by Julia Felton | Feb 8, 2017
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying “no” to 1,000 things” Steve Jobs
Over the past few weeks we have talked a lot about taking action and staying focused, and the quote above from Steve Jobs sums this up so well. Staying focused doesn’t mean saying yes to everything, in fact learning to say No is probably the most powerful action you can take. One of the challenges that I come across time and time again with entrepreneurs is that they want to do everything. Maybe you can relate to this?. Entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is the curse of the entrepreneur because when it kicks in they jump from one project or shiny object to the next. And why is this? It’s because great entrepreneurs can see the opportunity and possibility in everything. And so they just want to pursue all possible options. The challenge is to remain focused when their energy and focus becomes distracted.
So how do you know what to focus on? Firstly, it is so much easier to say No when you are crystal clear what you want to say Yes to. When you have clarity on the reason why you are doing what you are doing, then it is easier to see what a distraction is. This is why, with every business owner I work with, we start by getting clarity on the purpose for the business. The purpose provides the GPS and sets the business owner in the right direction. After all, if for example, you were travelling to Singapore from London, you would instantly know that going to New York was not a sensible idea, as it is in exactly the opposite direction. So having a clear purpose helps you filter out distractions and items that might take you off course.
Having clear values also helps you know what to say No to because your values inform your thinking and actions. If you are asked to undertake a task that is in violation of your values then most likely you would not do it. Our values become our DNA, the basis of what we stand for. Without values we can become like a rudderless ship bobbing around on the ocean, getting swept one way and then the next, never making any progress.
As creative entrepreneurs we often come up with many different types of products and service lines. The reality is that you cannot be an expert at everything. When Mark Parker, become Nike CEO, in 2006, he asked Steve Jobs for his best advice and this is what Jobs said:
“Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.”
Jobs calls the process of just focusing on the good stuff editing. It involves reviewing all your products, services and activities and then streamlining them. Whether it’s design or business strategy less is more. Nobody produces all masterpieces. You’ve got to edit it down and throw away the crappy stuff. Take away unnecessary hardware parts from your computer, unnecessary code and features from your app, unnecessary products from your offering, extra words from your presentation. This is not easy. It takes guts to take away a physical keyboard from a smartphone but the results can be astounding. Throw away the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.
So, how are you going to use the Power of No in your business? What crappy stuff are you going to release so that you can focus on the really good stuff? Think about this over the coming week and let me know in the Facebook group what you have said No to.
by Julia Felton | Feb 1, 2017
Happy February 1st. It seems amazing that the first month of the year has already flown by. I hope that you are staying focused on your goals and are making progress. Success happens one step at a time so if you are feeling disillusioned in any way just remember that one step every day will eventually help you reach your goal. This is the power of the compound effect – little and often is the key. There are no secrets to success except taking consistent action, planning and course correction.
Now if you are like me you might be wanting it all now. I know I can be super impatient, but the reality is that nothing in nature happens immediately. Seeds take time to germinate before they bloom into flower. There is a flow to everything and as any farmer or gardener will tell you, if you try to rush a plant or vegetable to grow it never works.
That is definitely the case with my horses. Every time I go to the yard in a rush, they slow me down. It is as if they just know I need to do something now, so they mess with me and make everything take time. And yet when I am detached from the time perspective, and act as if I have all the time in the world, they respond and complete the tasks effortlessly.
This was certainly the case this morning when I had to move the ponies to another field. Since there is limited haylage in this new field (as its their lose weight field!) they typically resist going in here but this morning they followed me into the field with no problem at all. It took just minutes as they were so accommodating versus the 5-10 mins it usually takes to catch them and then lead them, usually very reluctantly, to this field.
The end of the month is a great time to reflect on what has happened. Remember you get paid on what you get done so take some time to list all the activities you did in January and the impact they had. Were all the activities moving you and your business towards your goals or on reflection were some of the activities a distraction.
If you found yourself spending your time doing lots of £10 an hour tasks rather than £250 tasks then recognize this. Learn that maybe doing these small tasks that could be delegated to others might be your avoidance or procrastination mode and resolve to make changes in February. One of the great things about being in business and having flexibility over your schedule is that you can learn from your mistakes and make immediate changes. The only mistake is not learning from what has not worked and continuing to do the same thing over and over a again.
