personal-growth – Dave Glardon

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a nice start. It’s a brand-new week. Let’s see what kind of good trouble we can stir up!

We talked last week about income and retirement and the whole concept of waiting until your body is so old and broken you can’t do much of anything to enjoy what you’ve spent a lifetime building. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t interest me in the least.

The whole retirement system is based on life expectancy, which is a nice way of saying the system can’t survive if we live too long. Comforting, isn’t it? According to Social Security’s actuarial tables, if you’re 40 today, your life is half over. And you still have another 27 years to work. How’s that for a dose of reality?

But here’s some good news – the younger you are, the more you can influence not only the time you spend on this earth, but the quality of that time as well. And the key is planning, doing something now so you don’t have to do it later. Anticipate the inevitable, and work now to mitigate any negative consequences it may bring.

The “inevitable,” obviously, is getting old and still needing money. “Oh, she can’t afford to live there – she’s on a fixed income.” You hear it all the time. And all too often, that becomes, “She can’t afford food – she’s on a fixed income.” Well, dammit, maybe we need to ditch the fixed income! Who says you can’t keep up the cash flow in retirement? People do it every day.

But they did something most people haven’t done, and that’s recognizing and taking advantage of opportunity. If we only open our eyes and ears, and maybe use our imagination just a little, opportunity is all around us. It’s knocking on your door right every day. But, unlike an armed assailant, it won’t kick the door down. I’ll knock once or twice, and then quietly move on.

All opportunity asks is that you take the time to open the door and open your mind. Sure, sometimes it’s a scam, engineered specifically to part you from your hard-earned money. Other times, it may be a solid premise without the planning and insight to bring it to fruition. But if your mind is clouded by those expectations, you’re gonna miss something big.

And sometimes, the simplest of opportunities are the big ones. I read years ago about a group of elderly women who started a business cleaning up gravesites for family members who didn’t have time do it on their own. They’d pull weeds, polish the headstone, and even leave flowers for an extra fee. And they got rich doing it. All because they saw a need and filled it.

That’s just one of many examples I could share. And the thing is, none of these require any special skills or equipment. They don’t require any specific education, and most can be started for less than most of us spend on snacks and gourmet coffee in a week. That may be hard to comprehend, but it’s true. All you have to do is open your mind and see what’s possible.

It’s been said that the mind is like a parachute – it only works when it’s open. It’s easy to come up with reasons something can’t work. But it’s even easier to imagine why it can. Not every opportunity will appeal to you, and some may not work for you, personally. But opportunity is like a puppy – if you keep pushing it away, it’ll eventually stop trying.

That’s all for today. Give opportunity a chance. Find one that looks right for you and then give it everything you’ve got. If it doesn’t work, you’re that much closer to finding something that will. Give it some thought this week. Meanwhile, have an awesome day!

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a nice start.

In business, each month begins a new set of books. The old month is over and what’s done is done. All we have now are projections for the new month. In most cases, it’s a shot in the dark, like a kid telling you their grades will improve, and their room will be spotless by Friday.

I was once tasked to write a business plan for a corporate expansion – one that, if projections came true, would create more than 1,000 new jobs and result in the local government giving our company a large regional airport for free. I’ll save you some time. The company did expand into the new line of business. And the airport still belongs to the county.

The numbers just didn’t work. If we had hired all those people and put our plan into motion, we would have run out of new customers in a matter of months. And that’s if every potential customer in the nation bought our new product during that time. This wasn’t like Beanie Babies™. It was a mobile data terminal for heavy trucks. Exciting, huh?

My plan showed a profit of more than $20 million in the first six months. Wow! After that, our profit would drop to zero and all those people would be unemployed. So, the boss had an idea. “What if we increase our per-unit cost, and double the time it takes to build each unit?” Well, now we’d lose $13 million in the first six months and would never recoup that loss. Back to the drawing board.

We played with those numbers for a month, and I finally told the boss I sure hope somebody a lot smarter than me would be reviewing the plan. He assured me this is how ALL business plans are written. I find that a bit disturbing. Thank God we weren’t building airplanes. Thank God we weren’t building airplanes.

It’s easy to start new endeavors with an overabundance of excitement. “Wow, I’ll be rich by next Friday! I should buy that new car now before the prices go up!” Thankfully, the practical side of our brain kicks in and brings us back to earth, maybe a little too much. Then we start to doubt the entire premise. “This can’t be that easy. Maybe the whole idea is stupid.” Sound familiar?

The truth is, nothing is ever as easy as it sounds, and nothing ever goes completely according to plan. Just ask NASA. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying. We just need to set realistic expectations and anticipate setbacks. If the idea is sound, it’ll still work. You may just need to tweak it a bit.

Fifty-six years ago, man first walked on the moon. It was a lofty goal. And we’ve all seen video of those early attempts at manned space flight. They weren’t pretty. Your dreams are no less important. You may not reach your goal as quickly as you’d hoped, but if you follow the plan and revise expectations based on experience, success is still out there waiting.

That’s all for now. Keep those dreams alive and never let anything stand in your way, especially your own imagination. Have an awesome day!

Tag: personal-growth

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