“Some have given up, some have given in. Looks like everybody’s looking for a friend. Out in the parking lot.”

– Guy Clark, “Out In The Parking Lot”

I am not obsessed with parking lots. I promise. I did post on a parking lot experience recently. This should be my last. The serial dot-connecting in this story may just be a frightening look into my brain, but I feel an urgency to share.

Different terms and sayings from my days in the corporate environment randomly pop into my consciousness from time to time, terms I have not actually used in 6-8 months. I am collecting so many that I may just start posting on all of them. Over the past few weeks, I had the term “parking lot” bugging me. Maybe it was the suggestion of my previous post on convenience featuring a parking lot. It is fair to say that many in Nashville are preoccupied with parking arrangements, but this is not that kind. This “parking lot” is the hinterland where ideas and questions go to be dealt with later. As in, “That’s a great question, but we do not have time to deal with it today. Let’s put it in the parking lot and come back to it when we have more time.” In the spirit of meek team play, there it goes to sit, rust, or be picked over for parts by passersby. I cannot recall an instance where I was summoned back to the parking lot to start moving stuff around. Maybe I should have been lot manager or something.

With that as a backdrop, last week my good friend Bob invited me to visit with his entrepreneurship class at JPII High School. The class had been ideating on business opportunities for several weeks and had begun leaning into Step 5 of the Lean Canvas approach – the operating plan. Bob’s students are bright, engaging, and interesting. They offered a number of novel ideas, a number of which would be an awful lot of fun to develop. It was a lively discussion, and thought-provoking at times. Three minutes before the bell, Bob asked the class if anyone had questions for me. Only one, from the back corner, “Do you think any of these ideas have any chance of working?” In all seriousness, I thought about two-thirds of them could work at some level, maybe one big idea in the lot. I think they were surprised when I shared that with them.

I had a good 45 minute drive back, and that question kept coming back to me as one I have heard frequently, even from myself. Two-thirds might be too high a proportion of ideas that actually could work in general, but the sad reality is that the true proportion is still a strong multiple of the bona fide ideas that are ever pursued. Too hard. Too complicated. Just can’t deal with it now. Too many good business ideas end up in the “parking lot” never to be seen or heard from again. Same thing.

Then, an image streaked forth from the recesses of my brain. I was not looking for it. It just appeared, and it was the height of irony. I drive by a real parking lot nearly every day that is a testament to the opposite idea – people getting started. When one can start small, it takes a lot of pressure off. In the grossly oversized parking lot next to French’s Shoes and Boots sit two tiny businesses. I would call them food trucks, except that they are not motorized. People have to come to them. One is an Airstream trailer hosting Tiny Little Donuts, the other a tiny home on wheels hosting Southerner’s Coffee, a drive-thru coffee shop. Southerner’s Coffee is fairly new to the lot, while Tiny Little Donuts has been there for two years, and now even has patio furniture to complement its walk-up window. Here’s the kicker: Tiny Little Donuts is not so tiny any longer, having served over one million donuts in two years, adding a second Airstream location in a lot across town, with plans for a brick and mortar location to open in the spring in the pricey SoBro area of downtown Nashville. Can you just imagine how many Tiny Little Donuts tourists can pack away after a big night on Broadway? Here’s more on their story.

That’s a very different kind of parking lot, isn’t it? Advice and perspective is always helpful in business planning, but what I know is that no one knows your dream like you do and there is no one else who will work to make it a reality except the one who drew it from deep within. I wonder how many ideas just never get the chance. Wrong parking lot.