I’d love to hear what you have learnt from reviewing your January performance and what news strategies and tactics you are putting in place for February. As always let me know in the Facebook group.
by Julia Felton | Dec 7, 2016
We all have doubts, fears and disappointments in our lives. We’ve all had times in our lives where we felt bound by our past and our fear of failure. We know we should change, but…we can’t. Can you relate? I know I can!.
This weekend I’ve been reflecting on my business and life and the changes I need to implement to make 2017 the best year ever. The challenge is that in order to change it means I need to alter my thinking. I need to “unthink” my past and eliminate fear in order to unleash my hidden potential. And unthinking my past is not something I’m relishing. I’ve invested loads in my past (both financially and emotionally) but I know that in order to grow I need to release some of this old thinking and create the space to make new decisions from where I am now.
So how did we create this thinking? This story of the elephant describes the situation so well. When an elephant is born into captivity, the owner ties the animal to a tree or post with a thick chain to prevent the 250-pound infant from escaping. During the first few weeks of his life, the small elephant tests the chain that binds him, again and again, in an attempt to free himself and wander as his nature urges him to do. His efforts, however, are no match for steel links. Over the course of a few weeks, he eventually learns that his resources are no match for the hardiness of the chain. He gives up any further attempts to free himself, and thus relegates himself to a life within a small circle.
As an adult elephant conditioned by a past experience, he can now be tethered to a small tree with the thinnest of ropes or, in some cases, no rope at all. He makes no attempts to wander because he carries with him, for life, the belief that he does not possess the power to break the ties that bind him. The adult elephant could easily snap the rope or uproot the tree to which it is attached, but he makes no such effort, because early in life, he was taught that true freedom was not available to him. For the remainder of his life, he is tame and nothing like the captivating, powerful creature he was born to be.
Can you sympathize with this story about the elephant? Do you feel your life has been shackled by what you were conditioned to believe when you were young? Maybe the conditioning was even more recent than that. Whatever thoughts came up for you as you read this I urge you to stop and reflect on whether your current thinking is serving you now. And if it is not then maybe you want to unchain your elephant and let it run free.
I’m off to do some elephant unchaining of my own. Are you going to join me?
by Julia Felton | Nov 30, 2016
Wow, I can’t believe that it is the last day of November. Christmas is just round the corner, closely followed by the start of 2017. Are you prepared? If not now is a great time to begin planning for the best 2017 ever. I recently learnt that we are at the end of a 9 year cycle which means that 2017 is a fresh start for all of us.
Make sure there are no negative influences and unfinished projects you are carrying into the next year, or else I am told they will stay with you for another 9 years and none of us want that, do we!. To help you get 2017 off to a flying start I’ll be running a workshop to help you Get Your Business Off To A Flying Start in 2017. It will be on Friday 13th January, which I think is a pretty auspicious date. More details to follow.
This weekend I was tidying my desk and I came across this quote from Dr. Michael Beckwith “Potential is always bigger than the problem” which that I wrote on a post it note some time ago. What struck me about this quote is that each of us has within us all the resources we need to be successful. We all have access to untapped potential but often we allow our problems to consume us and so we don’t access this potential.
What if actually our problems and challenges were the activators that helped unleash our potential?. Would you then regard problems and challenges from a different perspective? How would it be if these problems and challenges were actually just highlighting the areas where we are failing to live our purpose and where we are limiting ourselves in both life and business.
This is a great time of year to refocus and reset exactly what your purpose is for your business. WHY are you doing what your doing, is it working, is it turning out as you planned for 2016, if not why not?. What impact do you want to make.? If you haven’t achieved the results you desired in 2016 then maybe it’s time to reflect on whether you are building the right thing, or is it time for a pivot.
Once your WHY is clear again, move to vision. What does 2017 look like and feel like?. You should be able to paint it on the wall. Make it vivid and make it epic, if it doesn’t get you excited, it doesn’t inspire you then you’re building the wrong thing. This is also a great time of year to create or redo your vision board.
Finally, all this reflection and planning is great but you need to take action and this is why you need a strategy. A vision without a plan is a mere dream…. you have to bring it to action. What are the missing strategies in your business?
