You can’t open the paper, watch the news, or browse the Internet without seeing that Google has gone into another line of business.  I’ve heard that they are hiring as many as 500 people per week right now to accomodate their big dreams.  How long can this last?!  It’s incredibly difficult to manage one line of business that is in hyper-growth, let alone 50.  And anyone who has tried to hire 15 people at a time and get them fully integrated into your culture knows how hard that is.  How do you do it with 500 people in a week?

I’m not writing this to pick on Google…in fact, quite the opposite.  I’m writing this because thinking about them caused me to challenge myself, and it should do the same for you.  Ask yourself:

How many opportunities have I passed on in the last few years because I thought I was being too unreasonable?

Anyone who knows me knows that I have the entrepreneurship bug about as bad as anyone does.  I love starting businesses, growing businesses, and dreaming of big ideas.  I have so many things I’d like to pursue that it often keeps me up at night.

But how many times have I heard the words “You need to stay focused” or “Be reasonable, you can only do one thing at a time well”?

Oh yeah?  Tell that to Google!  Tell that to Richard Branson from Virgin!  Did they get to where they are today by staying focused?!

George Bernard Shaw said it best:

“Reasonable men adjust themselves to their environment.  Unreasonable men attempt to change their environment to suit themselves.  Therefore all progress is the work of unreasonable men.”

Challenge yourself to overcome the downward pull of reasonable men.