Genie of the Lamp
How to make your wishes become reality.
Do you think I’d just write this stuff if I hadn’t seen it work? Of course not. This is guaranteed.
A word of caution though, be careful what you wish for.
Nearly 20 years ago I set about to craft the vision for three important objectives I wanted to see manifest. All of them came to fruition.
I also have lived with the consequences of making more money than I was prepared to manage responsibly, getting into a bad marriage and perpetuating my semi-nomadic life experience.
Then again, my purpose has never been simply to succeed materially, but rather to understand life in all of it’s myriad forms.
The Gorilla
It all began back in Cleveland, Ohio at the Weatherhead School of Management [Case Western Reserve University].
A local business hero, The Gorilla, taught a course in Strategy based largely on his own experiences as a Entrepreneur worth multiple hundreds of millions. The business community revered The Gorilla and years later I spent some time hanging out at The Gorilla Group meetings, a group built to spur entrepreneurship and inspired by his teachings. That’s where I got connected to some of the people I formed my first business with.
But, you care about how to get success, so let’s get back to the story.
In one of his sessions, The Gorilla told a story about a super successful, multiple times over Billionaire he’d had the great fortune to have lunch with. During the lunch he asked, “Please, you have to tell me, what’s the secret to you success?”.
The Billionaire picked up a spoon from the table, I’m sure it was silver, held it up above the pure white table cloth and said, “When I drop this spoon, you can be certain it will hit the tablecloth right?”.
“Of course! So what secret is that powerful?”.
“Well, the secret is … Three Ring Binders.”.
“The Ring Binders?????”.
Three Ring Binders
That’s right. The secret is Three Ring Binders.
And, the way it works is like this.
Pick a Big Goal that takes time to achieve, typically 3-4 years is ideal.
You can do this with a few Big Goals at a time but no more than 3-4 to get started.
For each Big Goal set up a 3-Ring Binder
On the Top of Page One write out your Big Goal clearly in a short paragraph.
Underneath write 25 Things that are Stopping You from Achieving the Goal [Blockers]
Rank the 25 Blockers and pick the Top 5 most significant ones.
For each Top Blocker add a New Page, write out a description for the Blocker at the Top and then list 25 Actions you can take to remove the Blocker.
Prioritize the Actions and develop a Game Plan to start working on them.
How you go about executing your Game Plan can vary person to person, based on the available time you have and your own Productivity Systems.
Refer back to your Three Ring Binders regularly.
Theory & Insights
As I mentioned, I tested this out, and it definitely works.
But why?
My theory is that it’s about Gravity. Pushing ourselves toward a goal works to some extent, however when an object is pushed and hits another object it gets deflected.
Gravity on the other hand pulls us towards it’s center. By removing Objects or Obstacles that stand in the way, we’ll naturally arrive at the Goal with almost effortless efficiency.
This same concept shows up in advanced Business Practices as well. For example, when building a Product, SaaS or Startup businesses people throw around the term Derisking a lot. The essence of this comes from the fact that it’s impossible to plan perfectly for success but by removing the obvious points of failure, your odds go up a ton.
To be honest, I didn’t spend a huge amount of time focused on the goals. I cleared the path and worked hard at the things I needed to do, such as making money at my job or taking care of clients when I started my first business.
Someone with more discipline, focus and organization than I have would likely progress faster and got even better results, though on the business end, going from $0 - $3.7 million annual services revenue, fully bootstrapped, in less than 4 years isn’t all that bad.
Wrapping It All Up
As I mentioned at the start of this article, using the Three Ring Binders will grant your wishes. However, what you get may not be exactly what you expect, or may come with consequences and new challenges.
In my case I built a successfully business that produced a lot of cash flow. It also burnt me out and created a host of life challenges that I had not really prepared for.
The next time around, instead of, “I want to build a multi-million dollar business.”, I’ll probably write it more like “I want to build or acquire a multi-million dollar cash generating machine that runs itself.”.
Would love to hear your thoughts and comments!