I have the wife, have the house, have the blended family (with teenagers), have the baby (from scratch), had the fast cars, have the 20+ year friendships, started a company from nothing which accumulated $1+ million in assets (unfortunately it wasn't in gold), am my own boss, have good relationships with my extended family and finished a book that's near publication.  All of this was accomplished within the first 30 years of my life.  I have it all, right?  What more do I need?  There are certainly those that have done more in fewer years, but If I died today, you could probably look back and say I was pretty successful.  

While I might agree, this is just the beginning of what's to come and as an entrepreneur, more is always better.  There are better houses to buy, faster cars to drive, more (liquid) assets to accumulate, additional friendships to build, more books to write, more places to travel, just hopefully not more wives to marry :).  

All of those things are fun to dream about, but a big challenge is going to be raising Baby Bell.  Like I said above, she's my first and will most likely be my only from scratch.  While I'm lucky to have a wonderful wife that's been through this before, this time will be different as I'm still a newbie.  After only 2 1/2 months of life, It's exciting to speculate what's to become of her.  Comforting to know, however, neither of us have placed expectations or qualifications of what she is to become.  We'll do our best to set her on the right path and give her the tools to be successful in life, but it's her's to live.

You could say I had it easy the first 30 years and I did.  The next 30 are certainly going to be more difficult.  Success has brought more obligations and with more success will come even more obligations.  I'm still striving for more and want to keep climbing the ladder so managing those obligations while improving myself is the largest challenge facing me today.  

Starting a company just out of college where I was able to live off my parents while building it was wonderful.  The first two years spent "off payroll" was what the company needed to get off its feet and headed toward profitability.  To do that same thing now certainly wouldn't be possible while supporting a family.  Living off the parents isn't an option and taking a two year hiatus from collecting a paycheck might put me on the street.  The good news is that 10 years of experience and education in the real world would probably make it unnecessary to duplicate those exact steps if I had to create a new venture from scratch.  In fact, that might even push me to take a few more risks which could bring bigger rewards quicker or simply cause me to fail faster so I could move onto the next venture.

Back to the question of this entry, do I have it all?  Not even close.  While I'm happy about the success I've had in the first 30, there are a number of things I wish to accomplish going forward.  Doing those things with all the other obligations in place is going to make it even more rewarding.  

The first step of 31+ is getting The Banner Brand launched.