I love working with entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur. I love innovation. I love new ideas. Every entrepreneur I work with has one trait in common- we all love the thoughts of what success of our great idea for a product, service or program will look like. It is like a high- the planning stage.

The other thing many entrepreneurs have in common is that they frequently sabotage their own success. There are many self sabotaging behaviors. One of the common ones is what I call, chasing rainbows. See if you recognize yourself or someone you know.

You come up with a good idea, are super excited about it, start to work on it, and then….. someone suggests something or the you read something that has you say to yourself; “Wait, no, that is not it. This is it! This is better” and then you stop doing whatever you were doing and start doing something else or a different spin on what you were doing before. And this cycle repeats and repeats.

It is the experience of following one rainbow after another looking for that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The problem is… you are creating the rainbows! And the gold actually is sticking with one idea and executing and tweaking your process as you execute.

If you recognize yourself as someone who chases rainbows, you most likely need to have someone outside yourself to bounce ideas off of and see if where you are going has real merit. This is key, as you are not reliable to know. What I recommend is having a consistent person, like a mentor or coach, who will be straightforward with you and help you interrupt this self-sabotaging behavior.  One thing that I find also helps is if you keep an idea file, where you can file the ideas, but don’t have to act on them. This way you can capture all those great ideas, but not go on a mission to chase the rainbow, but stick to a plan and experience real success.

Remember…..

Almost all good ideas are simply one moment of quitting away from success!