Would you build your future on a house of cards? If so, how secure do you think that future would be? In October of 2007 I had the pleasure of attending the Texas state fair. While at the fair I got a chance to see the current world record for the world’s tallest house of cards. I had got there a few days after the record was officially broken and Guinness Book had already handed out the certificate. What amazed me about the exibit was the story behind it.

The house of cards, which measured over 25 feet in height, was built by Bryan Berg and shattered this own previous record. By the time I saw the exhibit Mr. Berg was still hard at working on a rendition of the Dallas Skyline to accompany his masterpiece. The event was complete with a corporate sponsor, Metro PCS, whose logo seemed to adorn the back of every playing card in site.

The plaque on the wall explained that Berg had had passion for building structures out of ordinary playing cards since childhood. At age 17 he had originally captured the title for the “World’s Tallest House of Cards” and later he even attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design to further his unique career.

According to Mr. Bergs own website, http://www.cardstacker.com/, his clients have included companies such as Disney, Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, and the National Hockey League, just to name a few.

So what is the point, and what in the world does this have to do with online business? Well for one thing Mr. Berg is an entrepreneur…a risk taker. Anyone responds to the question “what would you like to do when you grow up,” by answering that they would like to build card houses for hours on end is bound to encounter at least a few quizzical glances now and again.

The point of the story is that no matter what your online niche may be, one the factors which will determine your success or failure is how far you are willing to push it. How extreme, passionate, and persistent are you at establishing yourself in that niche?

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 9:30 am by Phil Weslow and is filed under Strategy, Goal Setting, Online Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.