“Winning Isn’t Everything But Losing Is Nothing” – Part 2
In the first part of this article I talked about how winning and losing needs to be constructed in the context of playing a bigger game to reach your goals. Then having the ability to not take losing (Or winning) personally – which is a major barrier to reaching your goals and success.
And more importantly being able to understand that it’s not the number of times you win necessarily but how big you win when you do – and being emotionally okay with it. Mostly people are not okay with losing at all.
The second thing you need to be aware of is that you don’t want to go broke trying to win.
In both my and other people’s opinion, the inability to understand how to make compound interest or geometric growth work for you rather than against you is the single biggest obstacle to sustained success.
Is a 2% return any good?
One of our clients is getting about a 2% referral rate every month on his newsletter. In a past business life I was getting a 2% return on my direct mail, (that return meant I was making 2 grand in profit for every $100 spent.) I got depressed with 2% and stopped doing direct mail. Can you spell
‘B.I.G. M.I.S.T.A.K.E?’
Do you know what sustaining that response rate means? It means quite simply that our client’s business will grow 27% from new customers in the next 12 months.
Would that make you happy? 27% bigger this time next year.
All from a ‘piddly’ 2% response rate being able to compound for 12 months. 2 years on and you’ve grown 61%.
Unfortunately most people will get discouraged at 2% and just stop.
You can use compound interest in your favor or not. The choice is yours. But I can guarantee you that playing the long game is how most people succeed. I am yet to encounter a genuine overnight success. They all begin with long periods spent in obscurity, before the bloom into something massive.
As far as I can see everything unfettered in nature grows geometrically. The only place there is linear growth is in the world of jobs and employees.