FIG. 14 Choose your box—choose your outcome.
“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only
to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the
other somewhat higher.”
— Thomas Henry Huxley
Big gives you the best chance for extraordinary results today and
tomorrow. When Arthur Guinness set up his first brewery, he signed a
9,000-year lease. When J. K. Rowling conceived Harry Potter, she
thought big and envisioned seven years at Hogwarts before she
penned the first chapter of the first of seven books. Before Sam
Walton opened the first Wal-Mart, he envisioned a business so big
that he felt he needed to go ahead and set up his future estate plan to
minimize inheritance taxes. By thinking big, long before he made it
big, he was able to save his family an estimated $11 to $13 billion in
estate taxes. Transferring the wealth of one of the greatest companies
ever built as tax-free as possible requires thinking big from the
beginning.
Thinking big isn’t just about business. Candace Lightner started
Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980 after her daughter was killed
in a hit-and-run accident by a drunk driver. Today, MADD has saved
more than 300,000 lives. As a six-year-old in 1998, Ryan Hreljac was
inspired by stories told by his teacher to help bring clean water to
Africa. Today his foundation, Ryan’s Well, has improved conditions
and helped bring safe water to over 750,000 people in 16 countries.
Derreck Kayongo recognized both the waste and hidden value in
getting new soap into hotels every day. So in 2009 he created the
Global Soap Project, which has provided more than 250,000 bars of
soap in 21 countries, helping combat child mortality by simply giving
impoverished people the chance to wash their hands.
Asking big questions can be daunting. Big goals can seem
unattainable at first. Yet how many times have you set out to do