The Dangers of Dreaming Big

I first met Brian about a few years ago through a friend at a party. He quickly pitched to me a grand business idea that involved selling video games over mobile devices. I soon realized he kind of introduces himself everyone with a pitch rather than a simple greeting.

His video game distribution idea involved making huge deals with Apple and Google, and he envisioned his company becoming the Facebook of mobile gaming. It was a grand idea. Unfortunately, that's all it was: an idea.

Brian had never worked in a tech company before. He doesn't even know any kind of programming. Now, I'm not the kind of guy to squash an idea just because of lack of skill. Skills can be learned. But how Brian went about it was all wrong.

When I bumped into him again at the bookstore the other day, I discovered that he dropped his idea within a few weeks from when he pitched to me. He realized that it would take "too long" to learn any decent programming, and would need "significant capital" and resources to get the idea off the ground. This was not surprising to me.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming big. I encourage it, actually. The only challenge is making sure you take incremental actions into making that dream come true. Brian could have just started with one program and went from there. But he wanted it all, all at once. He ended up getting overwhelmed by his own idea. That is the danger of dreaming big.