Wealth vs. Riches – Which one defines business success?

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There is a significant difference between Wealth and Riches, and which one you choose will likely define whether your business is successful or not.

I was at a friend’s house in Maryland who lives on the water. We were sitting on his deck looking out over the water and I noticed that his neighbor had a nice 30’ sloop docked at his house. I mentioned it to my friend and without pausing he said, “Yeah, it’s a nice one, but I never see it go out.” I asked him to explain and he said, “Every spring he pulls it out of the water to knock the shellfish off and paint it, but I don’t remember the last time I actually saw him take it out. If it’s out, it’s certainly never out enough for anyone around here to notice.”

This guy was rich, but he definitely wasn’t wealthy. Riches equals money, but Wealth equals “the ability to choose what to do with my time.” Riches just accumulates money and stuff, but Wealth creates freedom. Too often business owners don’t make this distinction and buy off on the notion that piling up the money is the definition of success. This is leftover thinking from the 1980s and 90s that was expressed in the bumper sticker “He who dies with the most toys wins.” We got a chance to try it during the 1990s and 2000s, and it came up short.

Too often we intend that our business should throw off money, so at best, that’s all it does. But business should give us three things; two resources and a benefit.

Resource One: Money

You can do a lot of things with money, but getting money by itself is not a good goal. Ask anyone who has made a lot of it – Making money is not an empowering vision. Do you have an empowering vision that is bigger than making money? If not, you will likely never make a lot of it. The blue flame coming out your backside will come from having a vision for something that grips you, and money will just be a way to get there.

Resource Two: Time

Most business owners never ask their business for time, just money. So they get what they ask for – some money (usually not a lot). I expect my business to throw off both time and money, and relentlessly work to get the business to the point where it creates both assets for me. Without time, money is meaningless – it’s just a boat that never goes out.

The Benefit: Significance

The most important, least asked question in business is “Why?”. Most business owners have no idea why they are in business, so it’s no surprise they don’t know where their business is taking them. What is it that you could do with your business to create significance for you, your family, your employees, and in the world around you? The bigger that vision is, the more likely you are to succeed in your business. Significance, or creating meaning should be the reason you are in business. If you have a Big Why, you will be much more motivated to design your business in a way that it throws off both a lot of money and a lot of time. When you have both, you are Wealthy and can now choose how you will create significance in the world around you.

There are a lot of rich people in the world who don’t have freedom and haven’t done what they could have to create significance in the world around them. There are a lot more struggling business owners who just focused on making money and never made much of it because they never got a Big Why for being in business.

Go for “Wealth” – time, money and significance. We get what we intend, not what we hope for. Stop hoping your business will get there – random hope is a terrible business strategy. Instead, intend to build a business around your Big Why, and intend for it to throw off time and money so you can create significance. It’s not “He who dies with most toys wins”, but “He who lives with the best Lifetime Goals wins.”

Wouldn’t you rather leave a legacy than a pile of cash and a boat that never goes out?

The Business Success Train – Get On It.

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If you were trying to get an old steam engine going to move the train, would you put the coal in the caboose or in the engine’s firebox? Does it make any sense at all to put the coal in the caboose instead? It’s not the way a train works and it’s not how business works, yet in business we do it all the time and all it does is weigh us down.

The Business Train of Success looks like this:

And it’s really simple to run it. Stop putting your faith in your feelings and make a habit out of putting your faith in the facts. It’s amazing how much better your business will run, and how much more likely you are to make good decisions.

When we put our faith in our feelings we either make fear-based decisions or hope-based decisions.

FEAR–BASED DECISIONS

Fear-based decisions are rooted in how things have gone in the past and maybe how things “are”, but don’t take into account anything to do with how things could be if I decided to make a change. If you tend to make fear-based decisions you are saying two things:

  1. The pain I know is better than the pain I have yet to experience. I’ll just live with it. (A big reason why most small businesses never grow to maturity).
  2. I am committed to making decisions based on where I am, rather than on where I want to be.

Stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself, “What would I be doing right now if I wasn’t afraid?” Make decisions based on where you want to be, not where you are. Otherwise you will never get where you want to go, you’ll only just wish you could have…

HOPE–BASED DECISIONS

Hope-based decisions ignore the past, the present and even the future facts that should be informing your decisions. Hope here really means, “I wish” and, “Wouldn’t it be nice if..” People who are hope-based ignore the facts as well and go full steam ahead without any idea where they are going or how they will get there. They are always “excited” about the future but have no factual reason to be – “it will just work out” if we keep going. If you make hope-based decisions, you are really saying two things:

  1. I will ignore the facts at all costs because reality always gets in the way of my dreams. Or – the pain I have yet to experience has to be better than my present pain – I’ll just keep running headlong into the abyss.
  2. I’m am committed to making decisions based on where want to be with no regard for where I am or the facts on how I can actually get there.

Both the naively optimistic (hope-based) and stiflingly pessimistic (fear-based) view of the world will keep us from being successful. Instead put your faith in the facts, stoke the engine of success, and get moving on a clear track to growing a mature business.

FACT–BASED DECISIONS

The more faith you put in the facts and not your feelings, the faster you will get there!

We Don’t Find the Sandbars With An Anchor in the Water

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Our desire for safety is paralyzing. We’re so afraid of hitting a sandbar that we’re willing to just sit in the harbor for years on end. Then we have the audacity to wonder why our business never grows up.

Think of the Steering Wheel on a boat as “Purposeful Direction”, and the Engine as “Commitment”. I’m a big fan of both commitment and purpose. One without the other is of no value. Nothing is more important to how quickly you will get where you’re going than the size and fitness of your engine combined with ongoing attention to the helm. Most of us don’t pay attention to either. We’re just sitting at anchor most of the time.

The single biggest factor in getting somewhere is the steering wheel of your life and business – a purposeful direction (see last week’s post). But if you know where you want to go and you aren’t committed to getting there, I mean fundamentally sold out to that end game, the journey will take a very long time and you will likely lose steam before you ever get there. If your engine of commitment isn’t big enough it’s likely you really don’t have a clear understanding of where you want to go – the steering wheel has no direction.

The only way to find the sandbars in life and in business is to get the ship moving and then start taking soundings. And if you’re commitment is big, you’ll get where you want to go a lot faster and easier than those who are puttering around with little outboard engines.

It’s all about committed movement in a purposeful direction. Lack of committed movement is failure.

Are you fully committed to moving in order to find out what works, or are you sitting around wondering where the sandbars are?

Committed Movement in a Purposeful Direction

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Conation

We’ve all heard that extraordinary people are just ordinary people who have made extraordinary decisions. It think it’s even more simple than that. Extraordinary people are those who understand that Movement is the Master, and planning is just its humble servant with a small “s”.

While the rest of us are building a perfect plan in an ivory tower, the successful person has already pulled up anchor, hoisted the sails and left the harbor for their rendezvous with destiny. They understand it isn’t about the plan, but about the destination, and that the plan will unfold as they go. They just need to know two things: where they are and where they want to go, and their plan is to do whatever they need to do in the middle to get there.

The rest of us just get nervous at this whole approach. In fact we’re much more comfortable with knowing exactly what the dayto-day activity is and what each day holds going forward. We’re so committed to safety, stability and a perfect map for daily life that we really don’t care what the destination is as long the journey along the way to nowhere holds no surprises.

“I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how I’m going to get there.”

We need to stop worshiping the planning servant and start focusing on the Master – movement.

Committed Movement in a Purposeful Direction

Just because you’re going flat out doesn’t mean you’re going the right direction.

If you don’t have your hand constantly on the steering wheel to control the helm and make ongoing corrections, all the movement in the world isn’t going to help you. It will likely just create chaos as you crash into things and bounce off of them. We need Purposeful Direction – a clear understanding of the end game (not the plan, but the end game – there is a big difference!).

Successful people get moving fast but have a very strong understanding of where they are going. They aren’t just committed to movement, but to movement in a purposeful direction. They have a clear view of the destination. But successful people focus on the end game, not on planning. They didn’t become successful by planning the whole journey out, but by simply having clarity about where they are, where they want to end up, and a complete commitment to get there at any cost.

Do you have Committed Movement in a Purposeful Direction?