GOLD! Think big and then think bigger than that.

[Kak]

https://www.texascentral.com/about/

This got me going today (my poor wife ) I think it’s interesting.

The facts are...
-The project will cost upwards of $15 billion.
-It is a private Texas based company and it has never built a high speed railroad before.
-They have the finances to complete the project.
-The project is underway and 100 percent approved on the regulatory side of things.
-There is zero chance that any of these guys put up the 15 billion.

So how are they involved in such a large scale entrepreneurship endeavor?

Like I’ve said before, they became the expert. They traveled around the world and talked with the entities that build, run and maintain high speed rails. They learned everything there was to know about them and brought it to Texas where they had an answer to every question an investor might of had. They raised enough money to finance a 15 billion dollar railroad. They are building a wild dream basically from a level competence and the leadership to surround themselves with the right people.

Are you on the millionaire fastlane? Or are you, as @GPM put so eloquently, on “The thousandaire fastlane! Make as much as a corporate job with 5x the stress and 100% of the risk!”

This should be a HUGE lesson in thinking big. These guys did and they put their pants on one leg at a time just like you. No one is born an expert at anything. Start thinking BIG!

 

[Paolo Rizzo]

https://www.texascentral.com/about/

This got me going today (my poor wife ) I think it’s interesting.

The facts are...
-The project will cost upwards of $15 billion.
-It is a private Texas based company and it has never built a high speed railroad before.
-They have the finances to complete the project.
-The project is underway and 100 percent approved on the regulatory side of things.
-There is zero chance that any of these guys put up the 15 billion.

So how are they involved in such a large scale entrepreneurship endeavor?

Like I’ve said before, they became the expert. They traveled around the world and talked with the entities that build, run and maintain high speed rails. They learned everything there was to know about them and brought it to Texas where they had an answer to every question an investor might of had. They raised enough money to finance a 15 billion dollar railroad. They are building a wild dream basically from nothing much more a level of competence and the leadership to surround themselves with the right people.

This should be a HUGE lesson in thinking big. These guys did and they put their pants on one leg at a time just like you. No one is born an expert at anything. Start thinking BIG!

I agree that thinking big is essential and it’s something most of us overlook.

But their CEO was the Vice President of a global engineering company and their president has 25 years experience as an executive.

It’s important to not underestimate their experience and connections they would have obtained over the years.

But it shows what it possible once people believe in you.

 

[Kak]

But their CEO was the Vice President of a global engineering company and their president has 25 years experience as an executive.

Still not a railroad tycoon or a CEO for all of those 25 years. So what? The guy has leadership experience, you can build that too.

I’m not underestimating anyone. I’m applauding their ambition. I didn’t call this easy. This was probably 10 years of hard work behind the scenes before they even went public with their plans.

It’s important to not underestimate their experience and connections they would have obtained over the years.

You’re right, you need tons of experience to do anything worth a shit. Back to Amazon so I can upload my toilet paper holders to FBA. Maybe I’ll make 60k this year if my customers give me good reviews.

 

[Raoul Duke]

Astro Teller, CEO of X – How to Think 10x Bigger

 

[NanoDrake]

@Kak
From your posts I always thought that you think BIG, that in order to do something remarkable you need to think even BIGGER than what is wildly accepted.

Thanks for reminding me that

 

[Dylan in Africa]

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

 

[Vigilante]

@Kak
From your posts I always thought that you think BIG, that in order to do something remarkable you need to think even BIGGER than what is wildly accepted.

Thanks for reminding me that

He does. When I started reading this post I literally thought it might be one of his businesses.

 

[GPM]

But their CEO was the Vice President of a global engineering company and their president has 25 years experience as an executive.

It’s important to not underestimate their experience and connections they would have obtained over the years.

This just plain old hurts my head. "But". One of the worst words in the English language.

Let's paint 2 pictures. Mr. CEO and VP enjoyed their jobs. They spent 25 years working their way up the corporate ladder to eventually reach their coveted positions. They were mighty impressed with how their lives had turned out and continued to pat themselves on the back, all the while collecting their million dollar salaries, and retiring with their multi-million dollar retirement package. Nice work fellows. Great work, and I am sure you led excellent lives.

