By the age of 12 I was fortunate enough to know exactly what I was going to do. I was going to be president of my own company. Unfortunately, the school curriculum didn't support my ambition, and university at the time wasn't offering courses for entrepreneurship. Two days after my sixteenth birthday I quit school and left home. Not because I wasn't happy at home, but because there was a great big world out there, and I was convinced presidents do not live with their parents.
At the age of 19 I bought my first computer and taught myself how to program. At the age of 21 I started my first company and successfully learned at the age of 22 how companies close their doors. At the age of 23 I started my second company. However, this time I beat my previous record and closed its doors within three months.
It was at this point I reverted back to the goals I had set earlier in my life. I was quite shocked at what I discovered. I had already achieved them! I did become president of my own company.
Emotionally, this was a very trying time for me. After picking myself up off the basement floor, I decided to focus my attention on setting better goals. This time, however, I was armed with experience. The experience of knowing the consequences of pursuing poorly stated goals.
After spending almost a year writing down my goals and reviewing them regularly, I realized I was spending a lot of time at this. My goals were constantly evolving! Each time I reviewed my goals I found several that were already out of date, or noticed that certain details required updating. I was convinced that goal setting was effective, but also felt the entire process was flawed. Armed with the programming skills I had developed during the previous ventures I created a simple program for defining and tracking goals.
I quickly realized this system was going to be the focus of my next company. At the age of 26 I started Success Software, and in July of 1990 Success Software's Goal Setting Package was launched (see Entrepreneur Magazine July-Aug 1990). Sales were quite modest in the beginning simply due to the fact that computers in the household and office were quite rare. I worked full time in sales for the first five years, using the majority of my income to support the business, and spent almost all my spare time rewriting and reworking the system.
Then, almost overnight it seemed computers were in every household and the birth of the Internet meant new opportunities. Success Software hit the Internet in 1996 and in 1997 I was able to leave my job to spend full time running the company. Success Software evolved into Success Studios Corporation and our goal-setting software product product is famously known as GoalPro.
Today literally thousands of people use GoalPro® on a daily basis and every week I receive email messages from users expressing how grateful they are of GoalPro's existence. For me, being president I guess is cool, but knowing GoalPro® is helping many individuals make real progress towards achieving their goals is the real reward.
"You can only achieve your goals once you have helped enough people achieve theirs."
Author Unknown.
Marc Grenier