- Marketing
- Sales
- Operations
- Cash or
- Talent.
Where are you weak? Where do you need education? Where is change impacting the most? These are some of the questions we will be answering on the Get Your Business Off To A Flying Start in 2017 on Friday 13th January. Get on the early bird notification list right now.
by Julia Felton | Nov 16, 2016
There is a great saying that goes “if you’ve never failed, you’ve never tried anything new” and I’ve been reflecting a lot on this over the past week. Before I launched my own business I was very proud of the fact that I had never failed at anything. I saw only being successful as a good trait. After all why would you want to fail. I had been brought up only to be successful and in fact failure was seen as a negative thing. It meant you were stupid. So I only ever put myself in situations where I could succeed. I’d study hard for my exams to be successful. I’d work hard to be in all the school sports teams and now I realized I would avoid activities where I had any fear that I might not succeed.
Fast forward seven years of running my own business and I realize that a flawed belief that earlier thinking was. Since running my own business I have had more failures than I care to imagine. Its been really humbling at times, as well as frustrating as very failure has initially seemed like a barrier to my success. And yet what I have learnt from these failures has been the magic dust that has helped me become more successful.
In fact the only failure is not to learn from the failure. This is because there is a lesson in everything that doesn’t work out as you expected. Recently I was speaking to my friend who rather sheepishly admitted to me that she had quit her part time role. She was embarrassed and ashamed by this as she simply could not complete the work required in the two days a week she worked. To try and push on would have been in conflict with her values of integrity and delivering excellent service. So she gave in her notice. When I chatted with her about this I asked her what was the lesson she learnt from this experience and she shared with me that intuitively she had had reservations about taking the role. So the lesson she learnt was to listen more to her intuition. What a great lesson to learn.
Increasingly I have come to realize that life is just one big lesson and that each and every day we are presented with opportunities to learn more about ourselves. Sometimes we might not like the lessons but each of us is given the lessons we most need to learn. And you know what. If we don’t learn the lesson, the universe delivers the lesson more profoundly and acutely, until such time we get it.
That was the case for me with boundaries. I kept avoiding dealing with this issue, which had been presenting itself I now see for decades, but more recently I was literally slapped around the face with this lesson. The universe had quietly been delivering her lesson but since I had been avoiding it the universe crescendoed up the volume until I couldn’t fail to take action.
There are many examples of successful people that have not been discouraged by their failures and these include:
· Albert Einstein – he wasn’t able to speak until he was almost 4-years old and his teachers said he would “never amount to much”
· Michael Jordan – after being cut from his high school basketball team , he went home, locked himself in a room, and cried.
· Walt Disney – fired from a newspaper for ”lacking imagination” and having “No original ideas”
· Steve Jobs – at 30-years old he was left devastated and depressed after being unceremoniously removed from the company he started
· Oprah Winfrey – was demoted from her job as anchor because she “wasn’t for for television”
· The Beetles – rejected be Decca Recording Studios who said “ we don’t like their sound – they have no future in show business”
In each case they took the lessons they learnt from their so-called “failed experience” and used this to fuel their success.
So where in your life and business are you being shared lessons that you are failing to take heed of? What do you need to acknowledge and learn, to move forward with more flow.
A simple exercise to do is to make a list of all the failures (or opportunities that did not work out as expected). Write these down the left hand side of a page and then on the right hand side list what the gift was for each of these experiences and now knowing this what can you do differently to move forward.
If you need any assistance with mastering your growth mindset then please book in for a complimentary chat and let’s explore what is possible
Wishing you an amazing aligned and flow filled Wednesday
by Julia Felton | Nov 9, 2016
I really hope you are having a great week. I’ve just returned from a four day immersion training with my mentor Clinton Swaine, which once again was incredibly powerful. That’s why I love experiential learning. It really helps you embody the feeling of the situation and you can’t help leaving feeling changed in some way. Reading the Facebook comments of my fellow students I know we all experienced profound shifts in perspective on this programme, and as always it seems the right message always comes at the right time. Spooky how that happens!.
