Somewhere right now, someone is opening a blank spreadsheet and typing a number into a cell labeled “Year 1 Revenue” — for a business that doesn’t exist yet, selling a product no one has bought, to customers who haven’t said yes. That’s not accounting. That’s an act of faith with a currency symbol in front of it.
Can business make you hopeful? I used to think hope lived somewhere softer — in nurseries, in reunions, in the tarmac scenes I’ve written about before. But the more I sit with it, the more I think business might be one of the most disciplined hope-practices we have.
Psychologists have a name for what’s actually happening in that spreadsheet. Charles Snyder, who spent decades studying hope at the University of Kansas, found it isn’t a feeling — it’s a structure.
Real hope is three things working together:
1) a goal,
2) a pathway to reach it, and
3) the belief that you’re the one who can walk that pathway.
Wishing is just the first part. Hope needs all three.
Business is one of the few arenas in life that forces all three at once, on the record, with money attached. You don’t get to just want the thing. You have to name it, plan more than one way to get there, and then actually move. A five-year plan is a goal. A pivot is a pathway. Payroll made on a Friday you weren’t sure you’d hit is agency, proven.
Here’s my stance: I think we’ve let “business” become a dirty word — synonymous with greed, extraction, burnout — when the more honest read is that it’s one of the most hopeful things a person can do with their life. Not because business is virtuous by default. It isn’t. But because starting one, or showing up to run one, requires believing in a version of tomorrow you cannot prove yet and building toward it anyway, in public, where you can fail.
A pro forma is nothing but hope wearing a suit.
Question
What’s the boldest thing you’ve ever built, bet on, or bought into, before you had a shred of proof it would work? Drop it in the comments below.
A Daily Dose of Hope — one short reflection each day about where hope lives in our world. Read in 50 states in the US and 91 countries throughout the World.
