In 1991, my wife and decided that we’d see if we could buy a second home before we turned 40. We found a place that we could buy, but the country was in a recession, I was less than a year at my job, and we would have to refinance our first home to get the second.

Bill Driscol was my father in law. At the time, he was 73 years old well into the second job that he would eventually retire from with a pension. He lived in the same house that he bought 50+ years earlier. He lived for our sons, Mark and Matt. He never missed a baseball, soccer or basketball game. He also never missed a concert, show, report card. When Mark presented his eulogy, about this man who didn’t have much but felt like he had everything, there wasn’t a dry eye in the church.

OK, back to buying the house. Bill told me that he and Tony used to take their familys to the Cape every year for vacation. One year, they saw a nice house for sale and Tony urged Bill to buy it. Bill didn’t. Two kids. Only 20 years in his job. Ten years left on his mortgage. The harder Tony pushed. The more excuses Bill came up with. In 1991, when we were looking at getting our second home, he told us that he had kicked himself many times for not listening to Tony. The Cape had “taken off”. The house values had appreciated accordingly. He woulda been all set. Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda. Those were his words.

We bought that house at the beach. We have all the memories that a house at the beach creates. It’s tripled in value. Bill’s advice, “Learn from my mistakes.” was on the money.

So, why is this story on this blog. We can often see the future that we want, but don’t reach for it because we’re comfortable where we are. If I said, give me $100,000 and a couple of hours a week if you’d like to fix your head so you could add a million dollars to your lifetime earnings, would you? or would you say something like:

“I would, but I don’t have $100,000.”

“I could, if I could just find a couple of extra hours every week.”

“I should, but I don’t like anyone messing around in my head.”

or would you say something like,

“I do want it. I will find the money. I am in. Let’s go.”

Those that get this will send me an email saying, “I get it. Let’s go.”

Those that don’t will scratch their heads.

(For those head scratchers…an evaluation of your sales “head”, skills, hangups, strengths, weaknesses, wills and won’ts might start you down the road to making your million dollar change.) It’s your call.