Picture #2. Mr. CEO and VP were mighty pleased with themselves. After working for 25 years and making it to the top of the corporate ladder, they decided that they needed to think bigger. Running a global engineering company and working as an executive no longer seemed like it was as large of a goal as it once was. Time to think bigger. Utilizing the experience that they had gained in the corporate world, and leveraging their contacts to their full potential, they started to look global. They got out of their comfort zone and interfaced with the best and brightest of the world, and came up with a plan to raise 15 billion dollars on a mega-rail project.

Fast forward 7 years. The project is a roaring success. Not one to sit on their asses, Mr. CEO and VP are taking the experience gained on this project, as well as the massive contact list of experts and investors, and blowing this up into another project, this one with a raised investment of 45 billion dollars.

One life sets up a single family for perhaps a generation or two of comfortable living, with essentially a "9-5" job. The other life sets up generational change which creates family empires and dynasty's which will have the potential to impact millions far into the future.

The choice is no ones but yours.

 

[Real Deal Denver]

Like I’ve said before, they became the expert.

So damn inspiring, I am having trouble breathing!

Thanks for this superb post.

 

[Paolo Rizzo]

This just plain old hurts my head. "But". One of the worst words in the English language.

Let's paint 2 pictures. Mr. CEO and VP enjoyed their jobs. They spent 25 years working their way up the corporate ladder to eventually reach their coveted positions. They were mighty impressed with how their lives had turned out and continued to pat themselves on the back, all the while collecting their million dollar salaries, and retiring with their multi-million dollar retirement package. Nice work fellows. Great work, and I am sure you led excellent lives.

Picture #2. Mr. CEO and VP were mighty pleased with themselves. After working for 25 years and making it to the top of the corporate ladder, they decided that they needed to think bigger. Running a global engineering company and working as an executive no longer seemed like it was as large of a goal as it once was. Time to think bigger. Utilizing the experience that they had gained in the corporate world, and leveraging their contacts to their full potential, they started to look global. They got out of their comfort zone and interfaced with the best and brightest of the world, and came up with a plan to raise 15 billion dollars on a mega-rail project.

Fast forward 7 years. The project is a roaring success. Not one to sit on their asses, Mr. CEO and VP are taking the experience gained on this project, as well as the massive contact list of experts and investors, and blowing this up into another project, this one with a raised investment of 45 billion dollars.

One life sets up a single family for perhaps a generation or two of comfortable living, with essentially a "9-5" job. The other life sets up generational change which creates family empires and dynasty's which will have the potential to impact millions far into the future.

The choice is no ones but yours.

Spot on. You’ve explained that in a way that has made me look at this completely different.

Perhaps I was projecting my own lack of abilities/experience onto them as I haven’t had much success yet.

Thanks!

 

[Kak]

Perhaps I was projecting my own lack of abilities/experience onto them as I haven’t had much success yet.

Your opinions on this don’t matter. The facts about the company building this railroad are the same no matter what you or anyone says about them. There are only two options here: Take it as inspiration or find a way to make an excuse about why it isn’t inspiring to poor you and build the walls higher.

You are responsible for your “lack”. Do something about it or continue “lacking.”

 

[Vigilante]

Your opinions on this don’t matter. The facts about the company building this railroad are the same no matter what you or anyone anyone says about them. There are only two options here: Take it as inspiration or find a way to make an excuse about why it isn’t inspiring to poor you and build the walls higher.

You are responsible for your “lack”. Do something about it or continue “lacking.”

When I worked for Walmart corporate, they forced us to take the "but" thinking out of our vocabulary.

What inevitably follows the "but" is a reason why something can't happen.

"But they had an edge..."
"But it snowed last week and that's why sales are down"
"But I don't have the capital"
"But I work full time"
"But he was born into money"
"But I've never done that before"
"But they've been doing this for 20 years"
"But they have first market movers advantage"
"But that would be a lot of work"
"But I am not sure how to do that"
"But they got lucky"

What if the founder of Walmart had said "I want to do this but KMart is already doing it..." because they were.

