It has often been said that “The first million is the hardest” to earn. I think that is a rather accurate statement. Reaching a target number in any category is difficult. What I want you to think about is how that concept applies to just about anything in life.
Think of other goals or milestones or skills in your life that took effort to reach. Your first job perhaps? Maybe your first website or first time painting a room. Once you’ve done it the first time, each successive time gets easier and easier.
The economist/philosopher/priest Adam Smith pointed out that the more specialized a worker becomes, they produce more and the quality of their work increases. I truly believe that statement and it goes directly towards the premise of this post. As you get more skilled a certain task, it becomes easier and your output is better.
Back to the title. Rather than shooting for a million, why not look at other goals. Simple things like adding one additional customer to your company per week. Once you’ve succeeded at that, adding two per week is just that much easier. I’ve been getting quite a rhythm going recently in two specific areas.
First is blogging. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m working with my business partner on placeshifting.org. I was able to purchase the domain, setup hosting install the blog software, create email addresses, FTP logins and guest access all within about half an hour. Think about that. I went from an idea to a full-blown web presence, complete with images, ads and content in about the same amount of time it takes to watch a TV show. Why was I able to do it so quickly? I’ve done it dozens of times before. At this point it’s almost automatic. That brings me to the second project.
I’ve been working in a variety of e-commerce environments over the years, but I’ve never built an entire shopping cart system from the ground up. I have a grasp of things like credit card processing, merchant accounts, inventory management, advertising, web hosting, etc., but not actually setting up the software. So I dove in. On a recommendation I went with the CRE Loaded version of osCommerce, a free shopping cart system. I sure like free things. It took me two days of pounding my head against the wall, numerous calls to tech support and a few favors, but you know what? It’s up and running. And here’s the weird thing. Not two days after the first was setup, I was asked to create a site for a friend of mine. From the two days of head pounding, I’m now down to about 5 hours of minor hair-pulling. Not bad when you really think about it.
The point I’m trying to make here is that there really are no barriers to what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it. And the best part is, when you have to perform the same task again, it gets easier and easier. So don’t focus on that million, but rather on creating an indexed PDF file, or getting a thousand bucks in your savings account. Most importantly, try to focus on tasks that are useful if repeated. Reading the Encyclopedia once may make the second time a breeze, but what value is that to your life or career?
