In the world of financial questions, a famous, or perhaps infamous, one is the “Which would you rather have, a penny a day doubled for 30 days or $60,000 cash today?” It is more than a math question, it tests the perspective of the person being asked.
Many people will quickly state they want the cash. This is quite a typical answer and shows someone who lacks vision. The more thoughtful and vision minded will go for the penny. But why?
On the first day, the penny person gets just a penny. On day two, they get two cents; day three, 4 cents. At the end of the first 7 days, the person who took the penny doubled gets a whopping 64 cents. Their total take for that week is $2.55. Holy cow! They are in to money now!
In the second week, the principles of duplication start to really take hold. Day 8 brings $1.28 and by the end of the second week, a total of 16,383 pennies have been collected. Yep, a total of $163.83 in two weeks! That really rocks! The person choosing the money is no doubt still laughing all the way to the bank.
Day 21 ends more interestingly with a payout of 1,048,576 pennies. Yes, over a million pennies or $10,485.76. The total collected by this person is $20,971.51. Still less than the person who took $60,000, but at least it seems to be gaining. What do the next 9 days bring?
The end of the fourth week, day 28, has a payout of $1,342,177.28. Now we are talking! It took time, but the penny doubled is clearly pulling way, way ahead of the $60,000. The question could go as high as $500,000 for the single payout and still the penny wins. The total collected by the penny miser? $10,737,418.23.
The principle of this exercise is to see the vision of a person. Those that can see further than their current circumstance will work hard to get those pennies doubled every day. They know the power of duplication. They know they want to do things differently. Just as the locomotive needs a long way to get up to speed, so will building duplication take time. Once going, it becomes just as hard to stop as the locomotive. Put inertia to work with you and learn how to build a business that duplicates.