Learning and why some never will

It takes quite a bit of confidence to go out and start a business. Not just in yourself but in your idea, in the longevity of that idea, in a plan that is hardly more than a dream built on unproven confidence. There is no such thing as a sure thing. Most people lose this quality the longer and further they get from their dream.

Why? Because running a business is hard. The more successful you become at it the more problems you will have – with vendors, with clients, with employees, with partners: the bigger things get the more complicated they become. Mo money, mo problems.

Critical mistake: “Working on your business instead of working in your business”.

I’ve seen this misguided slogan from many people that have crashed and burned in business. You become successful by focusing on your business – you make your business successful by focusing on your clients. Most folks, just as they make some level of success, pull way back and pretend they are Warren Buffett: no phones, no meetings – “I’m all strategy. Guided and kept accountable by my peers. And these consultants” – You can guess where things go from there but chisel this into your monitor:

“The most important person, anywhere, is the one that is giving you money.” –me, now.

Earn it. Thank them for the opportunity and their money.. cause they could always give it to someone else.

Now that you know the minor details of why client cash is king

There is a reason why really successful people are always reading and always studying. Experience. You know you’ll make mistakes and you know you’ll survive them so you study all the time to learn how to deal with and overcome mistakes.

But not to avoid mistakes.

This is huge I’ll write it again because it goes for employees as much as it does for employers: you will make mistakes – it’s not about not making them. It’s about overcoming them. It’s about how quickly you can move on. It’s about how quickly you can embrace the next idea/task – it’s about always moving forward and making progress.

It’s why I run so many marathons.

There is an epic misunderstanding (mostly fed by misleading lies) in success being a matter of doing something remarkably simple consistently – it’s not. It’s the process of taking a chance and being able to cash in on an opportunity.

I’ve talked to so many people that spent so much time trying to analyze every single possible way of doing something, doing peer review, thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it. Hi Eddie! That in the end never pulled the trigger and lived to regret it.

Listen, I get it. Comfort is nice. I want things to be easy too. I want predictable stuff.

The question is if you’re cool being safe and comfortable and working till you’re 104. And even if you’re that fearful of risk and taking chances – what you should really be afraid of is not the opportunity but the threat that someone very smart and very resourceful is working extremely hard to replace you.

And that to me is all the motivation you’ll ever need.