You know, as I’m sitting here thinking and we’re working on some business plans, and one of the things that I think back is all the businesses and things that I’ve started in my life.
And there was some very successful businesses I created over the years and there’s been some failures or I would call them learning experiences because there is no real failure.
The only failure is if you do something wrong and you create something and you keep repeating it. Well, I think that’s not very smart. But I’ve learned from a lot of things. And one of the things that’s a really interesting story I heard, again, you know, wisdom from beyond the grave. From my great old daddy, he was telling stories and also my good friend, Greg S. Reed, told me this story specifically and this story goes like this.
There was a man who was really desired to have some gold. He knew that gold was very valuable so he wanted to go dig for gold and he wanted to, you know, create great wealth.
So, he was out there and he was searching and digging for gold. And he found this little vein of gold and he was able to have a little success. So he thought, “Now I’m just digging with shovels and my hand basically, so if I got a whole bunch of equipment, what I’m going to do, I’m able to find more gold”.
So he went to friends and relatives and he got everybody to invest with him and a whole bunch of money. And he bought all of this equipment and he went out there and he started digging. And he had a whole bunch of gold and he had a whole bunch of success. And he kept digging and things were looking really, really good.
But then one day, no gold. And he kept digging, he kept trying to look around and dig and no gold. So, he said to himself, “Well, I guess the gold dried up” and he ended up taking his very expensive equipment and he sold it to a junk man.
Now, the junk man knew nothing about gold. And what he realized is that, because he didn’t know anything, he needed expert advice. So, what he did was, went out and found somebody, a geologist, who understood about gold.
And this geologist did some studies and, from where the first person started digging for gold and he stopped, three feet over they found the vein.
Because the way gold veins go, he only just had to go three feet over and he would have found the gold. And the junk man became very, very rich and found abundance of gold because he asked for expert advice.
Now, there was two things I learnt from that story. Number one, sometimes you can stop just a little bit too short before success is right around the corner. It could be two, three feet. It could be inches from the success. That’s one lesson I learnt.
The second lesson is this. Ask for expert advice. Always go to people who are in positions where you wanna get to or go to people who have already done certain things.
You know, I had a saying many years ago. If I’m going to learn how to fly an airplane, I wanna learn from somebody that actually flew an airplane, versus read about it in a book.
So, I hope this was very helpful for you. So remember, you may be quitting too soon. You might be three feet from your success and your gold and always ask for expert advice. Seek out people who actually know and have done what you’re planning to do.
This is Alex and I look forward to talking to you again.
