Jonathan:

The question is: When will I feel like I’ve finally arrived? I feel like I’ve answered this question previously, but I have no idea where I might have talked about it, but I got a feeling I have. I’m going to talk about this from a couple of different vantage points.

I’m going to talk about it first from the big vantage point. You’re now doing millions of dollars, you’re making a big income, you’ve bought a bigger home, you’re able to buy cars, you’re able to do vacations, whatever that thing is that’s your thing. Everybody’s got a different thing. Yes, to some degree, you might feel like, okay, I’ve arrived. Even at that level, you might feel like, okay, I’ve arrived. Maybe this is just my personality type.

Now you’re running this big organization. It’s bigger than the majority. However, you then get to know other individuals running even bigger organizations. Then you start learning more about building a business and what it takes to get to 20 million, 30, 40, 50, a hundred million dollars. I’m talking really big here. You start to realize, man, I’m still playing such a really small game. Man, there’s so much more to learn. There’s so much more that I need to become. There’s so many things that I could be better at. I need these types of people on my team and they’re going to be very expensive. It just never ends. That’s my point.

There’s this level where even if you’ve got the home you wanted, and the cars you wanted, and the vacations you wanted, and you got some money in the bank, and that money is growing, a couple of things happen. One is you keep looking out towards the future, setting your next goal. When that goal is big and you meet very interesting people, you say to yourself, “Yeah, it’s pretty good, but it could be this.” Or, “Yeah, I’ve learned a lot. But, man, I still really don’t know that much.” So, you don’t fully feel like you’ve made it.

In fact, I think if you get to that place, you’re like, “I’ve made it, I’m good,” then you probably should cash out of the game because you’re probably going to get overtaken by someone else. I think that constant feeling of a little bit of dissatisfaction is very healthy if you want to get to somewhere significant.

The reason for telling you that side of the story first is I don’t know that you ever totally feel like you made it. I think you feel like, okay, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t have credit card debt and these other things have been taken care of. I’m pretty good in some areas. But you really, if you focus on business and things like that, you’re like, oh my gosh, there’s so much more to do.

Then there’s the next side of the business, and maybe again it’s just a me thing, so now you’ve built these big things that do huge amounts of money and revenue, and then you’re like, oh my goodness, I’ve built these businesses and now I’ve got to protect them. Then you’re like, I’ve got to keep building bigger, and bigger, and bigger bank accounts, and I need the investments that I have to be liquid so that if anything ever happened to these businesses, I can get the money to make sure these businesses keep growing through downturns and they’re protected and what I’ve built doesn’t get harmed.

Again, none of that may resonate with you, depending on where you’re at in business, but I wanted to start there because that’s reality. I know a lot of individuals that are very successful and I’ve had a lot of conversations. Do you really ever arrive and say, “Oh, I’m done. It’s all good. I’m golden.” No, probably not.