The best advice I've ever received

The questions range from particular things we did at FoxP2 to personal choices and decisions I made in the years leading up to it.

At the recent Design Indaba, my business partner Justin Gomes (@justinjgomes) and I did the opening talk entitled, "Why Wookies Don't Wear Pants." The talk was essentially about sticking to one's creative and business vision and we outlined the seven principles, which, if we've had any success over the last five or six years, have served us well in building our agency and the brands we've been entrusted with.

Two strong themes

As I sat through the rest of the Design Indaba conference, two strong themes seemed to emerge, sometimes obvious and sometimes implied:

• First, conquer your fears to take the necessary risks in business and in life, or risk being confined to a life wallowing in the shallows; and

• Secondly, don't be afraid to fail. As Winston Churchill himself so beautifully remarked: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

These themes from Design Indaba were not dissimilar to the global themes that emerged from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last year, and it got me thinking about one particular speaker from a panel on day one, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google. He was asked about the best piece of advice he had ever been given. His answer was simple: "Try to say yes".

It got me thinking about the most valuable advice I had ever been given, and it's made up of two simple, but powerful words:

Act. Now.

The fact is that both the Design Indaba and Cannes themes highlight negative factors that will fuel inaction and procrastination. If these factors aren't overcome, they will most certainly slow down, or even paralyse, your business and personal development over time.

Truly useful

The advice became truly useful to me when I learned to recognise and manage the factors that fueled these opposite behaviours of inaction, and importantly, that acting does not necessarily mean the absence of fear or the fear of failure - it means acting despite those fears being present.

And, secondly, that the second word of the advice is as critical as the first. Acting too late, sometimes by a seemingly insignificant period of time at first, is often akin to failing to act at all. As the world hurtles into a more digitised economy and information age, acting swiftly becomes increasingly important

At this point it's important not to confuse the advice with a mandate to say (in the words of Richard Branson) "Screw it, let's do it!" with reckless abandon in every single situation you're confronted with.

Sometimes acting means acting away from an opportunity presented to you.

Not always the...

It's not always the best decision to take on every client that comes knocking on your door. It's not always the right time to sell your business each time a potential bidder knocks on your door, even during those tough times when the suitor has to push the wolf out of the way to get a knock in.

Take, for example, Ronald Wayne, the little known third founding partner of Apple Computers, who sold his 10% share in what was then a struggling fledgling company, for a sweet US$800 in 1976. That share would now be worth US$35 billion if he had acted away from that decision and backed his efforts behind the new company.

Life is a journey that boils down to a series of choices and decisions that will lead us to different experiences and adventures. These calls we make will determine our path and the quality of the journey.

Sometimes there is no right or wrong, and no one gets it right every time but, ultimately, the worst decision is not to make a decision at all. It keeps you in limbo and it keeps you in touch with and dwelling on the past, rather than creating momentum to the future.

Here's to applying all the wisdom

So here's to applying all the wisdom that can be mustered from personal experience, and the experiences of those around us (although drawing on that counsel is a topic for another time), and then making and acting on the brave decisions that lead us on journeys filled with adventure and discovery.

• Bizcommunity: Brave is the new safe by Mike Abel

For More list added at 3.02pm on 4 May 2012.