It’s all bullshit until the check clears

Until something is real, don’t say a word.

Unless you want to build unnecessary expectation, invite annoying questions, activate nonstop rumination and trigger your superstitious urges, keep your project contained.

Even if you have a signed contract in your hand, even if it sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime that is going to change everything for you, mum is the word until there is money in the bank.

As they say in show business, it’s all bullshit until the check clears.

This is not senseless superstition, it’s productive paranoia. And this is not some strategy you use to trick the world into giving you what you want, it’s protecting yourself.

Take it from an entrepreneur who has had his share of cancelled engagements, defaulted contracts and even clients who outright refused to pay even after successful completion of the event.

The chickens do not need to be counted. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Look, so many things in this life just go away. And the longer we believe they will last, the more ephemeral they will prove to be.

Once it’s real, you can shout it from the rooftops. But while it’s still incubating, nobody needs to know.

Are you talking about the work you are going to do, or quietly executing while nobody notices?