I think it’s just the humility to get around people that are doing it better than you are. Learning from those people and not trying to reinvent the wheel and asking for help. I think that’s a thing that’s a big one. For the first five years of our business, we were on an island, we didn’t have anybody around us and we were just trying to figure it out on our own because we’re smart guys. That’s not the right way to do it. Getting around people that are actually doing it and can show you some tips and tricks that’ll save you millions of man hours and millions of dollars over the life of your business.
That’s probably a pretty smart move, right? So I love when I am around people that have mastermind groups and meetup groups and things like that because they think that they can do it themselves. Those are typically the people that aren’t doing anything. The most successful people that I’m around are buying planes and things of that nature. Those are the guys that I’m in masterminds with. So, that’s number one is just being humble enough to say that you’re not the smartest guy in the room and go find that smart guy and try to attach yourself to them. And then perseverance. I mean you just can’t give up, we never had a plan B, there is no backup plan. I was always looking forward, not ever looking backward unless it was to analyze what went wrong and learn from it.
And the first couple of years I’ll be honest, I was looking for sales jobs, I was good at sales. I could go make $150,000 a year and my wife is a very process oriented, she’s a security driven and I mean God grew her a lot through giving her me because I don’t need security. She wanted a paycheck and I was like, no, I won’t do it. But as I started looking around for these other jobs to go back into because it was hard in the beginning. My wife was like, please don’t just don’t go get a job, you’re going to be miserable. She said, just go, you can make this work and you know, I’m going to support you through it. And that really motivated me and having the persistence to continue on and not have a plan B was, was huge.
Not too many people do that, but that’s a really big idea. And I really hope you guys will execute that and put that place in your life. You need to be all in on the things that you’re doing. If you’re not all in, then you’re all out because you can’t just put a little bit here and a little bit there and hope that everything turns out. It takes a lot of effort, energy, and more important focus to succeed.
Steven Libman
WILLIAM FERGUSON 