Welcome to discovering your full entrepreneurial potential. If you’re reading this, you’ve set yourself apart from the masses and are among the very few who have positioned yourself to achieve extraordinary business success. You are among the few on planet Earth with a dream big enough to become one of 5,000 entrepreneurs who will take your gifts and talents to the world by providing a product or service that will benefit us all, thanks to your willingness to create, build, and scale a business that becomes LARGER THAN LIFE and leaves a legacy beyond your lifetime.
Starting today, Monday, June 8, 2026, I’ll be sharing insights, tips, distinctions, and wisdom from the perspective of someone who has built a business that grosses $100M+ annually. This blog is not for the general public. It is for entrepreneurs who wish to reach beyond extraordinary and accomplish something that fewer than 1% of all businesses will ever do.
And that’s only counting businesses in the United States. From a global perspective, the numbers are even more startling, as only 0.01% to 0.03% reach this rarified air.
You’ve self-selected to receive this priceless information by opting in to my weekly blog, The Connector, which supports entrepreneurs making a significant difference in the world through their businesses. Now that you’re here, if this is a sincere dream for you, let’s get down to the cold, hard facts and learn what you’ll need to do that 99 out of 100 business owners either fail to do or don’t know.
In my book, LARGER THAN LIFE, In Pursuit of Discovering Your Full Potential, I shared several insights I learned from my friend, sage, and mentor Van Carrigan. One of the many things he shared with me and those he worked with was this: “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.”
When I first heard him say it, I started to argue with him, but in short order I recognized my ignorance and learned that he was correct. The importance of this distinction lies in removing the emotional attachments we often form to support a perspective we may believe is correct but that, when measured, falls apart.
When it comes to business success or failure, here are the facts based on global company databases, private market estimates, and worldwide enterprise counts:
| Revenue Level | Approx % of Global Businesses |
|---|---|
| Under $100K | ~90%+ |
| $1M+ | ~1–2% |
| $10M+ | ~0.1–0.3% |
| $100M+ | ~0.01–0.03% |
| $1B+ revenue | ~0.001% or less |
When looking to do something this rare, one of the first things to learn is why they don’t work and then do the opposite.
As I shared in my book LARGER THAN LIFE, from my own experience in failing forward in my first five businesses before reaching a breakthrough in my sixth, here are five distinctions that I learned.
- Most entrepreneurs start businesses for freedom… then build prisons. A great friend of mine shared this insight from his business mentor, and I couldn’t stop laughing. When he was purchasing a Chinese restaurant on Chicago’s South Side, before finalizing the purchase, the owner simply advised him, “Business… it looks easy… it’s not easy.” Truer words could not be spoken. Many entrepreneurs chase money, status, flexibility, and independence, but quickly learn that good employees are hard to find, customers are demanding, cash flow is relentless, and leadership is physically and emotionally exhausting. Running a business magnifies who you already are and exposes weaknesses in discipline, communication, emotional control, decision-making, and consistency. This is why entrepreneurship becomes personal development disguised as business.
- Most entrepreneurs never clearly define success. As simple and straightforward as this is, it’s shocking how many business owners can’t clearly tell you what their “end in mind” is. They don’t have an exit strategy and are doing their best to keep their heads above water while flailing day to day. Some fail financially while others fail personally. Along the way, they may think they are chasing the dollar while destroying marriages, health, friendships, integrity, and peace. This is why true success must become multidimensional.
- The businesses that endure are usually built around Vision, Mission, Values, Culture, and long-term thinking vs. short-term gain. Most businesses are undercapitalized emotionally, not financially. To succeed in business, you must upgrade your identity before your strategy. You can’t surpass the identity you haven’t yet become. Self-awareness and growth are the keys that unlock your full potential and shift you from “I hope this works,” to “I’m responsible for making it work.” Many companies die due to being undercapitalized, but more die because founders lose confidence, avoid hard conversations, stop adapting, become reactive, and, as a result, quit too early. The emotional volatility of entrepreneurship destroys more companies than bad ideas.
- Most entrepreneurs don’t create conditions where failure isn’t an option. As entrepreneurs, we often start a business to “be our own boss” and try to “motivate” our way to success through sheer will. The hard truth is that we don’t rise to our ambition; we rise to the standards of our environment. Exceptional achievers engineer conditions that force success. They create accountability structures (partners, mentors, KPIs, etc.), commit to a reporting cadence with deadlines, and surround themselves with growth-minded people.
- Growth creates new versions of problems. A company that reaches $1M, $ 10M, or $100M is not solving the same problems at each level. Every stage demands a new identity from the founder. Many entrepreneurs unconsciously sabotage growth because the business begins requiring delegation, structure, accountability, vulnerability, and leadership maturity. The skills needed to start a business are different than those needed to build and scale a business.
Now that we know what not to do, what do the businesses that succeed have that those that fail don’t?
The rare businesses that truly succeed tend to have:
- Extraordinary clarity
- Exceptional leadership
- Strong culture
- Financial discipline
- Emotional resilience
- Long-term vision
- The ability to endure hardship without losing belief.
And perhaps most importantly… they continue to evolve while others stop growing. What makes $100M+ companies remarkable is not merely revenue. It’s that they’ve usually solved leadership, talent, systems, scalability, and operational execution at a level very few organizations ever achieve.
As a result, though a microscopic percentage numerically, they are an outsized percentage economically. This is why your business success needs to be realized for the betterment of humanity worldwide, and together we can achieve our Impossible Dream.
See you next Monday!
