PILLAR 14

Embracing Your New Points of No Return

I am sure that you have heard the term “point of no return” many times in your life. It means you are going to a place where you can’t turn back, where going backward in your journey is not an option. Some people are afraid of the point of no return, but I want you to embrace it.

I want to stretch the possibilities of creating a new rule that you can immediately implement in your life using this very concept. This critical pillar is one of my core fundamental success principles, and it has changed my trajectory in life, leading me to become the businessman that I am today. Every single time I have progressed to a new level in life, I have established a new point that I can never return back to. Now we are getting into the nitty-gritty of inspecting what you expect. We’ve looked back, we’ve analyzed our character, and we’ve strengthened our commitment. Now it’s time to plan out exactly what you need to do to reach your goal by the numbers.

Remember the coins in my pocket? When I was on a mission to make my first $100,000 year, I calculated exactly what I needed to do each week to reach that annual goal. I divided it by 52 weeks and saw that I needed to make $2,000 per week. In order to reach that, I knew that I had to set up 15 appointments per week. Out of those 15 appointments I made, I knew that I had to meet successfully with at least 8. And I knew that I had to make five sales to reach that number. Setting up 15 appointments a week meant two calls (and two coins) per day. Remember how we talked in Pillar 4 about goals and the rungs on the ladder to success? I wrote the rungs on my ladder and started climbing.

Doing the math is important, but it is only half of the equation (see what I did there?). The other half is creating your point of no return over and over again. When I was 22, I wanted to reach a new tier in my life. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I had to do to get to it. And I also knew that once I reached that point, it would be my point of no return. That meant that I could never go back to the life I had lived before I reached my most recent goal. This meant that I knew that I would always be climbing up the ladder. I never, ever wanted to reach a rung and then have to take a step back down. In my mind, each new goal that I reached became the new bottom rung—and I was never allowed back on that bottom step.

Every time I hit a new point of no return, I used that as a mental marker of what my minimal lifestyle would be. This meant different things to me at different times in my life. When I was first starting out, it was all about the numbers. Each rung in my ladder had a dollar amount next to it. At 22, that meant making $1,000 a week.

In order for me to do that, I had to trace the end result back to my weekly numbers. (It’s a numbers game. We hear that phrase so often that we have turned it into a cliché, but it’s true.) Not only do you need to know the numbers for your goal but you also need to know the numbers for your industry. Here was the plan for my industry at the time: Monday before 1:00 p.m. was my time to work the phones. Every Monday—without question—I spent 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. setting up my appointments for the week. If people I talked to during those hours wanted to see me right away, I would turn them down. I told them my first open appointment for any Monday was at 1:00 p.m. I was so structured and married to this mindset that despite having someone who wanted to see me that day, I knew the numbers for the week were more important than the right-now sale.

I started looking at the rungs on my ladder. I knew that I had to make at least 50 or more calls before 1:00 p.m. to set up 12 to 15 appointments for the week. I knew if I set up 12 appointments, I would meet with at least eight people. I knew if I saw eight people, I would sell to five of them. Five sales at an average of $200 per sale would put me at $1,000 per week after taxes. Once I hit a thousand per week, that was my new point of no return. I made $54,000 the year I turned 22. Earning that kind of money consistently from week to week became my new bottom rung. I knew exactly what I had to do to get there, so that plan became my bare minimum going forward.

Within the next 12 months, my brand-new house was built, the same year I got married, and I made a commitment to Crystal that she would never have to work. I also paid for her last year of college, paid off all her student loans, and made sure we were debt free before we had our first child.

I had created a time frame for what I wanted to accomplish, and I knew that neither I nor my wife could ever go backward. It was not just about the salary. I was not going to move Crystal to a smaller house or ask her to start working. It was about making sure we didn’t owe money to anyone. I went above and beyond because my promise wasn’t just to myself. It was to my current and future family as well. That year, living debt free and knowing that my wife would never work became my new bottom rung, my new point of no return. I knew I was never going to go backward in those two respects. I knew what I had to earn to have that life. Now I just had to keep climbing up.

When I was 25, the rungs on my ladder changed again. I had set my top rung for the end of the year as making an income that was double the amount that I had set only three years before. I decided my goal would be to make six figures by the end of the year. By then, I was selling onstage, promoting products, and selling insurance and security systems. I used those two coins in my pocket every day, set smaller 90-day goals, met them, and kept climbing that ladder. This time, however, I realized that I was climbing much more quickly than I had before.

By May 2000, I had made my $100,000 goal. I had given myself a year, and I achieved my goal in less than five months. After May, after I had already hit my top rung in less than half the time that I had allowed myself to hit it, I had no intention of slowing down. The pace I had been keeping to get there was my new point of no return. I was never going to work at a slower pace again.

I didn’t take June to December off. I kept up that pace for the rest of the year. It was no longer about reaching that six-figure salary. It was about maintaining the earnings I had on a week-to-week basis. Earning $2,000 a week was my point of no return. I refused to slow down.

When I got to $250,000 per year, I knew I could never go back to less than $250,000 per year. That number was my new point of no return. When I got to $1 million per year, I knew I would never go back to less than $1 million per year. That was my new point of no return.

As soon as I hit each new number, that number became my new point of no return. Some years, the change in income levels was smaller than the change in other years, but there was always an increase; there was always a change. I want you to have that mentality now too. The goal at the top of the ladder can be amended as circumstances change and you grow in experience and broaden your perspective, but I never, ever want you to slide down the ladder. I never want you to take a step down. Every time you hit a goal, that goal becomes your base. That is your new point of no return.

From purely a financial perspective, constantly creating new points of no return is one of my most important rules when it comes to year-over-year income. The most incredible thing about adopting this principle is that you are competing only with your previous success. And the amazing thing about the principle is that it’s not hard to accept the fact that you can do something again that you have already accomplished and push for just a little bit more. It’s a friendly competition between you and your previous year.

Having and keeping to a point of no return is a key element in my life that creates perpetual success. You will never become a first-generation millionaire if you hit your very first goal and just stop. Set your goal, do the math, and reach it. Then set an even higher goal. This book is designed to create personal accountability by your never being passive with yourself when it comes to being OK with going backward. For over 15 consecutive years, I have never gone backward when it comes to a year-after-year financial increase. I credit that to the simple fact that I can never go backward once I’ve established a new point of no return.

What started out as a personal principle in my life has now become a Wimbrey Financial Law that is a major contributor to mastering the mindset of a first-generation millionaire. As your coach during this journey, it is my desire that you implement this law by scratching off my last name in “Wimbrey Financial Law” and replacing it with your last name and that you teach your new law to your children with the hopes that they will pass it down to their children and beyond.

ACTION STEP

Think back to a time when you moved backward in your life. How did you approach your goals back then? How did you go about reaching them? What happened when you didn’t reach them? Or what happened when you found yourself taking a step down the rungs on your ladder or staying on one rung for much too long? Use this as the inspiration for what not to do going forward. Write down where you went wrong and how to fix that in the future.

Next, think back to each of these instances, and write out all the excuses you have given yourself (and others) when they happened. How did you justify your downward trajectory? Did you blame a boss, a spouse, a child? Did you blame your education level? Your parents? Your upbringing? Keep this list handy because you will be using that list in this pillar’s assignment.

PILLAR 14