Last night I surprised my lovely wife when I dramatically changed my strongly held opinion on a certain business opportunity.
We’re all faced with choices, opportunities, and options on a regular basis. We approach it all with a healthy dose of skepticism, as well we should, and we find it important not to rush blindly into new ventures or take up certain options. We’ve been around long enough not to get swept up into every scheme and scam around, and that protects us from the con artists and from losing our proverbial shirts. All good. Except when we throw healthy babies out with the bathwater, miss the train, and overlook the diamonds in the mud, that is.
We’re masters of self-deception, and we diligently seek evidence to support our dominant beliefs and justify our choices - it’s only human. We hate to be proven wrong or admit that we missed a lucrative opportunity, and we trot out endless streams of “reasons” why we were right. It takes courage and humility to change one’s opinion, even reverse it completely. It’s hard to say, “I was wrong, I missed it, and it cost me money.” You can be “right” or you can be rich. Business is not about feeling important, infallible, and ingenious - it’s about making money. The most successful entrepreneurs I know fail on a regular basis. Babe Ruth struck out more than anyone in baseball history, I’m told.
The scary thing is that we lose a lot of money with wrong decisions, and usually it’s our fear, ego, conditioning, bias, and pig-headedness that makes the decision instead of a calm, objective, rational business brain. That’s why it’s important to put the old ego on hold when evaluating one’s options. Looking back, I have lost a lot of money by missing opportunities. And I know a lot of others who have lost a lot, and even some right now that are going to miss huge opportunities that they are being exposed to through DollarMakers. I could name names, but I won’t - their skepticism is going to rob them blind, and they don’t know it yet.
I attended a meeting this week where I met a character that had been a Member of the DollarMakers Club when it first started, but he lapsed his Membertship and never got really involved. He’s a typical. lazy, west coast specimen who has no idea how much money he could have made through DollarMakers had he stayed with us. I know of at least a dozen specific, lucrative opportunities that would have funnelled thousands into his bank account, had he simply showed up at our events and stayed active. But I guess pot, beer, and ice hockey got in the way. The same applies to people offering website services, computer services, financial services, and real estate who were involved with us, but their desperation for a quick fix and easy money had them scampering off to greener grass, only to find it growing over a cesspit. By the time they limp back to us with their tails between their legs and a big bag of excuses, their spot has been taken by a smarter person; we don’t want them back. (”Where were you when we needed you?”)
Decisions cost money or make money, and because nothing stays the same, we need to have the courage to revisit past decisions, if it’s not too late for tears, which it often is. Better still to make the right decision at the outset by aligning yourself with real entrepreneurs who think rationally, and not relying on advice from your loser relative or an unemployed has-been or jumped-up kid that calls himself a “Business Coach”.
Last night I was more interested in making a lot of honest money than feeling embarrassed by telling Rika, “I was wrong, the situation has changed, and I have changed my mind.” Think of it this way: to go faster in your car, you need to change gears. Change is good, and we should embrace it like a warm puppy.
