It’s not sexy, it’s not exciting, it’s not flashy; but plain old persistence is a much better indicator of success than skill or technique.
That’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way with years of failed businesses and changed courses.
Genius Types
If you’re like most Genius Types readers, you’re a highly intelligent, creative, entrepreneurial-type with a lot of drive. If you’re anything like me, you want the world, but you don’t have a lot of patience.
You might spend a lot of time scouring the web for money-making ideas. When you find something that sounds interesting, you give it a try.
The Serial Entrepreneur
Maybe you start with network marketing. Hearing stories about how much money could be made put stars in your eyes; but after a few months, you weren’t seeing the results you wanted, so you quit. You tell yourself that it was a scam and look for something else.
Then you decide to give bulk candy vending a go. You throw down several hundred bucks for some machines and some candy and hit the street in search of accounts. After talking to thirty store owners, you only get three locations. You’re making less than $100, so you decide that there’s no money in vending.
Next you try your hand at blogging. You tell yourself, “if that Lee guy can make money at it, why not me?” You set up the blog, slap down some AdSense, sit back, and wait for the money to flow.
When you don’t see any money, you decide to learn some tricks to get some traffic. You write an article, email everyone you know, and ask them to “Digg” it. You get about 10 diggs, but it’s not enough to make the front page.
As your interest wanes, your consistency drops off. You realize that if you’d just put the hours you’d spent on the computer every day into a job, you might have been out of debt already. You quit, thinking: “Those bloggers are just spinning their wheels.”
The cycle continues…
I spent about ten years in a cycle like the one I just described before I realized a very important lesson. My problem wasn’t the techniques I had chosen. (All of them were proven money-makers.) My problem was that I had no persistence. I’d developed a habit of quitting before I got into the real money.
Exponential Growth
The reason that persistence is so powerful lies in the principle of exponential growth, which basically states that the bigger something is, the faster it grows.
This principle is especially visible when applied to the profitability of entrepreneurial ventures.
In most startups, a massive amount of effort is needed at the beginning while almost no results are showing. As time goes on, the amount of effort needed to maintain the business decreases while profits increase.
Someone who is impatient will quit at about the red line, before any substantive results occur. In their eyes, they had just wasted several months of work. If they had just stuck it out, they would have begun to reap what they had sewn. Instead, they start all over again at the beginning on a new project with an entirely new exponential growth curve.
Blog Growth
The monetization of Genius Types is a perfect example. After five months of blogging, I hadn’t surpassed $100 a month in income although I had expended an enormous amount of energy. It would have been extremely easy to quit.
What kept me going was the knowledge that Genius Types was operating under the principle of exponential growth. Isn’t it amazing how the curvature of the actual blog income graph resembles the imaginary exponential growth curve? It’s truly a universal principle.
I earned $152.53 in my sixth month, an $245.41 in my seventh. That’s still not a ton of money to some people; but if you understand exponential growth like I do, it’s pretty exciting.
Changing Course
The principle of exponential growth is similar to the principle of inertia. Imagine your financial situation as a huge iron ball. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to get it to budge. Once it starts, momentum takes over and you get a lot more motion for the amount of energy expended.
Every time you change your mind and decide to change course, you must expend a massive amount of energy all over again to change its direction. A smart entrepreneur who understands this principle will set a course and persist.
Successful leaders are quick to make decisions, but slow to change their minds.
How to Be More Persistent
Insurance
In order to be persistent, you must be prepared to go a long time without making a profit. Most people jump into entrepreneurship expecting to make money right away without a backup.
It’s important to have an emergency account, savings, or an alternative income source that will carry you through the hard times.
Think With Your Head, Not With Your Emotions
It takes an emotionally strong person to resist the temptation to quit. People around you will question your sanity. You will question your own sanity. But if your plan is sound, you have to keep a cool head.
Bottom Line
There are a lot of ways to make money in today’s world. It’s not the technique that counts, it’s your persistence.
In any given entrepreneurial field, a minority of the people make the majority of the money. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? Take real estate agents for example. In this self-directed profession, 20 percent of the agents make 80 percent of the money. You can substitute any entrepreneurial profession and you’ll get the same phenomenon.
An average person would see this and become discouraged. As an entrepreneur freshly equipped with an understanding of exponential growth, I hope the 80/20 rule excites you. The reason 20 percent of the people make all the money is because 80 percent of the people quit early.