 

[TommyZ]

Your opinions on this don’t matter. The facts about the company building this railroad are the same no matter what you or anyone anyone says about them. There are only two options here: Take it as inspiration or find a way to make an excuse about why it isn’t inspiring to poor you and build the walls higher.

You are responsible for your “lack”. Do something about it or continue “lacking.”

Now that
Is awesome

 

[Real Deal Denver]

What if the founder of Walmart had said "I want to do this but KMart is already doing it..." because they were.

Love this sentence. And the last three words are so powerful. I can hear the organ music as they are stated. Bam. Hits em right between the eyes.

Now THAT is writing at its highest level! The left hook you don't see coming, and it knocks you out!

THIS is one that I'm printing out and on the wall it goes!

 

[TonyStark]

Damn, I wanted a hyperloop.

 

[Sagemoney]

When I worked for Walmart corporate, they forced us to take the "but" thinking out of our vocabulary.

What inevitably follows the "but" is a reason why something can't happen.

"But they had an edge..."
"But it snowed last week and that's why sales are down"
"But I don't have the capital"
"But I work full time"
"But he was born into money"
"But I've never done that before"
"But they've been doing this for 20 years"
"But they have first market movers advantage"
"But that would be a lot of work"
"But I am not sure how to do that"
"But they got lucky"

What if the founder of Walmart had said "I want to do this but KMart is already doing it..." because they were.

Your opinions on this don’t matter. The facts about the company building this railroad are the same no matter what you or anyone says about them. There are only two options here: Take it as inspiration or find a way to make an excuse about why it isn’t inspiring to poor you and build the walls higher.

You are responsible for your “lack”. Do something about it or continue “lacking.”

Man.....

Can I hang out with you guys?

 

[Vigilante]

Man.....

Can I hang out with you guys?

You're here. We're here. That's what this place is. Glad you are here.

 

[ZCP]

Man.....

Can I hang out with you guys?

You are here. Now provide value.

 

[Kak]

Damn, I wanted a hyperloop.

Then build one.

 

[Hyrum]

So at what point does "Thinking Bigger" become "Thinking Too Big"?

I've been kicking an idea around for a few months that has loads of potential. But when I start doing financial projections, I get to feeling like Dr. Evil



I get the feeling that if I were to pitch in front of a group of investors, once I start talking about the numbers they'd dismiss it as implausible before I could finish explaining how I arrived at my projections. Any thoughts on how big a project can be before investors stop taking you seriously?

 

[GPM]

So at what point does "Thinking Bigger" become "Thinking Too Big"?

I've been kicking an idea around for a few months that has loads of potential. But when I start doing financial projections, I get to feeling like Dr. Evil

View attachment 19181

I get the feeling that if I were to pitch in front of a group of investors, once I start talking about the numbers they'd dismiss it as implausible before I could finish explaining how I arrived at my projections. Any thoughts on how big a project can be before investors stop taking you seriously?

If your idea really is that great, and it is that big, if you don't do it then I guarantee you that eventually someone else will. They won't have had those hangups and will have gone forward with it. If they can do it, why not you?

 

[Kak]

So at what point does "Thinking Bigger" become "Thinking Too Big"?

I've been kicking an idea around for a few months that has loads of potential. But when I start doing financial projections, I get to feeling like Dr. Evil

View attachment 19181

I get the feeling that if I were to pitch in front of a group of investors, once I start talking about the numbers they'd dismiss it as implausible before I could finish explaining how I arrived at my projections. Any thoughts on how big a project can be before investors stop taking you seriously?

I've been there. I raised millions.

Yes the projections in my discussions with investors were in the hundreds of millions with conservative assumptions. Like you, I felt like a crazy a**hole. Don't.

They can only say no, and some did. DO IT!

 

[Hyrum]

I've been there. I raised millions. The s got added recently.

Yes the projections in my discussions with investors were in the hundreds of millions with conservative assumptions. Like you, I felt like a crazy a**hole. Don't.

