By: Dezmon Landers

As an entrepreneur, I’m always in a hurry to get things done and to move on to the next challenge. I often hear things like “Slow down” and “Take your time, you have a whole life ahead of you”. While I understand the importance of being patient, it doesn’t really seem like the people giving the advice are actually taking it for themselves. When is the last time you’ve ever heard someone say “I’m just going to take my time getting into work today.”? When is the last time you’ve heard an entrepreneur say “I’m just gonna take my time with payroll this week.”? Most likely never and the reason is this, as patient as any of us say we are or want to be, we have no choice but to be impatient and rush.

Your Job

To continue to be competitive and employed in this fast paced, global workplace, the natural behavior is to rush. In the morning, most people travel to work by foot, car or carpool all in a race to get to work on time or earlier. In some cases, people catch cases of road rage when in traffic or held up on their way because they know the consequences of being late, which inherently make them rush.

Your Company

As a business owner, every second of everyday counts substantially when trying to solidify your business in the market. Most entrepreneurs can’t afford to push back revenue generating activities, projects or paying bills. All of these activities require a sense of urgency or they just won’t get done and the company won’t succeed.

Managed Impatience

So you may ask, what is the solution? I call it Managed Impatience, which in my opinion is the ability to have a sense of urgency about everything you do, while calculating the negative effects of making the decision without enough thought. For example, in which situation would you have more problems if you made the wrong decision? Not raising money or not completing an internal business development project as well as you’d like to? In my experience, it will always be raising money because investors prey on those who rush and are in need of their money and they use that as leverage to get a more lucrative, one sided deal for themselves. In the case of the internal business development project, it’s still very important but if there is potential for the project to be only 75% complete and the ability to generate revenue now, think less about that decision, if you really have to choose.

So, the next time someone tells you to “Slow Down”, look at them and evaluate where they’re coming from. Do they have your best interest in mind, or is your pace just faster than theirs?

If you find out the latter, keep it moving and be successful!