Ever Wanted To Do Something This Crazy?

Discover the secret that took one man from a basement startup to the spacewalk and how it can work for you.

At 11:50am (BST), on 12 September this year, the hatch of a spaceship opened…

Into the blackness of space emerged a man in a protective suit and helmet.

But he wasn’t a professional astronaut.

This was a billionaire businessman named Jared Isaacman.

As he stepped from the door of the Resilience, he became the first civilian in history to take a spacewalk.

Say what you like about billionaires, this was quite an amazing event well, for me, anyway.

I don’t know about you, but as a kid I grew up fascinated with space travel.

I’d sit in front of films like 2001: A Space Odyssey with wide, excited eyes, dreaming I could become an astronaut.

It’s a dream for many people…

And it will remain that way for 99.99999999999999% of the population (I probably need more 9s added to that number, but you get my point!)

However, as a man worth 1.9 billion dollars, Isaacman was able to spend an undisclosed (but surely astronomical?!) sum funding this trip on a Space X rocket, thereby fulfilling his ambition.

Isaacman’s story was fairly humble, too.

In fact, it all began with a home business.

He started in his parents’ New Jersey basement at the age of 16, when he created his own payment processing company Shift4Payments using around £7,000 in inheritance from his grandad.

By his 20s, he felt bored and burned out, and began to fly planes to relieve stress.

This quickly became his greatest passion, and he ended up breaking a world record for the fastest around-the-world flight in a light jet in 2009.

This drove him to found Draken International, a company that trains U.S. Air Force pilots, which he later sold for a massive sum, pushing his wealth into the big league.

However, the money wasn’t his ultimate goal.

Isaacman set his sights even higher– literally– on outer space.

By 2021, he was in command of a SpaceX mission, and by 2024, he was floating outside the spaceship Resilience.

So what’s the message here?

Is it that if you dream hard enough, and believe in yourself enough, you can get to space (or whatever your wildest fantasy might be)?

Well, no.

Despite all the success gurus’ cliches… the bad news is…

Dreams Cannot Always Be Achieved

The old adage from Napoleon Hill goes that “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

But if you’re a man in his 50s who isn’t super-rich and wants to get into space, you can conceive and believe as much as you like… you’re not going on a moonwalk.

However, this isn’t what I take from this story– or from the Napoleon Hill quote either.

What Hill means is that unless you formulate a specific and clear goal in your mind for what you want out of life, you aren’t going to achieve it… because there’s nothing there to achieve.

You create the future with your mind first– a bit like drawing a map for where you want to go.

No map? Then there’s no destination.

And the lesson I take from Isaacman’s spacewalk is that he didn’t just get lucky with a basement startup and then rest on his laurels, doing online payment processing– which, going by his personality, would have bored him to tears.

Instead, he was driven to his biggest achievement through a singular passion for something that truly motivated him.

Not payment processing systems, or pilot training programmes… but the thrill of high speed flight.

This is what seems to have taken him way beyond what he might have initially achieved, into something more extraordinary.

On asmaller scale, this is something you can learn from.

What Is More Important To You Than Money?

If you’re going to really succeed in any kind of home enterprise, part-time or otherwise, you’re going to need to find that inner engine of desire which drives you.

It needs to be something that’s beyond money, respect from friends, getting out of a boring job and all those other common factors.

Those things will only motivate you for a short while.

Instead, there needs to be the flame of a deep desire that draws you irresistibly towards it, over the obstacles that might get in your way.

Interestingly, I read a recent interview with another billionaire, Jay Chaudhry. He founded a string of successful cyber security companies, including SecureIT, AirDefense, CipherTrust, and CoreHarbor– and then sold all of them for a fortune.

Chaudhry says that the secret to success isn’t money or skills… but passion.

Now, I realise that’s easy to say when you’re a billionaire, but I think his point still stands.

When you’re truly passionate about your work, he says, it doesn’t feel like work at all. Instead, it becomes a hobby– something you’d enjoy doing even if it didn’t earn you money.

And when work feels like a hobby, you keep going.

You improve. You achieve.

All the stuff Napoleon Hill talks about in his famous quote.

Now, it might be that your current business idea isn’t your burning passion.

Perhaps selling planners on Etsy, pet products on Amazon or digital courses about loft conversions isn’t your ultimate dream.

What then?

Well, Isaacman’s first business (payment processing) wasn’t his big passion either– but he used that as a stepping stone.

When flying became his ‘everything’ in life, that’s when things started to ahem– take off.

And it was that passion that resulted in a historical spacewalk earlier this month.

So the question is– where is it that your current business plan could take you next… and how could it open doors to something even bigger?

And what does “bigger” mean for you?

What is the big overriding goal that could drive you through all the ups and downs that will inevitably come your way?

Perhaps a spacewalk is out of the question…

But maybe you want to fund yourself through a degree you always wanted to get… move to the seaside… emigrate to another country… swim with whales… become a golfer... write a novel… save a local landmark…

That could be the dream that keeps you going.

So it’s important to dig deep and be honest with yourself.

Because if you don’t find that internal fire, no amount of Google searches or self-help advice columns will create it for you.

And to finish…

I’d be interested to know your ultimate “achievable-but-massive” goal in life! Fire away here: www.thegrowthnavigator.co.uk