Will and Jada. Jonathan Majors and Grace Jabbari. Mike Tyson and Don King.

The romantic relationship isn’t the point. It’s the people you let in close to your life. Especially once you’re right at the cusp of, or already have, made it.

At Genius Network, we had a saying about the Million Dollar Racehorse.

If you had a racehorse that won you a million dollars every time you ran it, how would you treat it? You would feed it, water it, give it rest, and perhaps even pamper it.

You definitely wouldn’t let other racehorses abuse it.

The Million Dollar Racehorse is you.

(It’s not a stretch; at GN, your business had to be doing at least $1M to get into the group. And most were solo founders, meaning, they literally were the reason their business made $1M.).

Do you treat yourself like the million dollar racehorse? Does your community?

  1. Do the people around you bring out the best in you, or the worst in you?
  2. Are the people in your life rocks, or are they fellow stars envious of your success?
  3. Is your community comprised of givers, or takers?

Stage 1 in your career is about building skills. Stage 2 is about building the business (the vehicle that houses your skills in a reliable way to make you money). Stage 3 is about the people you bring into that business (into the stables, so to speak).

You fail in Stage 1 by not building skills. You fail in Stage 2 by not being able to reliably monetize your skills. But Stage 3 failure?

That’s when you’re great at what you do, you have reliable work that makes you good money. But the people you let in abuse the Million Dollar Racehorse.