Many factors go into creating a great company and building significant personal wealth. One determining factor is the need to “play the long game.” Your long game is your concrete vision of your ideal future down the road—years or even decades from now—and taking the specific, carefully considered action steps at every stage along the way that can maximize your ability to get there.
According to Frank Carone, chairman of Oaktree Solutions and co-author of Everyone Wins! How You Can Enhance and Optimize Business Relationships Just Like Ultra-Wealthy Entrepreneurs, “When looking at research on entrepreneurs, most of them fail to plot out their business future and how it will be the foundation of their affluence. So many entrepreneurs, for instance, rarely look much beyond their next immediate move or deal. Without vision, most entrepreneurs react instead of act. They spend most of their time responding to changes and challenges instead of driving methodically toward outcomes they truly want. On the other hand, playing the long game is characteristic of most successful entrepreneurs.”
It’s not easy playing the long game. The day-to-day demands of running your business can easily distract you from your vision. The following are some guidelines used by many of the most accomplished entrepreneurs for playing the long game.
Work backward: You should probably start with the end in mind. You need to develop your visions of your future—your well-conceptualized end goals. There are benefits to doing this, such as keeping you motivated, helping you stay on track as times get hard, and ensuring you’re focusing on the processes and activities that matter and avoiding distractions.
Identify intermediate goals and plans: To reach your end goals, you must specify intermediary goals. You’ll also need to delineate well-thought-out plans to enable you to achieve the intermediary goals that push you toward your end goal.
For example, to become seriously wealthy, you must specify precisely what that means. It might be a net worth of U.S. $5 million or U.S. $10 million, or much more). This is your financial end goal. Remember that your financial end goal can change over time—and most likely will. But, you need to have a financial end goal that you keep top of mind.
Now, you need to determine how you are going to get there. Regularly, this is going to center on the success of your business. A successful business then becomes an intermediate goal. There will be other intermediate goals, such as finding and working with a high-performing virtual family office.
Take action: To get the results you’re looking for, you’ll need to implement—and implement well. By setting intermediary goals and making them happen, you’ll move toward making your end goals a reality. You need to choose the strategies and tactics to enable you to achieve each intermediary goal and execute.
The need to persevere and remain flexible: Perseverance is central to your long game. Substantial results will likely take time. Therefore, you must stay the course, especially as setbacks are almost inevitable. You need to be willing and able to stay the course for quite some time, as most successes are built on incremental achievements—that is, you attaining your intermediate goals and plans.
Perseverance becomes much easier and more productive when you keep your end goals, intermediate goals, and plans to get there top of mind. Doing so can help you avoid being overwhelmed by immediate circumstances.
Flexibility is vital as you navigate inevitable changes in your life and the world that impact your goals and courses of action. An often defining characteristic of ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs is that they can generally adapt as necessary.
Ultimately, long-game planning builds a bridge that links where you are today to where you want to be. To get the most out of your efforts, remember a few fundamental tenets of success—start with the end in mind, develop intermediate goals that propel you forward, and execute with focus.
Russ Alan Prince is the executive director of Private Wealth magazine and chief content officer for High-Net-Worth Genius. He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs and select professionals.
