People have very distorted views of money and success.
Often, they get it flat-out wrong.
Take the myth of the 7-figure business.
Tell the average online business owner that you have a 7-figure business, they’ll instantly peg you as “successful”.
But this is a mistake.
I call it the next level fallacy.
It goes like this:
“If I can just grow my business to 7-figures… then I’ll be successful!”
In your mind, you think all your problems will go away with more money.
Hah!
No such luck, I’m afraid.
What do you suppose happens when you reach 7-figures?
The goalposts instantly move.
Hence, the next level fallacy.
Now, obviously with a 7-figure business you’ll have a comfortable life…
- You’ll have the house
- You’ll have the car
- If you built your business right, you’ll have a bunch of free time too
But here’s the flip side…
- You still have a mortgage
- You’re not financially free yet
- In fact, you may spend everything you make and have no significant savings at all
And as one insightful friend told me recently:
“Once your family gets used to flying business class… they ain’t never going back to economy!”
Bottom line:
You have to keep working just like before, except now you’ve got the fear of loss hanging over your head… with the possibility of decline in the business a constant worry.
So while you may have a 7-figure business…
You don’t actually feel successful.
And don’t think for a minute that 7-figure problems are solved at 8-figures.
Or 9.
However successful you become, there’s nothing waiting for you on the other side except… yourself.
You. Alone. With your thoughts.
Here’s what this means:
If you don’t define what success means for yourself, you’ll never be able to feel successful.
I believe that the reason many entrepreneurs struggle to define success is because nobody ever prepared you for owning a business.
It just kinda “happened”.
And this is why you get 7-figure business owners still operating with the financial mindset of a broke teenager!
(Or in my case, the financial mindset of a jazz-musician-turned-English-teacher. It’s rough!)
This is why you can get successful business owners just burning through all the money they make…
They lack a clear definition of success for themselves.
Once you define success for yourself, you can create a plan to get there.
(You might be surprised how little money you actually need to make it happen.)
And once you have a plan, you’ll feel a whole lot calmer, which makes the journey more fun!
Namaste,
Olly
