I wanted to share a personal story today that will hopefully serve and encourage you as a business owner.

I grew up on a farm. When I was a teenager, I would work on farms every single summer. And one of the best jobs to get was to be a tractor driver. It meant you didn't have to do any more manual labor. You just got to sit on a tractor and drive.

Well, one of the hardest jobs driving a tractor was plowing fields right after baby trees were planted. These things were precious. You wanted to be very careful with them not only because they'd just been planted, but also because they costed $14 each. Every time you messed up and plowed over the top of one, you'd have to take that out of your paycheck. And at the time, I was making $3 an hour. So a whole day's pay would be lost with one mistake.

The reason I'm telling you this story is that I couldn't get it right. Every time I'd drive down the row, I'd be all over the place. Finally, my boss comes up to me (he was this wise old farmer) and says, "You want to know how to get this straight? You gotta focus on where you're going, and not the mistakes you've made along the way." 

"You gotta focus on where you're going,
and not the mistakes you've made along the way."
- The Wise Old Farmer

As you can imagine, the advice came off as pretty cliché. Nevertheless, I did what he said. I looked at something way beyond where I was at. It could have been a tree, a house, or a barn. So long as it was an object way off in the distance in the direction I wanted to go, I focused on it. And so once the tractor was ready, I took hold of it, dropped the disc, and just stared at where I was going the whole time. I could feel myself making mistakes, but I wouldn't budge. I would just narrowly focus and stare at where I was going.

To go down a road that long would take a long time. You'd have just sit in place for 10 minutes. And that's what I did. I drove all the way to the end, pulled the disc up, and took a look back. It was totally straight - I was blown away! I went back to the farmer and said, "How is that possible? How did that happen?" He explained, "Every time you make a mistake, you turn look at it, so your body shifts the tractor. When you make another mistake, you overcompensate the other way. You can't drive looking through your rear-view mirror. You can't always look at your mistakes. Just focus on where you're going." 

When I did that, I managed to drive straight down the path. I made mistakes, but ended up in the right spot. And that's a common theme with how Kenny and I built Kajabi. We made mistakes along the way, but we focused on where we wanted our business to go and kept working at it. More importantly, we keep this mindset today as we continue to grow Kajabi. 

- Travis

p.s. Thanks for letting me share my story with you. I'd love to hear your thoughts below...