Good luck has an affinity for survivors and bad luck has an enmity for quitters.
After researching the stories and backgrounds of the 177 self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study, I came to admire survivors.
I found it amazing that so many of them were a hairs breath away from financial ruin. They literally put every dollar they had on the line and leveraged every asset they owned in order to fund their dream. Many went even further. They borrowed money from friends, family and anyone else who would lend them money.
If you were to look at the balance sheet of any self-made millionaire, right before they turned the corner, you’d throw up your lunch. And these eventual self-made millionaires had to look at that balance sheet every day they were pursuing their dream.
Just imagine having zero assets and piles of mounting debt as your constant companions. Now imagine having to look at the balance sheet day after day, which seems to do nothing but continue to increase. Perhaps worse than that bad balance sheet is the constant uncertainty that plagues Dreamers every day.
The pre-millionaire self-talk goes something like this:
“How will I get through next month?”
“When will I turn the corner?”
“When will I finally get lucky?”
“When will all this uncertainty end?”
“What more do I have to do?
How do they do it? How do Dreamers survive the financial worry and the never ending uncertainty? How do they find the strength to persevere?
Courage. Call it what you will, but those self-made’s knew one secret to success that all hard core entrepreneurs eventually figure out – you must find a way to survive until you thrive.
As I’ve written often, the #1 factor to Entrepreneurial success is luck.
You must eventually get lucky.
But luck, real life-changing luck, takes time.
For some self-made’s, life-changing luck comes sooner, but for the average run-of-the-mill self-made millionaires, Luck can take years.
That luck, however, only visits the survivors. This is why it is imperative that you figure out a way to survive.
Survival buys you time for luck to occur.
