How Do You Know Which Business To Build First?

24 Feb, 2024

To all the serial entrepreneurs, the creators, the dreamers, the visionaries out there; in the trenches right now, I have a question for you:

How do you know which “bonfire” to build?

Before I dive deeper into that question, let me explain a bit more so you know the context. I just had a chance to hear Matt Ragland talk about this subject in HeyCreator and this is what he said.

Note: It’s about 90% verbatim just based on my typing speed while he was talking.

“You’re a creator because you’re good at making stuff and thats awesome.

One of the downsides of that is you’ll ALWAYS find new stuff to make. The best way to do a lot of things is to do one really BIG thing first. It’s like building a bonfire.

A lot of what creators do is build a little fire, and then it starts burning pretty good. At that time you decide to go build another fire. The time that you spend building fire number 2, fire number 1 is dying down. Fire one was paying the bills so you have to get it going again.

But then when you’re on fire number 1, fire number 2 is dying down again. And some people even create two, three or four fires. Nothing is big or significant and you’re running yourself ragged trying to keep yourself going.

The fires are good enough that you feel like you’re letting people down if you don’t keep the fires going or you’re not living up to what you wanted to do…

The better option is to build the biggest doggone fire you can and then once you have a bonfire where you can go to sleep and it’s still going to be roaring in the morning, THAT’S when you know that you can take the coals and some sticks and start a new fire. You can focus on that second fire knowing that fire number 1 will be fine.”

Awesome right?! But that brings me back to my question; How do you know what bonfire to focus on?

I resonate with this statement so well because I LIVE THIS. Partly due to my passion to create, but the other part is the the cold hard reality that none of the bonfires are financially stable enough.

Is that due to the fact that I have too many fires being built? Maybe.

Or is it because they just take time to reach full flame, and soon I’ll have a few raging fires on my hands? Also possible.

Is the bonfire even the best analogy to use? MAYBE we should look at this more like fishing lines cast out.

When one line tugs, that’s where your energy is focused. When you reel in the fish, you can tend to the other lines again. And if you have some help on the boat, they can keep an eye on your other lines while you’re brining in the catch… see where I’m going with that?

All that said, I genuinely want to know how others end up choosing which fire or fishing line to focus on.

I’m not sure what the LinkedIn algorithms are, but I’m not concerned with racking up a bunch of comments. If you’d rather just DM me here or on any other platform you know me from instead of commenting, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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