At the end of our meeting today, sitting catty corner at the bar, my client said to me, “I have just one more question for you.”
“Hit me,” I said.
He paused for a moment, his face muscles tightened and he got a serious look in his eye, then he said, “Am I thinking big enough?”
Without hesitation, I blurted, “NO.”
Watching his non-verbals I could see he was jolted, but he was pleased to get the answer he wanted.
We both knew that if he’s asking the question, then the answer is “no.”
You know when you are thinking big. You question when you are thinking small.
In starting Amazon, Jeff Bezos never failed the test of thinking small.
He started small with one product, selling books, but he was never thinking small.
Michelangelo said, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
I have met many men and women who have achieved great success, but few who feel they have gone as far as they can go. As my old trainer used to say, “If you’re not puking in the corner, you can stand up and fight.”
Last night another client told me, “I want people to write books about me. I want them to say, ‘I don’t know how he did it, but what he did is unbelievable.'”
He has no idea what we’ll cook up, but he has the taste of BIG.
I can get behind that. Every day of the week I get behind that.
Today I spoke with a fellow who told me that he was planning to get on the phone and beg me to take him on as a client.
It is true that based on the conversation I expected to have that even begging like Oliver Twist he would have failed, but as soon as he told me he was thinking big and has a mission to be a force for good, I was in.
‘Nuff said.
These are the people I want in my life. They are already playing big, but they want to see how far they can take it.
With that attitude it doesn’t matter how far you get.
As Norman Vincent Peale said, “Shoot for the moon because even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”