[…] distracted type can get there. As usual, I found the idea of persistence perfectly captured at Genius Types. I think he got it right when he said, “The reason 20 percent of the people make all the […]
Being really honest, I see how this principle works in relationships as well. Cultivating relationships with people takes time and patience, and you will not instantly be accepted into any ‘circle’ just because. I really, really, really, really, REALLY hate that it takes so long, but it does teach you some things along the way. The more effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it in the long run. This is a truly awesome post.
Brian,
You’re absolutely right and you make a good point, we hear a lot of people say, “Do what you love – don’t do something you don’t love just for the money.” But, I would guess that many people heard (and/or experienced) some form of this early in their lives: “A job is just a job, you do it for money, not to enjoy yourself – that’s why it’s called work – you have fun and enjoy yourself on the weekends.” And then as they grow older, they begin to explore other possibilities, such as “Do what you love and the money will follow.”
The problem is that later in life it becomes difficult to follow that “do what you love” advice because we have this limiting belief called: “work is work and it shouldn’t be enjoyable” that we got when we were younger, and it has been set in, strengthened and verified many times over many years.
So, we come full circle to your notion of persistence. I especially like your analogy of the huge iron ball. Even to try to follow advice that makes good sense like “do what you love and the money will follow” we must exert a tremendous effort in the beginning (start pushing that iron ball) to overcome limiting beliefs that have the strength of years of confirmation behind them. And these limiting beliefs WILL stand in our way until we make that (sometimes Herculean) effort that is required to overturn them.
Why do we do things that are not good for us? Or, why do we not do the things that are good for us? I think we are getting at some of it.
It is complicated stuff, but we can figure it out.
Chris614
Great contribution, Chris614.
You know, we are all told from a very young age to do what we love instead of what makes the most money, and it’s almost as if we have become numb to it.
Almost no one follows that sacred advice; but as it turns out, you can make more money doing what you love anyway.
Scratch another one up for kindergarten.
This is an excellent article – it bespeaks a very mature attitude and reveleation about how success really works in the real world. Many people are confused about this issue and suffer because of it.
I have recently come to a very similar conclusion about success and I really enjoyed reading this because I was also lost for many years on the “go-from-one-opportunity-to-another” cycle that you describe above. So, thanks for writing this – it definitely helped me.
One comment about the “know when to quit” issue mentioned above: For me, the “maybe I should know when to quit” issue has ALWAYS come up whenever I was pursuing opportunities that had not been proven out by others, but also, and perhaps more importantly, when I was doing things for the wrong reasons, meaning I was pursuing an opportunity because I wanted to get out of debt, or because I wanted to get rich quick, or I wanted power or recognition, or some other such thing. But when I found the thing that I love doing more than anything else, and (trying not to sound like a guidance counselor or Myers Briggs Aptitude question:) would actually do for no money, the “know when to quit” issue has never come up.
So, it is easier for me to persist when I am doing something because I love doing it – it is its own reward, AND because I can envision it being financially successful for me in the future, and it helps a lot when I get little tastes of success along the way.
I hope this contributed something. Sorry it was so long. Cheers.
No problem, KaRiM. Thanks for hanging out.
It’s really very important points in life of most of us .. Thank you for this Article ..
That’s a good point, Ben. That instant gratification is just drilled into us from the beginning of our work years.
You’re right, 60 in 3, it doesn’t help to be persistent if you’re barking up the wrong tree. The way to avoid this is to choose a path that has been proven by someone else.
That being said, lack of persistence steals more dreams than lack of the right path.
I think a lot of it is built into the 9 to 5 work culture. People are so used to getting paid by the hour instead of paid by the value created that they assume money will start rolling in right away.
Although the counter point to your post is “know when to quit.” Sometimes, you do need to stop trying and devote your efforts to something else. The key is knowing when quitting makes sense and when it doesn’t.
When I try something out and it doesn’t work I usually try to figure out why it isn’t working. Is there something I missed? Does it simply need more time? Is there something I’m doing wrong? Sometimes, as you said, it simply needs more time. No problem, I keep plugging away. Other times, you need to stop and devote your energy to more fruitful pursuits.
Gal
Your post reminds me of a great quote by Calvin Coolidge:
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
choosing projects carefully. Try to figure out how long and how hard you are going to have to blow before you have a toy that floats. If you don’t have the resources or time to get through those first thousand plus blows, pick a different project. Here
they had just wasted several months of work. If they had just stuck it out, they would have begun to reap what they had sewn. Instead, they start all over again at the beginning on a new project with an entirely new exponential growth curve. Source: http://geniustypes.com