I recently went on a vacation during spring break to Florida with a friend and his business partner Thinking bigger. They rented an amazing house on the ocean. The house was 8,000 square feet, had 8 bedrooms, 7 1/2 bathrooms, and an infinity pool. It was right on the ocean with surround sound speakers and climate control for every single room. It was an absolutely stunning place.

When we were there, the three women would go out and exercise in the morning. The three dads stayed back to fix breakfast for all the kids. When the ladies returned, it would be our turn to go exercise. We would start off with a run on the beach for two miles, which, if you’ve ever had a run on sand, is almost impossible to do. In between, we would do pushups.

Lesson Number One In Thinking Bigger

I dropped down to do pushups. I was going to do my normal set of 20. My friend ended up continuing his pushups even after I’d stood up. “How many are you doing?” I said. He answered, “40.” I said, “Okay. There we go. I gotta do more.”

We continue to run about another half mile down the beach, and then we make a left. We start running away from the water and I look over. It’s a gated community of all single-story ranch houses in a retirement community. I said, “How great would it have been in 2008 to have the extra capital to buy some of these?” He said, “You mean buy some of these subdivisions? Or the land to build a subdivision?” I said, “No. To buy one of these houses and rent it out.” There was lesson two in thinking bigger.

As we jogged up, we made a left on the main drag. We started heading back toward our compound, which was another two miles. In between there, we stopped and did three more sets of pushups, of which I still only did 20 and he did 40, until the last set, which he couldn’t do. I need to think bigger.

Think: When You Have An Idea, How Can You Double It?

I didn’t realize it at the time but what I thought was thinking big just got doubled. So I am going to start to think bigger and challenge myself that when I think I have an idea, how can I double that? What’s also funny is his wife, who when every time he brings up something, always says, “Add a zero. Add a zero.” This makes total sense.

How could my other businesses in the past have been bigger and better? If I were able to double what we were doing and add a zero, we would’ve grown much bigger. Instead of a $ 79-a-month subscription to the last company we had, what if it was $790 a month?

Going forward, I’m going to challenge myself to think bigger.

Who do you have in your life who challenges you to think bigger?