19 Horses and No Excuses

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I see a lot of posts where people are saying they haven’t started earning yet because they first have to [fill in the blank].  Sometimes their “reason” is sound (packing up and moving house), but most times it’s not (you don’t need to finish the 8 week training course of nightly webinars first).

In fact, I see this kind of statement so often, that I started thinking how I might encourage my team and anyone else to get off their “buts” (but I still have to do ___ first;  but I never learned that stuff about ___:  but ….)

Here’s my shot at that, with a tale I heard in 5th grade that has stayed with me …

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A certain country widow passed away and left behind 3 sons & 1 married daughter.  Her estate consisted of a small ranch with 19 horses.

Mom’s will was as follows:

To my daughter:           the land, and all the structures on it
To my eldest son:         1/2 of the horses
To my middle son:        1/4 of the horses
To my youngest son:    1/5 of the horses

Before long, the tense, bereaved sons were in an argument about dividing the 19 horses.  The sister – who was married and owned the neighboring horse ranch, happened to be driving by and heard her brothers quarreling.

She jumped from her truck and asked “Guys, what’s wrong?” to which they quickly & loudly touted her as the “lucky” sister whose inheritance was easily collected while they must struggle with the dilemma of dividing 19 horses, meaning they would need to slaughter a horse and which one would that be and why couldn’t mother have left us an even number of horses and … (I’ll stop there, since you get the idea).

Their sister wrinkled her brow in thought for just a moment, then she said, “Well, dear brothers, here’s my truck with the horse trailer hitched to it and one of my horses inside it.  Why don’t I offer you horse and let’s see if that helps?”

Well, did it ever!  Suddenly it was a problem of simple math (and no dead horses).

Son #1 said  “half of 20 horses means I get 10 horses”
Son #2 said  “a quarter of 20 horses means I get   5 horses”
Son #3 said  “one-fifth of 20 horses means I get   4 horses”

The sister said “See you later, guys,” then got back into her truck and started the engine.
“Wait a minute” the sons yelled, as they chased after her, where are you going with that horse?”
Their sister just smiled, “Don’t fool yourself, boys.  You don’t need it.  You never did.”

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Take a lesson from this story.  Success is not about waiting until the stars perfectly aligned, with the perfect training, perfect business background, best computer, most creative mind, perfect website template…  Success begins with looking carefully at what you already have, and learning to leverage that to get further along.

Stop putting off your success while you fool yourself into chasing after “horses” you don’t need.

Stop worrying about getting to 20 when you can do perfectly fine for now with just 19.

Go.  Succeed.