Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: How I Went From Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur by Ryan Blair

Author:Ryan Blair [Blair, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9781101517055
Amazon: B004IYISMQ
Barnesnoble: B004IYISMQ
Goodreads: 12022207
Publisher: Portfolio
Published: 2011-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

GET REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE

Closely related to your tolerance for risk is your willingness to sacrifice. You need to be able to stomach a large amount of uncertainty in your daily life, and you need to be willing to pare down to a minimal existence for as long as it takes to reach a point of sustainability in your company, which means at the very least a year or more. You have to determine just how uncomfortable you can stand to be, forfeiting not only luxury items or small indulgences, but also forgoing your physical comfort. You need to consider this seriously because without a willingness to sacrifice, you are never going to achieve your business goals.

Sacrifice is a word we tend to hear a lot about from politicians, but it’s not something most of us keep in the forefront of our minds every day. However, that is going to change when you enter the world of entrepreneurship. Sacrifice is going to be echoing in your head constantly as you make decisions about what you can afford, what you need, and what you’re going to have to plan for.

There are several steps of sacrifice you’ll have to take even before you formulate your business plan, starting with how you think about money in your personal life.

I think most middle-class Americans are in a holding pattern of comfort. They have a desire to keep up appearances, and then those appearances take on such a semblance of reality that the people living them believe they have to borrow money to maintain a lifestyle that was phony in the first place.

When I was growing up in Southern California, wealth was all around me. Even while living as a normal middle-class kid until the age of thirteen and then as a poor street kid for several years after that, I saw how the most successful business people, investors, and other professionals lived. Their lifestyle was what I wanted, and I was always curious about what it would take to get from where I was to where they were. What was different about the way they thought that opened them up to such success?

By the time I was in my early twenties and was back in the middle class, I had established a pattern of living that seemed very different from my neighbors. Whenever one of them earned a large amount of money, a new car or a new boat would inevitably show up in the driveway. Maybe a woman would be flashing some new jewelry or a man would be sporting a Rolex.

I fell into that trap more than once myself, purchasing a flashy new car that would stretch my budget or taking a lavish vacation with my raise or bonus. It feels good to spend money—I would feel like I had finally attained the standard of living I’d always wanted . . . until the bill came due. And then I realized the biggest difference between me and those people I had wanted so badly to emulate: they could afford to live in the manner I was only pretending to.

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