In the late 1990s, Sara Blakely was driving around Florida in an old car with a trunk full of fax machines, going door-to-door trying to make sales. It wasn’t glamorous work. Every day, she put pantyhose on under her white pants, hating how the seams showed through. One morning, while getting ready for yet another day of rejection and small commissions, she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the feet off her pantyhose. She didn’t know it at the time, but that small act of frustration would become the first move that changed her life.

Blakely had no background in fashion, no investors, and no connections. What she had was an idea—and enough initiative to chase it. She spent the next two years developing a prototype in her apartment, studying fabrics and learning manufacturing terms from scratch. Most people in her position would have waited until they “knew more,” but Sara didn’t. She picked up the phone, called hosiery mills across the country, and got turned down over and over. Nearly every manufacturer told her no. Some laughed.

Then one day, she got a call back from a mill owner whose daughters had convinced him to give her idea a chance. He agreed to make a small batch. It was her opening—and she took it.

Blakely didn’t stop there. She filed for her own patent, wrote her own packaging copy, and hand-delivered samples to buyers at Neiman Marcus. When one finally agreed to meet with her, she didn’t just explain the product—she took the buyer to the restroom to show her how it worked. That’s not something you learn in business school. That’s initiative.

Within months, Spanx hit the shelves. But what happened next was even bigger. Oprah Winfrey named Spanx her “Favorite Product of the Year,” and overnight, Sara Blakely went from unknown sales rep to founder of one of the fastest-growing apparel brands in America. Her $5,000 idea became a billion-dollar company. 

Action Creates Momentum

In the green phase of your career, initiative is one of your greatest competitive advantages. It’s stepping forward, going first, and doing more than the minimum. And it’s the differentiator between dreamers and achievers.

When you’re getting started, you don’t have seniority, experience, or status yet, but you have energy, and that’s something. Most people are lazy. They’re standing around waiting for someone to tell them exactly what to do. Initiative is what sets you apart. When you make the first move, you send the message that you’re capable. You don’t have it all figured out, but you’re willing to figure it out as you go.

In the world of business strategy, there is something known as first-mover advantage. The idea is that the one who acts first often earns the greatest rewards. Research has shown that moving first offers key benefits like recognition, early relationships, and access to scarce resources. Of course, early movement must be paired with execution and adaptation. Simply being first isn’t a guarantee of success. But the truth remains: initiative often beats intelligence because when you act, you gain experience and, more importantly, momentum.

Explain inertia. Getting going usually keeps you going. But something still is hard to get moving

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, famously said, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late.” ¹ He often talks about his early days in Silicon Valley. At every meet-up, people would whisper ideas they believed could change the world. But they were waiting for “the right time,” for “investors,” for “a better version,” or “more research.” A year later, they were still whispering. Reid learned quickly: There are two kinds of people. Those who wait for permission, and those who give themselves permission. 

Think about how many ideas never become reality. I bet you’ve had a great business idea at some point in your life. “They should make a….” you thought to yourself. “That would make a million dollars!” You know what we call that? A million-dollar idea. But did you do anything about it? 

There’s a difference between dreamers and doers. Dreaming is fun. It’s intoxicating. But ideas are cheap. Execution is priceless. That’s why initiative often beats intelligence. Overly educated people spend too much time analyzing and predicting. They’re waiting for the perfect conditions. But perfect conditions don’t exist. You’ll always find another reason to wait. Meanwhile, the person with initiative has already taken the first step, learned from it, and adjusted course. When I was a kid working in the backyard with my dad, he taught me to “measure twice and cut once.” That’s good advice. But you’re just supposed to measure twice. Some people never stop measuring. At some point, you’ve got to cut. 

If it sounds like I’m being too hard on intelligence, I am. Over the years of building a business, I have seen less educated people climb higher and earn millions more than their highly educated peers. In a perfect world, you would have both intelligence and initiative, but that’s rarely the case. Usually, the hungry are working while the intelligent are thinking. Knowledge can become a trap. When you know too much about what could go wrong, it’s easy to justify waiting. You convince yourself that you’re being strategic when in reality, you’re just scared. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the record-breaking Broadway musical Hamilton, was asked what set him apart from some of the smarter, more talented kids he had gone to school with. Miranda answered, “Cause I picked a lane and I started running ahead of everybody else… I was like, “All right, THIS!” ² Miranda has won a Pulitzer Prize, three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award, because of talent, sure, but more than that. Because he started, and hasn’t stopped. As the old saying goes, “Any plan will work if you work the plan.”