Now, if you have been following me for a while, you will know that if we want to achieve success we have to take action. Nothing’s going to happen for you if you just sit around waiting for something to happen. But not all actions are created equal. Not all actions are the right actions. I’m sure you can relate to that. Just think about it. Two people are given exactly the same resources to lets say launch a business and one is successful and one is not. On paper they both seem to take the same actions and yet they get very different results. How can that be?
Well, it’s all to do with alignment. You have to take action that’s in alignment with your core values and beliefs because unless you do your actions don’t resonate with others, and they fail to connect with what you are saying and doing. And the result is frustration and exhaustion. You can feel like you are stuck on a hamster wheel, running and running but not making progress…Maybe you can relate to this?
I know I do. For some time I have had a deep, inner feeling that everything has not been aligned. My head, heart and gut have in some way been dis-connected, and yet I haven’t been able to figure out why. It has been a painful time, knowing something is misaligned and yet not knowing what. These times have led me to face uncomfortable truths about my life and start examining facets of it that quite frankly I had not been willing to look at. The truth remains unconscious, until the pain of denial becomes stronger than the pain of facing up to it.
The AHA moment that I had on my immersive training is that I have been conning myself that if I have the right knowledge (after all I am the course junkie!) that I would succeed, and yet I had forgotten that you have to take responsibility to get your mindset, programming and influences right first. When we trip up, it’s usually because we jumped to the knowledge and action part before we have sorted out our mindset, subconscious programming and external influences first.
Once I realised this I was mad at myself until I remembered that of all the successful and abundant people I’ve met, many of them did go through tough times due to misalignment, before having an “aha” moment and breaking through.
So, my question for you today is where are you misaligned? Where are you experiencing any incongruence in your business or your life? I now know what has been holding me back, so expect to see some changes in my business over the next few weeks, as I get more aligned and congruent and stop doing what everyone tells me I should do rather than what feels right to me.
The horses are masters at alignment and sensing when your head, heart and gut are not aligned, so if you’d like them to act as your barometers to get you back on track just book in for a complimentary strategy session and we can get a session booked in for you.
Wishing you an amazing aligned and flow filled Wednesday.
by Julia Felton | Nov 2, 2016
I just love this photo I came across this week, as it so clearly demonstrates how to stand out from the crowd. We live in exponential times and the pace of technology is accelerating. Consumers are drowning in technology overload from emails to social media posts. At the same time business competition has never been fiercer and the challenge for all business owners is how to distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace.
Welcome to the world of disruptive marketing. A world where innovation, creativity and out of the box thinking reign. A world where imperfect action is better than no action at all. A world where speed is of the essence and where organisations need to be agile to be able to respond On-The-Hoof to changes in the marketplace.
As Richard Branson notes: “Disruption is all about risk-taking, trusting your intuition, and rejecting the way things are supposed to be.”
Uber and Airbnb are two companies that between then have changed the face of hospitality and travel industry over the last couple of years by being disruptive. What is amazing is that neither company has any assets, but rather they have both created a platform to connect users to a service that didn’t exist before. In the case of Uber you can easily locate and book a taxi with a few clicks on your phone, whilst with Airbnb you can find quality accommodation to stay in when visiting virtually any location. For many the idea of staying a home, either on a shared basis, or alone, provides a refreshing alternative to traditional hotel accommodation solutions.
Here are five things you can do to make your business stand out from the crowd:
1) Be Authentic
Whatever we say people buy from people who they know, like and trust, so make sure your brand truly reflects who you are and your personality. This is an era where quirky is good. Share your vulnerabilities and stories so that people can really connect with you. Showing that you are not perfect can make you more likeable. Share your vision and why you are really in business. What impact you want to make. All the research shows that the more purpose driven your company is, and the more your customers relate to this, the more successful you will be.
2) Focus on the Customer Experience
The reason people will stop doing business with your company is because they have a bad experience, so focus on wowing your customers with great service. Get to know your customers so you can deliver them promotions customised to their needs. Make then feel special, and really get to understand their motive for buying from you and the solution you are solving for them. This customer feedback is gold dust and enables you to be able to shape your offering quickly and so stay on the innovative edge.
