When I was 29, I was cruising through the streets of Hong Kong in the back of a taxicab with my friend Teresa. It was nighttime, so we were probably heading to dinner somewhere. Her dad had created a business that had become one of our vendors, and she was taking it over, but she and I had struck up a friendship over the years, so I had gone there pretty much just to see her.

We were the same age, so we were both about to hit our 30s, and we were wondering what they would be like. I remember saying to her, “My 30s are going to be the best decade of my life so far.” She asked me what I meant, and I said, “I have no idea. They just are.”

My 30s were the best decade of my life to that point. My 40s, and now my 50s, were, and are, better than that, but that’s just probably because of a commitment I made to myself years ago, which is that the peak will be reached at death, which pretty much by definition means that each decade has to be better than the one before it.

In the end, my 30s were in no way what I expected them to be at 29. When I told Teresa that my 30s were going to be my best decade so far, I had a vision in my mind, but it was wrong in every single way. Other cool things happened, sure, but none of the stuff I was imagining did. Not even one of those things.

My point is this: When you pitch an idea, if you are stretching your imagination far enough (which you d*mn well better be), keep in mind that years down the road, when it is all over and you have moved on, the real value of what you are proposing is going to be in things none of you can see yet. You need to keep the crazy vision in mind though, even if it’s highly likely that none of the things in that vision will come true. Other things will come true, but not those things.

You don’t have to talk about the things in the crazy vision yet, because you don’t want people to get distracted, think you’re just chasing a dream, think you are deranged, etc. But keep the crazy vision in mind, because remember mirror neurons, meaning that people act like each other, and you want your audience to be excited about what you’re talking about, so you need to be excited, too.

Whatever feeling you want your audience to have, you need to tap into that feeling in yourself, too.