They can only say no, and some did. DO IT!

Thanks! Glad to know it's not just me.

 

[AlessioLC]

This thread has to be in the top GOLD, you have to read this.

@Kak Thanks

 

[Kak]

This thread has to be in the top GOLD, you have to read this.

@Kak Thanks

I don't know about GOLD, but I do think it should be an ongoing thread, a reminder at all times to think bigger.

 

[The-J]

To me, it seems the difference is that these guys aren't trying to 'make themselves rich' and make 'F*ck you money'. They're trying to solve a giant problem and become lauded in the history books as men who transformed the way Texans commute to work.

There's a difference in incentive. Dr. Aguilar isn't thinking about how to make a business that 'covers his nut'. He's thinking about how to use the free market to solve a major problem. He may very well have been thinking about this problem for a long time. (Fun fact: Elon Musk was once asked 'I'm 21 what should I do', and he said 'pick a difficult problem that will help humanity if solved and work to solving it', implying that you should devote your life then to solving that problem)

Nobody in this thread without the desire to do something like this will EVER, and I mean EVER, even attempt it. They'll leave this thread thinking 'wow, that IS big' and then go back to working on their Shopify stores.

Oh, by the way, Elon Musk is currently working on 5 of those problems as we speak. Are you working on solving a big problem?

I'll admit, reading this made me rethink my life, despite having read Zero to One and listened to several Elon Musk speeches.

 

[Kak]

To me, it seems the difference is that these guys aren't trying to 'make themselves rich' and make 'f*ck you money'. They're trying to solve a giant problem and become lauded in the history books as men who transformed the way Texans commute to work.

There's a difference in incentive. Dr. Aguilar isn't thinking about how to make a business that 'covers his nut'. He's thinking about how to use the free market to solve a major problem. He may very well have been thinking about this problem for a long time. (Fun fact: Elon Musk was once asked 'I'm 21 what should I do', and he said 'pick a difficult problem that will help humanity if solved and work to solving it', implying that you should devote your life then to solving that problem)

Nobody in this thread without the desire to do something like this will EVER, and I mean EVER, even attempt it. They'll leave this thread thinking 'wow, that IS big' and then go back to working on their Shopify stores.

Oh, by the way, Elon Musk is currently working on 5 of those problems as we speak. Are you working on solving a big problem?

I'll admit, reading this made me rethink my life, despite having read Zero to One and listened to several Elon Musk speeches.

This is an excellent point. It also reminds me of the Simon Senik book Start with why. These guys have a why.

The other point I was trying to make in this thread is that it is POSSIBLE to do these things. Ventures like this arent just for Elon Musk. Regular people we have never heard of can eat the elephant one bite at a time too.

 

[The-J]

This is an excellent point. It also reminds me of the Simon Senik book Start with why. These guys have a why.

The other point I was trying to make in this thread is that it is POSSIBLE to do these things. Ventures like this arent just for Elon Musk. Regular people we have never heard of can eat the elephant one bite at a time too.

That's an excellent point, too.

There's a guy working at Tesla named Andrej Karpathy. He's a smart guy and many probably have never heard about him. People in the 'machine learning' world know who he is, but outside of it? Pretty much unknown.

He's working on the problem of training neural networks in an efficient manner so that they can learn like humans, but with the speed and computing power of computers. His dissertation was on natural language processing. Basically, can AI understand and develop language and instructions like people do, and how can AI teach in a human-learnable way?

Andrej Karpathy is not an entrepreneur... yet. He also makes a salary just like anyone at Tesla (although a fairly hefty one, most likely). But he's working on a very big problem and, in the next 10 years, if you see his name on some amazing AI software suite or something like that, it won't be a surprise.

Maybe we should all be an Andrej. Figure out a big problem to solve, and work with the best and brightest to do so.

 

[The-J]

By the way, here's a tweet Andrej posted last month:

Andrej Karpathy on Twitter

"It is starting to look like deep learning workflows of the future feature autotuned architectures running with autotuned compute schedules across arbitrary backends. I don't know if I should be excited or scared."

