Don’t Stop With Just One Goal

The most successful people often succeed many times over in multiple businesses. It is true that they have failed as well and learned from their mistakes but that is a post for another time. I’m talking about people like Elon Musk who are not happy with being a tech guru, but starting company after company to push the boundaries like Tesla and Space X. He is succeeding in two entirely different fields. Why do successful people take so many risks with so many business opportunities. It’s because they enjoy the pursuit of the challenge more than the goal itself. Think of it this way, you work hard to make your donut shop the best in town. Once you have succeeded you just start to coast. You become bored because there is nothing more for you to achieve. So you decide to start a flower shop as well because it’s entirely outside of your knowledge area, but hey, you like flowers. There is a thing called the Peter Principle which is that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence”. For example I am great at being on the assembly line at putting together widgets. I get promoted to team lead and teach others how to assemble widgets. Eventually they say I am awesome and that I would make a great manager. However, I have no managerial experience so I don’t do so well at it. So that’s as far as I will be promoted. I have reached my level of incompetence. There I sit in a job I stink at and the people under me suffer. Well successful people scoff at that idea. They reach the pinnacle of what they want to do and then start again with a new project. They take their lessons they learned from their previous business venture and tweek them and apply them to their next one in hopes of doing a better job. So don’t be like Peter, be like Elon Musk.