Your Future or Your Present?

“Once you realize that changing the mount of money you need to live on can dramatically increase your chances of success, you have an important choice to make: How much are you willing to sacrifice for the business?”

“One surefire way to determine if a bootstrapper is going to succeed or not is to check out how she changes her lifestyle when she starts the business. If everything is first-class — the office, the car, the mortgage, the vacations — then my bet is that the entrepreneur is too focused on taking from the business and not nearly focused enough on building it.”

— Seth Godin, The Bootstrapper’s Bible

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

butch hillhurst February 18, 2009 at 7:08 pm

This remind sme of a chapter I read in a book which I think was called “The Millionaire Next Door.” The author, a sociology prof if memory serves, has studied the wealthy and in this book he describes those who become millionaires rather than those who inherit their $$.

One of his very interesting observations is that among the self-made wealthy, the men almost all have re-soleable leather dress shoes (not sneakers). He thought about this and suggested that it was a mini-version of their attitude toward business and money. A dress shoe costs more than a pair of say Air Jordans, but it will last basically forever with some care and can be re-soled for cheap. A pair of Air Jordans, however, will either look unfashionable or be trashed in six months.

The point? The self-made wealthy invested their money in shoes that had long-term value and functionality, and avoided the trendy, disposable and long-term-expensive. A pretty good blueprint for personal finance and business investment, no?

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David Haavik February 28, 2009 at 9:59 am

Well put. Personal and business. Do you need to get an MBA to figure that out?

Reply

Scott February 28, 2009 at 11:11 am

Probably not an MBA, but more education than 99% of business owners have…

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