3) Stay Visible To Your Customers
One of the most common problems I come across with my clients is that they fail to stay visible with their customers. They assume that because the customer already knows what service they provide or has already brought from them that they will automatically remember them in the future. Incorrect. Customers are overloaded with marketing messages so unless you remain front of mind with them they can easily end up buying from your competitors – not necessarily because they intended to but rather your competitor happened to send them a promotion on the day they needed that service, so they took the easy option and used the solution that was right inf front of their nose. Combat this problem by providing your customers regularly with value added materials that they can use so that you stay front of mind.
4) Have Absolutely Clarity On Your Niche
Now I know many of my clients resist niching but the reality is you can’t serve everyone and if you do you are a generalist not a specialist and so you can’t command such high rates. You end up in a commodity bidding war for work and that is just not a great place to be. Just think about it. If you need heart surgery do you go to your GP or do you go to a heart specialist.? Who do you think would charge the most? It’s the same in business. It is actually easier for customers to purchase from you if they know you are the expert in X, and because they know you are the expert they are also willing to pay more for your services. So what could you become a real expert in? Getting clarity on this and then ensuring all your marketing collateral supports this will automatically help you stand out from the crowd.
5) Add Value In Ways That Might Not Be Obvious
Find innovative ways to make your product or service different and more luxurious from the others in the marketplace. Simple things you could do include sending gifts to customers on their birthday; packaging additional services together so for example if you are a hair dresser you could offer all your clients a glass of champagne with their haircut. One thing I do is send all my clients a picture of them with one of my horses after their Unbridled Success VIP Day. It gives the client an immediate reminder of the experience they had and helps them embody the learning as every time they look at the picture, they recall what they experienced. It also proves to be a great marketing promotion for me as they tend to show the picture to their friends and the photo has my website address on it so my business stays front of mind with them. It is simple add on’s like this that help retain customers, flood you with referrals and allow you to charge higher prices.
So how are you going to start standing out from the crowd.? I’d love to hear about the disruptive strategies you are using. And of course if you need any help just book in for a complimentary strategy session so I can help you decide on the way forward.
by Julia Felton | Oct 3, 2016
This week I have been thinking a lot about luck and why some people seem to have it and some don’t Luck is the phenomena that Swiss Psychiatrist, Carl Jung, termed synchronicity and it is ultimately related to flow. So as your flow grows, so your luck grows and vice versa. This is why it always seems that those that have a lot seem to get more. They are in flow and luck is attracted to flow. So how do you master how to create luck and flow. You focus on becoming a Wealth Creator by creating the conditions for success to occur.
The foundation of luck is built on four conditions namely Location, Understanding, Connections, Knowledge and great Wealth Creators know how to leverage these phenomena so that they are working for them rather than against them.
Location: luck comes with being in the right place at the right time. The problem is that so many of us are busy and not paying attention to what is happening around us that we fail to find the opportunities to be in the right place at the right time. It’s no coincidence that a football player like David Beckham always knew the right place to be in on the football pitch so he could get the ball and take the winning shot. In business sometimes it means being at the right networking event at the right time. I’ll never forget sitting next to someone at a conference who then turned out to become my best source of business bringing me two new corporate clients. That’s the power of synchronicity and being in the right place at the right time.
Understanding: luck comes from knowing the rules of the game so that when an opportunity presents itself you know how to respond. Too many people are spectators in the game of life and business. We observe what is happening around us but we don’t actively engage in the process. Take the football analogy again. The footballer might be in the right place at the right time but if they don’t realize that the aim of the game is to get the ball in the net they might not take the shot. In business this might translate to not making the offer to a potential client to work with you. When I met that potential client at the conference I knew that the rule of the game at that time was not asking for the business but rather building relationships. I did this over the following year and then in time the business referral resulted.
Connections: business is all about connections but many business owners that I work with have not invested in developing their wealth connections and so don’t have anyone sending them any referrals. Expanding the football analogy again, you are on the pitch, you know you need to put the ball in the net but no-one is passing the ball to you. And the reason is there is no-one else on the pitch!!.. Great wealth creators have loads of people on the pitch with them passing them balls, so their opportunity to score is increased exponentially. (Just a word of caution here. Connections are not the same as your network. Many of us have big networks, but networks are full of spectators, not players, this is why you can have a great network but still have no opportunities coming your way!).
