Business Success Is 50 Years of Multiplying Daily Wins
The Fountainhead Movement
That title pretty much sums it up. When you’re first getting started right out of college, you have very few real world skills, your network is a bunch of other broke college students, and no one is going to take you very seriously.
But all that can change.
That’s day one, but for some lucky individuals, even before that.
Maybe you send out 100 emails, maybe you organize a rally, maybe you plan a party. It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you do something.
You have to realize that it’s not about those small, everyday moments that matter. It’s about the compounding of those moments over the course of years and even decades.
Imagine if I told you to climb Mount Everest. Most people would say it’s impossible. But imagine if all I said instead was take one step forward everyday. And then all I did was point you in the right direction. After a decade, if you don’t stop, you might actually reach the top.
The beauty of business, and life really, is that it’s actually easier than climbing Everest. Because each new step you take isn’t the same size as the last step you take. It’s a little bit bigger.
For example, the day you graduate college your best friend is probably broke just like you and searching for a job. You could call him/her and ask for help but they probably don’t have the means. But wait 50 years and then call him/her for some help. I bet that one phone call could result in something pretty astounding. Because they’ve been taking those tiny steps everyday for 50 years.
That’s why Warren Buffett or Jay-Z can send one email today and have most of the entire free world at their beck and call. It didn’t happen on day one. It happened on day 56,739. Because it was all the days in between that made this one email possible.
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So now that we know each step we take is a little bit longer than the last, how can we use that to our advantage?
Well, the one part we glossed over was the direction of those steps. It all starts with a very simple question that very few people can answer.
What is your one want?
It’s not money, it’s not fame, it’s not success. That’s a result of what can happen after you find your one want. It’s your fascination. It’s the thing you still think about when you’re sick in bed with only one eye peaking out from underneath the covers.
That’s the direction your steps will take you.
Once you know the direction, all the steps just kind of work themselves out. Because you now know where you’re going, it’s easy on step 4,572 to figure out where the next obvious step should be. It’s 4,573. You can’t determine that on step 1, but the farther you walk, the closer you get to your goals.
And all the value you’ve created along the way, the friends you’ve made, the business colleagues, and the things you’ve learned means that 4,573rd step is going to take you a thousand times farther than your 1st step.
But no matter what you do, even if you’re not quite sure yet where you’re headed, don’t stop steppin’.
— Sean
