You gotta be READY!

This phrase stuck with me when I was learning about starting a business: “hang out your shingle and be ready for success from the first day.”

Inside my head it went like this: 

Being ready means make sure all your ducks are in a row… Don’t contact someone professional in the field until the operabracelets.com email is all set. You don’t want people seeing operabracelets@hotmail.com or something like that. Do not promote until website is ready to sell. Do not sell until everything from the product to the jewelry box to the shipping box is completely ready to go. 

Be ready.

When the moment comes, if you are not ready, your opportunity is lost.

Last weekend, I attended the Lotte Lenya competition which celebrates the music of Kurt Weill. I watched 14 fabulous singing actors basically sing their hearts out. Gripping, moving performances. You can’t help but fall in love with such wonderfully talented and bright young people.

Monday, I opened the program intending to connect with these fabulous artists on social media so I could follow and support them in their future careers. 

Alas, I was disappointed. Some had personal pages or accounts but none really had anything professional ready.  

They weren’t ready, but I was. I was ready to follow their careers, maybe go out of my way to see you perform. So were hundreds of other people in that audience. Maybe one or two of those people would be able to hire them at some point, remembering the fantastic experience they had seeing those powerful performances. But no matter how fantastic the performances and even if they won, as far as having an eye on the potential and the future:

Not ready. Not ready for a potentially life changing moment.

You don’t know when the moment is. Look forward. Be ready.