When I was young, I worked in a financial services company alongside a lady whose husband was one of the leading entrepreneurs at the time. He was involved in a multitude of businesses but very few people knew who he was. After riding in the London to Brighton bike ride we were invited to this lady’s house and I was keen to meet her husband. In sweat soaked riding gear I walk past the boat moored outside their house and walked up to my colleague and excitedly said “Where is Charles? I can’t wait to meet him”
She responded by saying “I am surprised you didn’t see him on the way in he is cleaning the boat”. In one of my better ‘foot-in-mouth’ moments, I said “The old guy in the boiler suit?” More amused at my naivety than annoyed she said “That’s him, what did you expect? Sparks coming out of his head?”
So at that moment I learned a life lesson. Even the most revered of entrepreneurs are really just people. This chap chatted all day long, took us out in the boat and encourage all of our crazy plans for the future some of which, I might add, worked!
I am paraphrasing some of the information he passed on and some I have, over the years, intermingled with other pearls of wisdom and personal experience.
1. Don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done. Find that out for yourself.
Basically, if you have an idea only you can decide that it is not working and only you can re-adjust your ideas. I created a $300mn dollar volume commodities trading business after EVERYONE I spoke to said it would not work.
2. Believe in yourself or no one else will
It is tough if you keep ‘failing’ right? Then don’t look at it as failure. If you look at the results you get as ‘outcomes’ you will always succeed. The outcome you achieve may not be the one you set out to get but it is an outcome you can use to learn, change your approach and seek to get to the next outcome… eventually you will get there.
Watch this video for someone who does not understand failure.
3. Everyone will not be your friend.
If you do not like conflict, cannot handle rejection and do not want to be accused of all the evils in the world do not start out on this journey until you have invested time in yourself to overcome these fears. You will pick up lots of haters whatever you do.
One of my mentors for the last two decades has been Anthony Robbins. I read Unlimited Power 20 years ago and it changed my life. He does massive humanitarian work, has changed the life of millions and yet if you put “Anthony Robbins Scam” into Google, you get 6000 pages.
Often you will find that people are negative about your success, or even your attempt at success because they want to make themselves feel better about not trying for their own goals. Take it on the chin and just remember if you don’t have haters, you are not trying hard enough.
In business you will make mistakes, mistakes will affect people lives and you will be pilloried for it. Get used to it, or go home.
This is a profane video, so if you don’t like that, don’t watch. It does, however, illustrate my point very well. It is also funny…
4. Enjoy the struggle, it won’t last.
The one thing that every successful entrepreneur I have met have in common is that, at some stage, they nearly gave up. They obviously didn’t and they talk about those times when they struggled in Utopian terms almost as if they enjoyed the struggle more than the success. Remember success is not the destination it is the journey.
5. Never give up – adjust your motivation.
If I gave you 1000 calculators to sell and told you that if you sell them all in a month I will give you $1000, how would you feel? I imagine you would go through your freinds and family, but sooner or later if your were not truly desperate for $1000 you would give up.
What if I told you I would give you $1mn if you sell 1000 calculators in a month? I suspect you wouldn’t sleep and you would be pitching strangers in the street. If you are thinking of giving up, spend some time on your goals. Remotivate yourself and keep going.
6. Do something now.
Do something, anything, that is taking you towards your goal. Recently I remotivated myself and decided I needed to make changes. I gave up smoking after 15 years and now ride at least 15k on my mountain bike every single day. I use this time to think of one idea or one strategy for an existing project and then I do one thing to help me achieve that idea or strategy when I get back in the office.
If you do something towards a goal everyday, it is amazing what you can achieve in the long term.
7. Talk to everyone
Cultivate your network of people, throw ideas at your network, ask for help from your network and give back to your network without them asking. Do favours for people, introduce people in your network to each other without thought of reward. In a very short space of time, you will be the ‘go to guy’ and that is exactly where you want to be.
