This weekend, I’ve been on e-mail with a friend who’s struggling to have a breakthrough at work and I told him this story which I just had to share with you. It’s how I made $500,000 in one weekend back in 1988. it was Victoria Weekend, May 21, 22 and 23.
I started my first company in February of that year. I was so successful that we were operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had to do something. I decided to automate the digital printing process for CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) files.
I worked 44 hours over 3 days. Literally only stopping to sleep and eat.
44 hours over 3 days. That’s +/- 15 hours a day over a 3-day long weekend.
My friends at the time spent the LONG WEEKEND going out, partying, sleeping in, going to dinner with family, cleaning out the garage, washing their cars, shopping, etc.
I invested in myself and my company. It didn’t kill me (since I am alive to tell the story).
The moral of the story is that I invested 44 hours that weekend and over the next 3 years I sold my ‘SuperCad System’ to over 50 companies across North America that generated more than $500,000 in sales from that ONE WEEKEND OF EFFORT.
7 years after-the-fact I reviewed the SOURCE CODE files and 90% of the files had NEVER BEEN UPDATED = that’s how good the programming was THAT WEEKEND.
What does this mean to you and my friend who is struggling to get a breakthrough?
You are your greatest investment – if you don’t invest in yourself, no one else will. BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CAN!
If you don’t push yourself, you’ll never do great things.
If you don’t do great things you’ll never get the rewards.
It’s a vicious circle that STARTS AND STOPS WITH YOU.
Now to be crystal clear – I AM NOT ADVOCATING to do this EVERY WEEKEND – God forbid you’d want THAT MUCH SUCCESS…
I am just advocating that if you are struggling with a BIG BREAKTHROUGH, take care of it NOW rather than later and REAP THE REWARDS.
Just in case you thought this was a one-off, it’s not.
I completed my Doctoral Thesis in LESS than 3 months.
By the way, my 500-page thesis included more than 1,200 references, 46 summary tables, 19 figures and a whopping 8 appendices! The file size was so big, Microsoft Word kept crashing forcing me to put the appendices in a separate file! My thesis was reviewed by two International examiners and accepted as-is without a request for any revisions!
3 months.
Now, I was on a sabbatical at the time, but I often worked 36 to 42 hours straight without sleep. I created 110 MAJOR revisions and DOZENS of updates for each one of those revisions, updating and refining it more than 1,000 times.
That was a MONUMENTAL EFFORT is a very short period of time – MOST Ph.D. students spend 2 to 3 YEARS writing their thesis, that’s 24 to 36 months = 8 to 12 times LONGER than I took.
Bottom line: When you COMPRESS your learning, you also IMPROVE your comprehension and SKILL LEVEL.
Think about it.
If you play a sport EVERY DAY for 4 weeks – HOW GOOD do you get? I think you’d agree you’d be a LOT BETTER than playing once every two weeks for a year…
Guess what? That’s about the same amount of TIME, but NOT anywhere the same result.
So what are YOU going to do?
The ONLY person who will ever know if YOU let yourself down is…. you.
Psst!
If you have been to Antony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within event – that’s a 4-day weekend event that changes lives… Why not change your own life THIS WEEKEND?!?!
I agree with this post 100%. If I dont believe I can be succesful no one else will. I”m in the process of getting my business off the ground but after reading this blog i know what i have been doing wrong. I have been dragging my feet. Its time to put 100% into my business and stop working for everyone else. Currently I have 3 jobs which leaves me zero time for my business. At the end of the day if i stick to this routine this will be my permanent routine