How to Make a Million Dollars – Understanding the quotes

by Marshall Brain

Let’s summarize:

“If you try, there is some chance of succeeding.” If you don’t try, obviously, there is not. You’ve got to be playing the game in order to win.

“Those who keep trying eventually do succeed.” That is a fact of life. Luck favors the prepared, and it also favors the persistent.

You will hear people say, “Nine out of every 10 businesses fail, so why bother?” Here is another way to look at that — the chance of success is 10 percent. You start nine businesses that fail and then the tenth one succeeds and you make a million bucks — those are damn good odds. Compare that to a lottery, where, for example, 9,999,999 out of every 10,000,000 tickets fail. And tens of millions of people play the lottery even though the odds are that bad. Starting a business is not as easy as buying a lottery ticket, sure, but keep in mind that, “Anything you practice gets easier.”

Let me repeat that, because it is very important: “Anything you practice gets easier.” The more you practice something, the easier it gets. Take video games. How many of you play video games? Come on — Everyone plays video games. Admit it. So let’s take Halo. The first time you played Halo, how well did you play? Be honest. You sucked. The first time you play a video game you suck. That’s true of just about anything you try the first time. First time you rode a bike you sucked. You fell off. First time you ice skated you sucked. And so on.

So you play Halo and you suck. Now what? You play some more, and you get better. And you play some more and you get better again. And pretty soon you are pretty good at Halo. Practice makes perfect. It is true in anything.

How long does it take someone to get really good at Halo? Be honest. A person who plays video games might “invest” 50, 100 hours of practice in a game to get good at it. It is a fact that the more you practice, the better you get. And the easier it gets.

So the first business you start, it is going to be hard. You don’t know anything. You will make mistakes. You will try things that don’t work. Whatever. But the second business you start is a lot easier. And the next one is easier still. Right now you look at “starting a business” and it looks hard. That’s because you’ve never done it before. You haven’t practiced. Simply start practicing and it will become trivial eventually, just like a video game.

You are never going to get rich practicing video games. What I would suggest is that you stop playing video games. And get rid of your television. Take the music off your iPod.

Raising Money?

If you are reading these pages and you are wondering how you can raise money for your new business, this article will help: How to Raise Money from Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists

Instead go get some books-on-CD that talk about starting businesses. I’ll give you some examples at the end of this talk. Put those on your iPod and listen to them over and over again. The first time you listen, they might not make much sense. That’s because all of the material is new. The second time through the book it will make a lot more sense. And then the third time you will understand what is going on. Practice makes perfect.

Now you are starting to get somewhere. You have taken some steps. You are learning about starting a business from the books you are listening to. Let’s look at the environment…

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