Page 208 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

Staying Power 187

and then shut everything else out. Turn off the screens and get back
to a college-ruled note pad if necessary.

PERSEVERE WITHOUT ATTACHING

The deepest form of entrepreneurial commitment acknowledges and
accepts that there are forces in the marketplace that are beyond the
founder’s control, forces that will impact the venture’s destiny for
better or worse. Rather than causing a resilient founder to give up,
this realization highlights for them the fact that every route to ven-
ture success will deviate in some way from early expectations. Per-
severing over time requires that the entrepreneur commit to the path
forward without knowing exactly where it will lead.

On a bright spring morning at The Ivey in May of 2010, twenty
elderly clients sat around a children’s choir, visiting from a local mid-
dle school. Lynn Ivey’s dog Lacy rested in the lap of a contented
woman. Staff members tried to coax people to sing along, and many
did. Others tapped a hand against a leg or a foot on the floor. Lynn
noticed her grumpiest member, a man who usually protested every
staff request, sitting with his eyes raised upward, smiling and singing
to the lofted ceiling. Soon another more powerful voice began to lift
above the crowd. Heads turned to see one of the center’s newest mem-
bers, a woman of stately bearing, standing on the outer edge of the
group. This former professional opera singer had returned to her stage.

Six years after she left her bank job to care for her ailing mother,
Lynn Ivey was beginning to taste her vision in real terms. This was
the kind of personal impact she imagined: a home-away-from-home
for people who desperately needed it, a community full of life, and a
cast of characters bringing plenty of challenge and humor. Lynn
couldn’t help but smile in describing the staff member who raced to
intercept a man trying to relieve himself in a trashcan or the pleasant
woman who seemed to be an aspiring thief, slipping the occasional
vase or photo frame into her purse on the way out the door.

The fact that Lynn Ivey has been able to keep the center operating
into 2010 is a testament to the sheer power of her personal will. When
asked about what has kept her going, she talked of several factors. “I’ve

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