Once upon a time, many moons ago and long before my life began (well not really that long before it began, but before it began nonetheless), Mick Jager and Keith Richards penned the song “You can’t always get what you want”. If only everyone understood this line, I think sometimes life would be a little easier. The song goes on to say “but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.”

I think many times people are confused between wants and needs, and often times they mistake their wants as needs, but they could not be any more different. Needs are a necessity, wants are luxury, but it seems more and more these days there is more expendable income and all of the sudden wants become needs. This can be a very bad habit to get into, and it comes on slowly without you realizing it is happening and before you know it, it is commonplace for you.

In developing a product, or launching a company, you want to build the next greatest thing, the thing that is going to change the world. Instead, what you need to build is the one thing that you know best, keep it simple and make it the best at what it does. That is what you need to do, once you accomplish that, figure out what you need to do next, and again make it the best that it can be. Before you know it, by just focusing on your needs, you will have quickly built what you started out wanting, and it will be exactly what you wanted, because you focused on each need, one at a time, instead of feeling the urge of instant gratification and just going gang busters and building it because you think that is what you want.

So the next time, no matter what the situation is, envision Mick and Keith playing their little ditty and remember “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you just might find you get what you need.”