Jon Sampson

Here’s a nice piece of wisdom Seth Godin wrote a while back:

Seth’s Blog: Doing it for free: “Woz wasn’t looking to make a lot of money when he invented the Apple computer, and Nolan Bushnell certainly didn’t imagine he was creating the video game industry when he invented Pong. Cory and the rest of the boingboing team had no revenue for years, and Digg and Yahoo! and dozens of other key websites were started without an eye on profit, never mind revenue. The same thing is true for Julia Child and Gene Roddenberry and Dean Kamen.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems that pioneers are almost never in it for the money. The smart ones figure out how to take a remarkable innovation and turn it into a living (or a bigger than big payout) but not the other way around. I think the reason is pretty obvious: when you try to make a profit from your innovation, you stop innovating too soon. You take the short payout because it’s too hard to stick around for the later one.”

Two takeaways.

Do something you’re passionate about – something that will bubble up within you whether or not you’re getting paid.

Start now. Sometimes we wait until we can perfect something before beginning it. But the best innovations, projects, activities start because they’re something we’re going to do even if no one notices and grow into something powerful. I see it all the time with church planting. We see these healthy churches and think a new one has to look the exact same way on day one (big, mega, smooth, etc.). But almost anything started small and imperfect and moved forward as everyone learned, created, prayed, and obeyed.