Whether it’s taking initiative around the office, trying to stand out from your peers, or the initiative to launch a product or business. In the green phase, it’s important to take bold risks, provide solutions, and finish the job.

Take Bold Risks

At some point, every dream collides with fear. When it happens, you can either wait for the fear to go away or do it scared. Fear never disappears on its own. It has to be pushed through. Movement creates confidence—not the other way around.

When Sarah Blakley first cut the feet off her pantyhose, she had no intention of launching a company. But the moment she realized she had stumbled onto something, she decided to take a bold risk. She quit her job selling fax machines and invested her entire $5,000 safety net into a product no one had ever heard of. She pitched Neiman Marcus without an official meeting and took potential customers into the bathroom to show them how to wear their Spanx. She believed in her idea more than she feared embarrassment. People who achieve remarkable things all have a moment when they take a bold, irrational risk. Reed Hastings shut down Netflix’s profitable DVD business to bet everything on streaming. Elon Musk poured every dollar from the PayPal sale into Tesla and SpaceX and survived on borrowed money. Walt Disney mortgaged his house to make Snow White. Bold risks always look irrational from the outside. That’s why the people who love you will warn you to be careful. They mean well, but they don’t get it. You have to do this. You can’t not do this! Will it work? You can’t know before you start. Every leap contains the possibility of failure. But what you learn is that failure is not fatal. 

In the green season, failure is education. You win or learn. But today, many young professionals enter the workplace terrified to make a wrong move. A big part of their fear stems from their upbringing. Gen Z is the most protected generation in history. Parents, teachers, and systems worked overtime to shield them from disappointment and discomfort. The intention was to keep them safe, but many never developed a healthy relationship with adversity.

In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt call this “safetyism.” It’s when safety (including emotional safety) becomes the dominant value, and it explains why so many younger people now struggle with failure and risk. ³ What happens when a generation grows up under safetyism? According to Lukianoff and Haidt, they have fewer opportunities to fail and recover. That mindset breeds hesitation, perfectionism, and fear of making the first move. 

No one wants to fail. But the only way to get good at anything is to be bad at it first. You can’t skip the awkward stage. Every expert was once a beginner. When you deny yourself the freedom to fail, you deny yourself the opportunity to grow. In fact, when you’re green, your mistakes have fewer consequences. Now is the time to try! 

Provide solutions

One of the clearest ways to stand out in a crowded field is to provide solutions instead of more problems. Anyone can point out what’s not working. Most people do. But high performers solve problems rather than create them. Managers spend most of their time putting out fires and managing conflict, so when someone shows up with a possible solution—even a small one—they create energy rather than drain it, and they immediately become an asset.

One of the most famous examples of this is the Ritz-Carlton “$2,000 Rule.” Every employee, from the person cleaning the rooms to the person checking guests in at the desk, is empowered and expected to solve their guests’ problems. And if the solution costs less than $2,000, they don’t even have to ask permission. When you get determined and creative, you send the message that you can be counted on. 

Todd Duncan gives another illustration in his book, The $6,000 Egg. As the story goes, a couple visited their favorite restaurant, which they had eaten at many times. On this particular day, the wife requested a fried egg added to her cheeseburger. A few minutes later, the server returned to say the kitchen couldn’t prepare the egg. Why? Because eggs were only stocked for a specialty waffle on the breakfast menu, not for burgers, and “the kitchen wasn’t prepared to do anything not already on the menu.” The couple asked again, politely. They even asked the manager, and got the same answer. No egg. It was policy. The couple politely finished their dinner. When they returned home, the husband did the math and estimated they spent around $6,000 per year at that restaurant. But they had lost their business because of a $2 egg.

There are times when what is needed simply isn’t possible, but most of the time, with a little initiative and creativity, a solution can make a big impression. Whether you’re solving problems for a customer or your boss, each time you position yourself as someone who makes life easier, you build trust.

But being a problem solver is also good for business. People are willing to pay a premium for a product that makes their life easier. Customers don’t buy products—they buy outcomes. They’re looking for someone to remove a frustration, save them time, or make something simpler. And the faster you solve a real problem, the faster your business grows.

Most people obsess over how to make more money. Very few obsess over how to help more people. But the more people you help, the more money you make. That’s the math of value creation. I’ve witnessed this firsthand with a friend of mine. She was a stay-at-home mom while her kids were younger, but now that they are out of the house, she wants to start a business.  I asked her what business she was starting, and she said, “I help working moms stop feeling behind. I come to their house after they leave for work, and I reset their home so it’s how they want it when they walk through the door after a long day of work.” She could have said, “I’m a house cleaner” or, “a nanny,” but that’s not what she does. She solves problems. She makes working moms feel better about themselves. Do you know what someone will pay to feel better about themselves?

