Five figure thinking

I’ve reached an age where the reflection starts on how I got to be the way I am; what early experiences led to certain personality traits and so on.  And I think it’s the same with my approach to business.

Unfortunately.

See, the longer you have a job, I think, the harder it is to let go of that mindset.  There are tons of great educational opportunities when you’re employed, to say nothing of the networking, but through it all you’re likely to be immersed in five figure thinking.

Or six figure thinking, if that’s where you’re at, but I went with five because most people start out in that bracket, and I’m a sucker for alliteration.

Five figure thinking isn’t going to get you to six, seven, or eight figures.  I’ve had coaches who’ve suggested it takes a different attitude and plan for each of those stages, and I believe it.

Five figure thinking is being given tasks to do instead of choosing tasks to stop doing.

Five figure thinking is measuring your contribution in a day by how many hours of sheer effort you personally put in.

Five figure thinking involves small, safe numbers.

The trouble with five figure thinking is that it’s paired with, and masked by, seven figure dreams.  But dreams without an execution path are just that, and you can keep them, nice and safe, for decades without any real progress.

So how to get out?  How does one graduate, as it were?  I’m looking at coaching and training from people a figure or two ahead of me, combined with studying others through articles and biographies.  The catch to all those is that there’s always an agenda, and it can be hard to get the right answer that isn’t self-serving, however well-intentioned it might be.

Or maybe that’s just five figure skepticism.  We’ll see.

Photo by Michael Arnold