Maybe Google Was Born Out of Pure Anger

(img: robert mcgoldrick)

For some reason people open up to us - a lot.

They tell us their dreams, their pains, their goals, their wants and needs.

The nature of our business, real estate investing, creates these situations we guess.

And it's good.

It's a privilege to have people ask for your opinion and we take it very seriously.

And often, face-to-face, it can be difficult to give straight answers because you feel like you're crushing their dreams.

But, thankfully, as we're getting older I guess... Both of us are much more comfortable calling it like it is.

And here's what we see with many-many-many people:

They are 100% not angry enough.

They want to accomplish big things but don't have nearly the amount of energy to pull any of it off.

Although they think they want to quit their jobs and start their own business they don't want to:

- do what it takes

- spend the money it takes (this is a big one)

- take the slack from family and friends that it takes

- put in the hours it takes

And they'll go on and on, for years and years, talking to us about the same idea, the same goals, the same dreams.

But get nowhere.

Listen up very closely...

Although most people think that setting a goal that they want is the path to success - from our experience it's not.

Having a goal you want to achieve is not enough.

If there's no energy behind the goal you won't have enough fuel for lift-off.

You get much more power and energy when you are pissed off and are acting out against your current state of affairs.

So you can be "for" running your business and "for" creating financial freedom all-freaking-day-long.

But until the fire in your belly burns so strongly in frustration against-your-current-state, not much will happen.

Having your "big why" as many goal setting programs teach us to have is not enough in our opinion.

You must get mad.

Don't believe us?

Look at Google.

Does anyone remember Alta Vista or Lycos or Infoseek?

These were all the search engines that existed back in the 1990's.

You couldn't find anything on the web.

It was like winning the lottery if your search results actually turned up anything close to what you were looking for.

This obviously frustrated Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

They were against the current state of search and a billion dollar company was born.

Sure we can all argue that their intentions were to "organize all the world's information" or whatever the mission statement says... But our gut tells us they got pretty frustrated and then took action.

Look at Richard Branson.

He has a very storied entrepreneurial background but if we take just one of his businesses, Virgin Airlines... Look at how it was born... Out of pure frustration with a cancelled flight and then frustration with the airline industry as a whole.

He despised the state of the business and it bothered him so much that he took action.

He felt he was righting a wrong.

If you talk to anyone that you would consider a success, you'll likely find that when they started there is a story around frustration and general anger.

Look, we're not getting on our high horse and judging anyone here... Because we're guilty of having a lack of anger and frustration around our own goals.

For example, we've both wanted to start a unique new stream of income totally separate from real estate for at least 18 months now.

What have we accomplished... Zip.

Why?

Because the cash from our other streams of income is giving us a pretty comfy and cozy life.

There's not nearly enough fire, passion or urgency for this new project.

Even though we love the idea.

Seriously, we love it and it's a great idea. Our "big why" is really big and yet, still nothing has happened.

We're finally self-aware enough to recognize this in ourselves and in others.

We personally operate best with our backs against the wall... When we have to come out swinging.

And it seems to us that most of us are like this.

Take our mission statement that we lovely dearly:  Your Life. Your Terms.

It's "for" living life on your own terms. The way you want to live.

You know what it was born out of?

Being hugely against living our lives on someone else's terms in our 9-5 jobs.

We were against that in a big way!

And one day we were against it so much we quit.

Now before you quit a job or change course entirely, here's what you need to know.

Without a bonafide system for making money, anger alone is not enough for you succeed unless you have very deep pockets.

Here's what we mean...

Google attracted investors. Branson was great at getting access to cash.

Before we quit our jobs we studied marketing for years.

We studied sales for years.

We understood that we needed a process to get customers and that the process would require money or time.

And because we needed to move quickly... I quit my job with a mortgage, my wife at home with our four-year-old and our eight-month-old... We spent a lot of money to get customers for our new business.

The combination of fire-in-our-bellies + customer-acquisition-process together made it all work for us.

Many people do have the anger necessary to fuel their passion but they don't have the plan.

Others, like us over the last 18-months, have the plan all mapped out but don't have the necessary fiery passion required for lift-off of the new income stream.

So maybe this self-indulgent little rant is more for us than anyone else.

Maybe it's time we need to get pissed off again.

And maybe you can use this little chat as an excuse to get angry yourself... In a very positive Canadian type of way 😉

Until next time ... Your Life! Your Terms!