Knowledge: just as there is no point in having the ball coming to you if you don’t know how to kick the ball, there is no point having opportunities come your way if you don’t know what to do with them. Knowing how to act on opportunities comes with experience, so the more you play the more skillful you become. This is why it is imperative to get over the perfectionist syndrome and get in the game, as the sooner you start playing, the sooner you will gain the knowledge and so the sooner your luck will begin to flow.
Now the great thing is that we build these four conditions of success not by investing our money but rather by investing our time. The challenge is that so many of us have been so busy going to work trying to build our businesses that we have not invested any time in building our luck, and so we are no luckier today than we were five years ago.
Remember wealth isn’t about how much money you have, it’s about what you have left when you lose all your money. Because so long as you have your talents and understand how to create luck then you can rebuild your wealth.
So what actions will you take today to start building your luck?. As always I’d love you to share in the Facebook group. And if you are free tomorrow join me at 10am for an in person masterclass on how to build your wealth connections. Simply email me for more details.
by Julia Felton | Sep 25, 2016
There are seven secrets to entrepreneurial success that you must practice throughout your business life if you are to achieve maximum results. They have been taught and repeated in thousands of books and articles over the years, and I have summarised them here for you as they are such a great reminder of what to focus on.
1. Clarity: You must be absolutely clear on who you are and what you want. You need written goals and plans for every part of your life. As Zig Ziglar would say, you must become a “meaningful specific” rather than a “wandering generality.”
Begin with your values. What do you believe in and stand for? What is most important to you in life? What would you pay for, fight for, suffer for and die for? What do you really care about? Someone once wrote, “Until you know exactly what you would do if you only had one hour left to live, you are not prepared to live.”
What is your vision for yourself and your future? What is your vision for your family and your finances? What is your vision for your career and your company? Peter Drucker once wrote, “Even if you are starting your business on a kitchen table, you must have a vision of becoming a world leader in your field, or you will probably never be successful.”
What is your mission for your business? What is it that you want to accomplish for your customers? What is it that you want to do to improve the lives and work of the people you intend to serve with your products and services? You need a clear vision and an inspiring mission to motivate yourself and others to do the hard work necessary to achieve business success.
What is your purpose for your life and your business? Why do you get up in the morning? What is your reason for being? And here’s a great question: What do you really want to do with your life?
Finally, what are your goals? What do you want to accomplish in your financial life? What are your family goals? What are your health goals? What difference do you want to make in the lives of others? And here is the best question: What would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail?
The greater clarity you have regarding each of these issues–values, vision, mission, purpose and goals–the greater the probability that you will accomplish something wonderful with your life.
2. Competence: To be truly successful and happy, you must be very good at what you do. You must resolve to join the top 10 percent in your field. You must make excellent performance of the business task your primary goal and then dedicate all your energies to doing quality work and offering quality products and services.
To be successful in business, according to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . and Others Don’t, you must find a field that satisfies three requirements. First, it must be something for which you have a passion-something you really believe in and love to do. Second, it must be an area where you have the potential to be the best, to be better than 90 percent of the people in that field. Third, it must involve a product or service that can be profitable and enable you to achieve all your financial goals.
According to the Harvard Business School, the most valuable asset a company can develop is its reputation. Your reputation is defined as “how you are known to your customers.” And the most important reputation you can have revolves around the quality of the products and services you offer and the quality of the people who deliver those services and interact with those customers.
3. Constraints: Between you and your goal, whatever it is, there will always be a constraint or limiting factor. Your ability to identify the most important factor that determines the speed at which you achieve your business goals is essential to your success.
The 80/20 rule applies to constraints in your business. Fully 80 percent of the reasons that you are not achieving your goals as quickly as you want will be within yourself. Only 20 percent will be contained in external circumstances or people.
What are your constraints? What holds you back? What sets the speed at which you achieve your goals? And what one thing could you do immediately to begin alleviating your main constraint? This is often the key to rapid progress.
4. Creativity: The essence of successful business is innovation. This is the ability to find faster, better, cheaper, easier ways to produce and deliver your products and services.
