What a newly hatched iguana, a hundred Galápagos racer snakes, and Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday can teach us about starting something new.
Last week, the Royal Albert Hall celebrated the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough, a man who has spent his entire life doing one thing: helping the rest of us see the natural world more clearly.
As part of the evening, the BBC Concert Orchestra performed the score from one of the most gripping sequences ever put on television. If you have not seen it, watch it here before reading any further. It takes less than three minutes and you will not regret it:
A newly hatched marine iguana on the Galápagos Islands. Motionless on the sand. And all around it, Galápagos racer snakes, dozens of them, closing in. Behaviour, incidentally, that had never been filmed before this sequence was captured.
What happens next is almost unbearable to watch. And yet I cannot think of a better picture of what it feels like to start a new business.
It feels exposed. It feels like everything is moving faster than you are. And it feels like the odds are stacked against you from the moment you begin.
Most people who have built something from nothing will tell you the same thing: the beginning is the hardest part. Not because the work is impossible, but because the obstacles arrive before the results do. Suppliers let you down. Technology fails at the worst moment. People you counted on disappear. And the voice in your own head, the one that says this was a mistake, is often the loudest obstacle of all.
This is not a reason to stop. It is simply what the beginning looks like.
The iguana’s survival does not come from being the fastest or the strongest. It comes from one decision: to move.
Watch the clip again if you have not seen it recently. The iguana that freezes is the one that does not make it. The one that moves, that commits fully to a direction and does not stop, finds a way through.
The Galápagos racer snakes in that sequence are not cruel. They are not personal. They are simply what the environment produces. And the iguana does not waste time resenting them. It runs.
This is a meaningful distinction for anyone starting out in business. The obstacles you will face are not a sign that you have made a mistake. They are a sign that you are moving. Businesses that never face difficulty are businesses that have never tried to go anywhere.
In my observation, it is rarely talent or timing. It is the decision to keep moving when stopping feels easier.
There is a moment in most new ventures, usually somewhere in the first six to twelve months, when the gap between effort and reward feels widest. You have invested time, money and credibility. The results are not yet visible. The people around you are starting to ask questions you cannot fully answer.
This is the moment most people stop.
It is also, almost always, the moment just before things begin to turn.
I have seen this pattern repeat itself enough times to believe it is not coincidence. The people who build something lasting are not the ones who never doubted themselves. They are the ones who kept moving despite the doubt, who had a clear enough sense of why they were doing it that the how remained negotiable.
Purpose. And a goal specific enough to feel real.
The iguana is not running towards safety in the abstract. It is running towards the rocks, a visible, specific destination. That specificity matters. Vague ambition does not sustain you through difficult periods. A clear picture of what you are building, and why, does.
Before you start, or restart, ask yourself two questions:
If you can answer both of those clearly, you have what the iguana has: a direction worth running towards.
That is the real question underneath all of this.
Working for someone else is not without its value. But if you have ever sat at a desk thinking there must be something more than this, if you have felt the pull towards something of your own, an extra income stream, a path towards greater freedom, work that feels like it belongs to you, then you already know the answer.
The snakes are real. The obstacles are real. The beginning will be harder than you expect. But the iguana that moves is the one that makes it to the rocks.
Sir David Attenborough has spent a century showing us what the natural world looks like when you pay close enough attention. The iguana sequence from Planet Earth II is a reminder of what determination looks like stripped back to its simplest form.
Then ask yourself: what is the one move you have been putting off?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.
Until next time, keep climbing.
Derek
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