It will take you five years
I didn’t know what the word ‘entrepreneur’ was until I was in my mid 30’s. At this stage I took stock and realized with great shock that life hadn’t panned out as I had expected. Yes, I was one of if not the most successful and highly paid service providers in a rare space of physically preparing elite athletes. I had trained more athletes than anyone else in the world possibly. No-one I had met or know worked harder. I know this sounds arrogant but this is not a marketing piece for physical preparation – you don’t see me talk like this in that arena.
What was shocking though was my realization that for all my effort, for all my industry-recognized success, I had very little to show for it. I was time poor, and asset poor. I had great cash flow, but if I took a day off work – I was a day further behind on paying the bills. I have zero leverage.
I spent the next seven years as a student in the area of entrepreneurship, seeking to develop leveraged and passive income. When I say I was a student, I didn’t limit this to collecting information – I also took action, learnt by doing, and investing tens of thousands of dollars in my education. Yes, most of what I attempted in the next seven years caused me more pain, because it failed.
By 2001 I had mastered leverage and was on my way to creating residual income. In the ensuing decade plus I have guided thousands on this same path, and leant many lessons. I will share one of them with you.
It will take at least five years to develop the entrepreneurial mindset as measured by tangible success. You might be quicker, you might be slower. There are no guarantees on this. What I can guarantee you is this
- If you don’t start you will never get there.
- If you start and quit you will never get there.
And that is perhaps the most valuable lesson I can share with you from my pursuit of entrepreneurial success, both as a student, practitioner, and as a teacher, during the last eighteen years.
Your success will happen some years after you start. The longer you procrastinate, the further off that date will become.
I could sugar-coat it. I could tell you what many sharp marketers do, of the instant success you will experience. But I don’t – they won’t serve you.
I will share however my intrigue at how many will spend this time frame in a university course, so that they can graduate with an average of $100,000 in debt, and the right to pursue the forty year plan – work at a job for forty years, get paid a salary, and then retire broke forty years later.
Yet are not prepared to spend this same time in a real-world entrepreneurial ‘course’. It’s not one or the other. You can do both. It’s just that most feel ‘comfortable’ doing the forty year plan only. Isn’t that interesting….