These are not the specific ‘write this’, ‘do this’ instructions for building your business, we will get to those with future articles – but if you are to be successful in business online or offline, you need to realise what being an entrepreneur is. If you have the stomach for it then you are on the right track.
Regards
David
@themarketmaker
She responded by saying “I am surprised you didn’t see him on the way in he is cleaning the boat”. In one of my better ‘foot-in-mouth’ moments, I said “The old guy in the boiler suit?” More amused at my naivety than annoyed she said “That’s him, what did you expect? Sparks coming out of his head?”
So at that moment I learned a life lesson. Even the most revered of entrepreneurs are really just people. This chap chatted all day long, took us out in the boat and encourage all of our crazy plans for the future some of which, I might add, worked!
I am paraphrasing some of the information he passed on and some I have, over the years, intermingled with other pearls of wisdom and personal experience.
1. Don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done. Find that out for yourself.
Basically, if you have an idea only you can decide that it is not working and only you can re-adjust your ideas. I created a $300mn dollar volume commodities trading business after EVERYONE I spoke to said it would not work.
2. Believe in yourself or no one else will
It is tough if you keep ‘failing’ right? Then don’t look at it as failure. If you look at the results you get as ‘outcomes’ you will always succeed. The outcome you achieve may not be the one you set out to get but it is an outcome you can use to learn, change your approach and seek to get to the next outcome… eventually you will get there.
Watch this video for someone who does not understand failure.
3. Everyone will not be your friend.
If you do not like conflict, cannot handle rejection and do not want to be accused of all the evils in the world do not start out on this journey until you have invested time in yourself to overcome these fears. You will pick up lots of haters whatever you do.
One of my mentors for the last two decades has been Anthony Robbins. I read Unlimited Power 20 years ago and it changed my life. He does massive humanitarian work, has changed the life of millions and yet if you put “Anthony Robbins Scam” into Google, you get 6000 pages.
Often you will find that people are negative about your success, or even your attempt at success because they want to make themselves feel better about not trying for their own goals. Take it on the chin and just remember if you don’t have haters, you are not trying hard enough.
In business you will make mistakes, mistakes will affect people lives and you will be pilloried for it. Get used to it, or go home.
This is a profane video, so if you don’t like that, don’t watch. It does, however, illustrate my point very well. It is also funny…
4. Enjoy the struggle, it won’t last.
The one thing that every successful entrepreneur I have met have in common is that, at some stage, they nearly gave up. They obviously didn’t and they talk about those times when they struggled in Utopian terms almost as if they enjoyed the struggle more than the success. Remember success is not the destination it is the journey.
5. Never give up – adjust your motivation.
If I gave you 1000 calculators to sell and told you that if you sell them all in a month I will give you $1000, how would you feel? I imagine you would go through your freinds and family, but sooner or later if your were not truly desperate for $1000 you would give up.
What if I told you I would give you $1mn if you sell 1000 calculators in a month? I suspect you wouldn’t sleep and you would be pitching strangers in the street. If you are thinking of giving up, spend some time on your goals. Remotivate yourself and keep going.
6. Do something now.
Do something, anything, that is taking you towards your goal. Recently I remotivated myself and decided I needed to make changes. I gave up smoking after 15 years and now ride at least 15k on my mountain bike every single day. I use this time to think of one idea or one strategy for an existing project and then I do one thing to help me achieve that idea or strategy when I get back in the office.
If you do something towards a goal everyday, it is amazing what you can achieve in the long term.
7. Talk to everyone
Cultivate your network of people, throw ideas at your network, ask for help from your network and give back to your network without them asking. Do favours for people, introduce people in your network to each other without thought of reward. In a very short space of time, you will be the ‘go to guy’ and that is exactly where you want to be.
These are not the specific ‘write this’, ‘do this’ instructions for building your business, we will get to those with future articles – but if you are to be successful in business online or offline, you need to realise what being an entrepreneur is. If you have the stomach for it then you are on the right track.
Regards
David
@themarketmaker
TheMarketMaker
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