Looking at the Big Picture

The problem with the majority of people these days is that they only see what they have in front of them. They are taught and trained to look at the small picture and it often will discourage and drive you away from opportunities that will potentially make you money. For example:

The other day I was working on launching a new website. About 5 hours after launching it, I was visiting with some friends and decided to check up on my Google Ad sense report to see if anything had happened. To my amazement, only 5 hours after launching, I had made $.75 from my advertisements! Now even today, a week or so later, my friend still gives me a hard time about that, making fun of my “$.75/day website” and all I can do is sit back and have pity for him, because all he is looking at is the little picture.

If you step back and look at the big picture, you can realize that without ever having to even look at the website again, I can now make about $23/month…basically for no reason. Now mind you that this was in the first 5 hours, so it is very likely that as I build upon that website of mine, instead of letting it sit, I can bring in more readers, and potentially more advertisements will be clicked on. Now imagine a month down the road, when that website has 10x the amount of pages and content along with age and traffic building strategies, could increase that $.75/day to $1/day, then $5/day, then $10/day, which in the big picture comes out to $300/month, in which case I could sit back and enjoy that $300/month of passive income, but will I stop there? Of course not! Because at this point, seeing the website grow is getting so exciting and so profitable that I will of course want to build on it more and more. So by not looking at the small picture and saying “this website sucks I only made $.75 for hours worth of work” I look at the big picture and say “I worked on this website for x amount of hours, but from now on I can make $23.25/month, or $279/year of passive, un-worked-for, money.

So from now on don’t look at the seemingly small result of an action you can take, but look further down the road, and try to see its full potential of what that opportunity could become. Look at the Big Picture.

This poem by Robert Frost goes along well with the point I have tried to make…I try to apply it to my life daily.

Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel Both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost [1916]