Time Really Does Fly

I was on vacation the last few days and I decided not to shave. I woke up five days later and I looked at myself and I had a full beard. I don’t think I’ve ever grown facial hair. But what really stood out to me the most, was that my beard was gray. I’m only 36 years old and I have a gray beard already. Wow, time truly flies.

I want to make sure you’re making the most of your time. Because I know that I am doing whatever I can to make the most of mine.

My business partner Chris and I always relate back to the Chinese proverb that says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” That’s something we think about all the time because there is no better time to do something than now.

Look back one, five, ten years ago, where were you? And where are you today? I’ll bet you are significantly further along today than you were that many years ago—which isn’t that long ago. Where do you want to be one year, five years, ten years from now? My guess is you can be significantly further than you can even imagine or dream by putting just a few things in place on a regular basis.

This relates to a topic that we talk about all the time. Imagine a snowball—it’s small, it’s round, it’s little. And as it grows and rolls down a hill, it builds momentum and it gains more snow, and it builds and it builds and it builds. This is a good analogy for an email database. When you start an email database, it is not sexy. You have one or two email addresses in your database and you can’t really do much. If you yell out the window you will probably attract more people than you can email. But over time, you add more and more people, and next thing you know, you have a gigantic database.

Or maybe it’s like buying real estate. Buying one real estate property as a rental portfolio isn’t that sexy. But if you keep paying down the mortgage, next thing you know, you wake up five, ten years later and maybe the mortgage is paid off and you have a free and clear asset worth $100,000. There are a lot of examples like this.

So make sure you don’t look back and say to yourself, “Wow, I wish I did this then,” or “I wish I did that then.”
Anything you wish, do it today! Do it now! Start small. Small isn’t sexy. Big is sexy. But you have to start small and it ends up getting big.

I don’t like thinking too long term because some of my long term goals are huge—hundreds of millions of dollars or this car or that house or this luxury thing. You paint that picture. But if you paint that picture, and you actually work to strive towards those goals in your business and your personal life, they do happen. It’s one baby step after another.

Time truly flies. Take that example of my gray beard. When you wake up and you grow your next beard, make sure you’ve accomplished everything that you want.