We all know that the pursuit of dreams and goals is one of the paths to riches. In my Rich Habits study, there were essentially three groups of self-made millionaires:
- SAVERS – Individuals who saved and invested their way to wealth.
- PUBLIC COMPANY EXECUTIVES – Individuals who worked for publicly-held companies and became senior executives.
- ENTREPRENEURS – Individuals who pursued a dream.
Those entrepreneurs who pursued a dream accumulated, by far, the most wealth ($7.4 million vs. $3.4 million and $3.6 million) and in the shortest period of time (12 years vs. 32 years and 25 years).
Why were entrepreneurs able to accumulate more wealth in a shorter period of time?
The answer is – Entrepreneurs had no choice but to forge good habits or fail.
You see, dreams, goals and habits are interconnected.
When you pursue a dream and the goals behind every dream, you must figure out what works and what does not work. This is a trial and error process. You experiment, fail, figure out what you did wrong, make adjustments and experiment again.
Entrepreneurs continue to experiment until they get it right. Once they have the right formula, then they turn that correct way of doing something into a habit. They continue this process until they forge numerous success habits, which enable them to keep moving forward towards the realization of their dream.
Pursuing dreams and goals forces you to create good daily success habits. And, because they’re habits, they stick with you forever. This is why, if you were to take away the wealth of self-made millionaire-entrepreneurs, like a phoenix, they will rise from the ashes.
Steve Jobs, for example, went through nearly all of the $117 million he had after he was fired from Apple. In his biography, he acknowledged that in 1994 he was one year away from losing everything. He eventually rebounded and when he died he was reportedly worth $10.2 billion.
In 2002, Elon Musk received a windfall of $180 million, after taxes, when eBay acquired his Pay Pal stock. Musk took his $180 million and invested it into three ventures: SpaceX ($100 million), Tesla ($70 million) and Solar City ($10 million). At the end of 2008, Musk was out of money to help fund his fledgling companies. He was able to rebound and is now reportedly worth $20.7 billion.
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