UlTImATE SUccESS GUIdEInvest YoUR hUMAn CAPItAlWhen you start your new business, the most valuable assets you have
are your energy, imagination, character and discipline. This is what you
use to get in there and do the work and get the results. Your assets are
your abilities to make the key decisions, to get out there face-to-face
with customers and make the sales. Your most valuable assets are your
abilities to follow through on your commitments and promises.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that, “A great institution is the length
and shadow of a single man.”
Even a small organization or company is the length and shadow of a
single person. You are your business. The business is you. The business
can never be more or less, better or worse than you are, on an hour-
by-hour, minute-by-minute basis. The business is really a mirror image
reflection of your character and ability. Your business tells you, and the
world, who you really are.
More than 30,000 businesses were studied over a twenty-year period
to determine their reasons for success and failure. The statistics that
emerged from these studies seem to hold true for almost all businesses
over the years.
In general, they found that it takes about two years for a new business
to break even and start to make a profit. Most business that fail do so in
the first two years. They run out of money and credit before they figure
out how to earn more than they are spending.
During the first two-year period, the business will suffer mostly losses
that will have to be made up from the energy and resources of the entre-
preneur. In the second two years, the business will start to make a profit.
These profits will go into paying back the debts and losses that were
incurred in the first two years.
After four years, the business will start to generate net profits, having
paid back all its start up cost. It will break into the clear and the entre-
preneur will start to make good money. But it is only after the seventh
year of entrepreneurship that the business starts to be really successful
and the entrepreneur begins to make an excellent living.
Most of the highest paid people in America, and most self-made mil-