I don’t like to call anyone out in my work, so trust me that this is not a story about a particular person, but a composite individual.

She is a gifted artist who created beautiful illustrations. This artist doesn’t want to sell her originals, only her prints. And she only wants to create work that features characters she’s created. She doesn’t want to do commissions and she doesn’t want to sell her work at festivals and farmer’s markets. She doesn’t want to be on social media, and she doesn’t want to do any networking in real life.

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It’s a weird thing to be cast in the role of naysayer on someone’s journey to greatness.

I believe that people can achieve great things if they have the belief in their ability to do so and a strong plan to back it up.

However, having only the belief isn’t always enough. The enthusiasm and motivation will peter out with repeated exposure to hardship if a person isn’t prepared for that.

As a teacher and coach, I’ve sometimes been the one to suggest that someone modify their plan or pursue an incremental goal on the way to the massive, ground-breaking, world-shaking achievement they are seeking. These suggestions are not always welcome. My character is definitely not making it to the second act when this story is turned into a movie.

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This blog was not originally meant to be for entrepreneurs and creatives, but I know there are a lot of you reading.

And one theme that these folks often struggle with is how to take the next step—especially when you don’t know what the next step is.

One source of confusion is that building a business and building an audience are two different things, but they are often presented as the same thing in a lot of the discourse online. One can lead to the other, but it’s important to have clarity about which thing you’re doing and why.

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Ever since I read the book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, I’ve been haunted by his assertion that the idea of “priorities” is a distortion of the word “priority.”

The nature of a priority is that you can only have one.

That sounds really nice in theory, but today I have to write a blog post, attend four meetings, get my car registered, water the plants in my garden, make a dump run, and…well, that’s all I’ve got in my short-term memory. Oh yeah, I also have daily routines like checking in with my clients, updating my financial records, and so on.

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My most recent trip might have gone better with more thorough planning.

I could have purchased a cooler and filled it with sliced vegetables and other healthy snacks.

I could have done my final errands earlier in the week so that I wouldn’t have been hitting the road along with the other weekend travelers, getting myself stuck in a long traffic jam behind a jackknifed tractor-trailer truck.

I could have avoided traveling on a holiday weekend in the first place.

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