I don't know half of these words but I understand what his last sentence means. No one human is going to be able to peer into the 'brain' of a deep neural net and figure out what's going on: it's going to learn almost completely on its own... no real help from humans. Maybe Andrej is getting ahead of himself and is going to doom us all. Or he's going to solve a major human problem. I don't know.

 

[Ray Goslin]

So at what point does "Thinking Bigger" become "Thinking Too Big"?

I've been kicking an idea around for a few months that has loads of potential. But when I start doing financial projections, I get to feeling like Dr. Evil

View attachment 19181

I get the feeling that if I were to pitch in front of a group of investors, once I start talking about the numbers they'd dismiss it as implausible before I could finish explaining how I arrived at my projections. Any thoughts on how big a project can be before investors stop taking you seriously?[/QUOT

So at what point does "Thinking Bigger" become "Thinking Too Big"?

I've been kicking an idea around for a few months that has loads of potential. But when I start doing financial projections, I get to feeling like Dr. Evil

View attachment 19181

I get the feeling that if I were to pitch in front of a group of investors, once I start talking about the numbers they'd dismiss it as implausible before I could finish explaining how I arrived at my projections. Any thoughts on how big a project can be before investors stop taking you seriously?

Ray Goslin says
Elon Musk going to Mars. Is there anything bigger. He doesn't think it can't be done, but rather how can I do it, and then finds the way.[/QUOTE]

 

[MTF]

I like how Andy Frisella puts it: your goals should embarrass you.

You know what realistic goals get? Bullshit realistic lives.

 

[ChristopherMCD]

- Love it! Time to exterminate all of the buts from our vocabulary!

 

[MiLeung]

What's considered "big"? Physically? Should I pursue my dream of creating the worlds largest cheese grater? I think the more appropriate phrase is to think radically different.

 

[NanoDrake]

I suppose we can all throw all our wisdom and knowledge here but...

Two guys are building a bullet train down in Texas, y'all got to witness.

 

[Real Deal Denver]

I like how Andy Frisella puts it: your goals should embarrass you.

You know what realistic goals get? Bullshit realistic lives.

Never heard it quite this way before. Thanks for a jolt - I will use this. Love it!

The link is a gold mine that I will be taking some time to relish.

 

[TYLER WALL]

This is something that I've been thinking/doing a lot lately.

I have a project that I'm working on that has a scale and scope that I've already established (on paper). I've been working off this for months.

Just recently, I thought just that - Think BIG and then think BIGGER. Who else can I serve? Who else would benefit from this? What other avenues can I take it down? Are there any cross streets and intersections with other existing businesses or ideas that I can cross-pollinate?

What I came up with is much BIGGER. Yes, it adds more to the project and creation, but I see these new areas as rich opportunities.

Guess what? I'm going to discover more too as I start travelling down these roads. It is easy to come up with an idea and try to stay in the lanes and confines of whatever that is by looking and travelling straight ahead. Just remember there's much more on the horizon and we have a periphery for a reason.

 

[Kak]

What's considered "big"? Physically? Should I pursue my dream of creating the worlds largest cheese grater? I think the more appropriate phrase is to think radically different.

Really?

You missed the point entirely .

 

[ChrisR]

This thread is incredible! I'm so grateful for this community and threads like this.

 

[MTF]

@Kak, I actually have a question for you regarding your thought process...

What's your thinking process when you're working on one opportunity (or it's already working quite well for you) and you get an opportunity to work on something new that can be much bigger?

In other words, how do you decide whether you should exercise thinking big applied to something you're already working on vs something new? How do you know when it's time to move from one big opportunity to another, even bigger one?

For example, a guy owns an e-commerce FBA business selling a generic product imported from China, say, woolen socks. It's doing very well, but his business doesn't really let him "think big" (when compared to the subject of this thread). Should he apply "thinking big" to his business that will probably never get super huge or try to find another opportunity with much more potential?

 

[Late Bloomer]

This is a very inspiring thread. I'm not qualified to tell others how this is done, only to listen and learn. I'm grateful for the ideas that prompt me to look up to a bigger horizon.