How to Think of Growth

Scenario: "Yo! We'll build a multi-million dollar business that will go IPO! Yay!" You read the magazines, you read the newspapers, and you scour the web: $10 million company here, $25 million there, and another one going IPO. Then you ask yourself: "Hey! How did they make it so easy?! I'm struggling here..." But when you really study those companies, what do you find? Building established multi-million dollar profitable companies takes years/decades of achieving successive-small-financial-wins. Unlike what those magazines imply, you can't climb Everest tomorrow.

Where Most Entrepreneurs Fail

Like most people going into business for themselves, Entrepreneur Billy goes into business thinking it's a sure-fire way to make big cash -- quickly.

• "You can't be rich working for someone else!" he tells himself.
• "Robert Kiyosaki said you have to be in the Business-Owner Quadrant! Yay!" he screams.
• "I will make tons of dough living in my mansion, driving my Range Rover!" he yells.

Then the Entrepreneur Billy starts dabbling in his business. Reality check two months later:

• "This is harder than I thought."
• "At this pace, I will never make enough money to buy Range Rovers."
• "I quit. The rich exploit people, so that's why they're rich. I have ethics. Yay for me!"

Lame. Talk to any self-made "rich" entrepreneur, and you'll find a common occurance:

1. They grew their sales/cash/income successively over time.
2. Instead of worrying about Range Rovers, they worried about earning record sales every month.
3. They focused on continuous improvement: "If you continually improve your financials over time, you'll make it."

The Mindset to Growth

Start embracing the fabulous "How-can-I-improve-this-month" mindset:

• This Month: "I made X dollars this month. How can I make more than X dollars this month?"
• Next Month: Restart cycle.

For instance:

• Cycle 1: "I grossed $50 in March. How can I gross more than $50 this April?"
• Cycle 2: "I grossed $150 in April. How can I gross more than $150 this May?"

When you continually rotate that mutha-!@^^%^ cycle, you'll see something pretty dope happening: Your revenues start growing, then growing some more, them more, then SHAZZAM! You're running a multi-million dollar company.

It takes steps, baby.

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