stir the pot and something doesn’t work out how we expect. The act of stirring the pot is to let go of expectations.
Sometimes stirring the pot brings obstacles to the surface. This is good. Knowing an obstacle exists is almost as good as no obstacle at all. This is best explained in Ryan Holladay’s The Obstacle is the Way.
If you haven’t decided that stirring the pot is possibly the best thing you can do in this moment, I haven’t done a good enough job of getting through to you. So here’s one last plea. Stir the pot every day. Each day do one thing, no matter how small, that brings what’s on the bottom of the pot up to the surface. It’s quite possibly the only way forward.
