Am I the only one that finds motivation in the strangest of places? Seriously, random-acts-of-DUHness. Last night I was eyes-deep (if thats not a word I just made it up) in what ended up being my favorite Criminal Minds off all-time…when I saw it. It was a commercial, so of course I’m surfing Twitter on my iPhone. (insert audience laughter) And I see my friend Heather Meeker RT our mutual friend Marsha Collier…

Wow. Staring me in the face was something that summed up how I felt about the last three years. What you are “going to do” in 2012 isn’t how you build a reputation Ryan. Ideas are nothing but ideas if they aren’t created. Words are just that, words, unless they are past-tense, describing something that’s already happened. In my best Marsha voice, “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

Well I’ll be damned. I’ve made no bones about it, 2012 for me is all about follow-through. The frustrating thing about follow-through you ask? Well, even though I’m only 20 days in 2012 I have one very big pain point with follow-through: time. Time isn’t something you can fast-forward in real life. The fact of the matter is simple: follow-through involves an AWFUL lot of it. And that’s tough. Patience isn’t a virtue I was born with. I’m a perfect definition of the counter, impatient. 

Couple my impatient tendencies with my very Type-A ‘shiny new thing’ entrepreneurship personality, I’ve managed to develop one hell of a bark. Unfortunately, with all that barking I literally forgot to bite. Blindly, I got so good at barking that I ended up trying to build a reputation of what I was going to do…not what I’d already done. Talk about backwards. I was a mess, and I didn’t know it.

Lucky for me, life, both personal and business, is nothing more than a giant learning experience. If you’ve stopped learning, well, you’ve pretty much given up. I don’t recommend doing that. It’s not a good look. It was time for me to Shut Up And Do It Already. I’m a mission to turn accomplishments into past-tense not future-tense. But hey, I’m wandering into over-talking a reputation I don’t even have yet.

Here’s to a year of nothing but follow-through on building a reputation that can only be described with past-tense verbs, not future-tense. (cheers)