Building Up

This is where I started:

And this is what I have now:

And this is what I want:

I didn’t get those things by focusing on them, and I won’t get the yacht by obsessing over it. Instead, I focused on success, on working hard, starting a business, and investing in real estate. If you focus on the results of success instead of the path to success you’ll never achieve the results.

You don’t start at the top and work your way down. You don’t start with a yacht and end up with a Jestski. You start at the bottom — but the bottom for me is different than the bottom for you. Some of us have a head start and others are far behind but that isn’t an excuse not to end up in the same place if you’re smart, work hard, and have a little luck.

Richard Branson grew up wealthy so for him starting at the bottom was a lot higher than for John Paul DeJoria. Don’t know who that is? Well he’s the now billionaire founder of Paul Mitchell hair care and Patron tequila (love the coffee Patron), and he once lived in a car, bottom for him was really low.

It is incremental steps that build success and wealth. The increments are sometimes large and sometimes small but it’s a process that must followed.

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, grew that business incrementally. Begun in 1971 Schultz bought the company in 1987 and expanded outside the Seattle area for the first time that same year. The company didn’t go public until 1992 when it had just 140 locations compared to over 16,000 today. The incremental growth was slow in the beginning and picked up speed as time went on. Incremental growth speeds up with momentum.

None of the successful people you know have coasted to the heights they’ve achieved. You can’t gain speed, distance, or height without momentum and you don’t create momentum by coasting.

But what do the boats have to do with growing a business? Nothing really, but they are the end result of that success. I mean really, why work if it can’t buy fun? The boats represent how growing your business is tied to growing your own success. We grow our businesses, our savings, our net worth so that we can enjoy it. When I got my first job after college I bought that Jetski and thought I had hit the big time. Over the years I upgraded and bought a boat and then another Jetski. I traded up for a bigger boat and now I’ve traded up once again for the boat you see in the middle picture.

I’ve taken small steps over the years which is how I’ve been able to grow in other areas such as net worth and investment portfolio. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the yacht but I know I won’t get it by obsessing over it. I’ll get that boat by continuing to work hard, by growing my various What Next businesses, and by keeping focused on success. It’s the people who focus on the results of success rather than the work of success who end up with less than they started.