If you’re an employee who wants to stand out, try this: instead of asking your boss for a raise, ask, “What’s something stressful I could take off your plate?” If you’re an entrepreneur, ask your customers, “How could we make this easier for you?” I think you’ll find problem solvers climb quickly. 

Finish the Job

Starting is good, but finishing is priceless. If you’ve ever hired a contractor to remodel your home, you know the frustration of someone leaving a job unfinished. 

Often, initiative means making the first move, but sometimes it’s making the last move—finishing the job. The workforce is full of loose ends. Think of how many half-completed initiatives and abandoned ideas you can think of right now. People love to talk, but they don’t finish, and “it is the loose ends with which men hang themselves,” declared Zelda Fitzgerald.

I’m not talking about perfectionism, I’m talking about professionalism. People do most of the work—the easy parts—but they walk away because what’s left is annoying or tedious. They never return their calls after they make the sale. They give brilliant ideas, but never follow through. They meet the client but never file the paperwork. They are starters, not finishers. 

Finishing the job is one of the most underrated forms of initiative—because it requires tenacity, and most people simply don’t have it. Research shows that perseverance is a stronger predictor of success than passion. ⁴ Pitching the idea, launching the product, posting the announcement, these things are exciting. You know what’s not exciting? Balancing the books, paying taxes, and completing paperwork. When you finish what you start, you aren’t just completing a task—you are building a reputation. You’re sending the message: “You can rely on me. You won’t have to chase me. I don’t leave messes for others.” 

Finishing the job is also good for your psyche. Loose ends don’t just frustrate managers—they drain your mental bandwidth. Every unfinished task becomes a small open loop in your brain. There is something deeply human about completing a task—it restores a sense of control. It tells your brain, “I keep my promises. I do what I say I will do.” That kind of self-trust compounds over time.

This is why finishing small things matters, too. When you empty your inbox before leaving the office, or take a Saturday morning to finally complete the paperwork hanging over your head, something shifts inside you. You feel lighter. More capable. More in control of your life than you were the day before. And you’ll almost always discover that finishing rarely takes as long as the anxiety you’ve been carrying about it.

There’s also a quiet dignity that comes from tying up loose ends. Each time you push through the tedious part, the boring part, the part no one celebrates, you’re not just completing a task—you’re strengthening a muscle. You’re becoming someone who closes loops, keeps commitments, and refuses to let your future be cluttered by yesterday’s undone work.

And here’s the part leaders will never tell you out loud: finishers become favorites. Inside every leader’s mind is a list. It isn’t public, and they will probably never say it out loud, but they have a mental rolodex of who they can trust and who they can’t. When you are known as a finisher, your boss knows, “I don’t have to babysit them.” 

The Common Thread

The common thread through all three expressions of initiative—take bold risks, provide solutions, and finish the job—is action. They’re dreamers and doers. They have a unique skill set that combines ambition and attention to detail, because, like Thomas Edison said, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” ⁵

Think about the people you know who have built something meaningful. I’m willing to bet that at some point, they took a risk. They made a move. They had an idea and decided, “I’m going for it.”  But they didn’t stop there. I bet they were maniacal about the details, too. But initiative is also about identity. Every time you act, you reinforce a powerful belief about yourself: I am someone who does the work. 

Chef José Andrés is one of the clearest modern examples of pure initiative. In 2010, when a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, Andrés didn’t wait for someone to organize a response. He simply flew to the island, found a kitchen, and started cooking meals for people who had lost everything. What began as a chef with a pot grew into World Central Kitchen, one of the most effective humanitarian relief organizations in the world.

Andrés has repeated this pattern again and again. When hurricanes level communities, he is often on the ground before governments. When wildfires destroy neighborhoods, he sets up mobile kitchens while traditional aid organizations are still drafting plans. When war broke out in Ukraine, he didn’t write a proposal—he went. Within days, his team was serving thousands of hot meals to refugees flooding across the border. Today, World Central Kitchen has served hundreds of millions of meals in disaster zones around the globe. ⁶ It’s easy to talk about helping hurting people, but Chef José Andrés decided to actually do it.

The beautiful part is that none of this requires being the smartest person in the room. You don’t need a degree, a title, or permission. Opportunity is biased toward action. So as you move forward—whether you’re an employee trying to stand out or an entrepreneur building something from nothing—remember this simple truth about initiative: People trust you because of what you produce, not what you promise. Don’t tell me what you’ll do. Tell me what you’ve done.