Fortunately, almost everyone is a “potential genius.” You have more intelligence and ability than you could ever use. Your job is to unleash this creativity and focus it, like a laser beam, on removing obstacles, solving problems and achieving your goals.
The essence of creativity is contained in your ability to solve the inevitable problems and difficulties of business life. Colin Powell said, “Leadership is the ability to solve problems.” Success is the ability to solve problems. And remember: A goal unachieved is merely a problem unsolved.
The way of the successful entrepreneur is to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Focus on what is to be done rather than what has happened or who is to blame. Concentrate all your attention on finding a solution to any obstacle that is holding you back from the sales and profitability you desire. And the more you think about solutions, the more solutions you will think of. You will actually feel yourself getting smarter by focusing all your energies on what you can do to continually improve your situation.
5. Concentration: Your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the most important thing and stay at it until it is complete is an essential prerequisite for success. No success is possible without the ability to practice sustained concentration on a single goal or task, in a single direction.
The simplest way to learn to concentrate is to make a list for each day before you begin. Then prioritize the list by putting the numbers 1 through 10 next to each item. Once you have determined your most important task, immediately begin to work on that task. Discipline yourself to continue working until that top task is 100 percent complete. When you make a habit of doing this–starting and completing your most important tasks each day–you will double or triple your productivity and put yourself solidly on the way to wealth.
6. Courage: Winston Churchill once wrote, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.” It takes tremendous courage to take the entrepreneurial risks necessary to become wealthy. In study after study, experts have concluded it is the courage to take the “first step” that makes all the difference. This is the courage to launch in the direction of your goals, with no guarantee of success. Most people lack this.
Once you have begun your entrepreneurial journey, you also need the courage to persist. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “All great successes are the triumph of persistence.”
The word entrepreneur means “one who undertakes the risks of a new venture in pursuit of profit.” Fully 90 percent of the population will never have sufficient courage to launch a new venture, to start a new business, to boldly go where no one has gone before. You need, first of all, the courage to begin, to move out of your comfort zone in the direction of your goals and dreams, even though you know you will experience many problems, difficulties and temporary failures along the way.
Second, you need the courage to endure, to hang in there, to persist in the face of all adversity until you finally win. When you develop these twin qualities–the ability to step out in faith and then to persist resolutely in the face of all difficulties–your success is guaranteed.
7. Continuous Action: Perhaps the most outwardly identifiable quality of a successful person is that he or she is in continuous motion. The entrepreneur is always trying new things and, if they don’t work, trying something else. It turns out that most entrepreneurs achieve their success in an area completely different from what they had initially expected. But because they continually reacted and responded constructively to change, trying new methods, abandoning activities that didn’t work, picking themselves up after every defeat and trying once more, they eventually won out.
Top people, especially entrepreneurs, seem to have these three qualities. First, they learn more things. Second, they try more things. Third, they persist longer than anyone else. The good news is that, because of the law of probabilities, if you learn more things, try more things and persist longer, you dramatically increase the probability that you will succeed greatly. If you launch toward your goal and resolve in advance to never give up, your success is virtually guaranteed.
The Ultimate Reward
Jim Rohn once said, “The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place.”
To have more, you must first be more. For you to set out on the way to wealth and become a self-made entrepreneurial millionaire, you will have to develop many qualities at a higher level than you ever have before. You will have to become an exceptional person. You will have to become more than you ever imagined possible for you.
To realize your full potential and achieve all your financial goals in your own business, you must develop the virtues of integrity, courage and persistence to a much higher level than you have up to now. You will have to practice the qualities of clarity, competence, creativity, concentration and continuous action until they are as natural to you as breathing. You will have to accept complete responsibility for your life and everything that happens to you, and especially for the way you think in every area.
When you develop these qualities and become a completely different person, you will eventually achieve all your goals in life, including financial success. The best part of becoming an extraordinary person is that, if something happens and you lose it all, it won’t really matter. Because you have become a different person, you will be able to make it all back again and more, far faster than the first time.
Welcome to The Way to Wealth. You are about to embark on a grand adventure that may last for the rest of your working lifetime. But if you have the courage to begin and the persistence to endure, nothing can hold you back from achieving all your goals and dreams. If you decide that, no matter what, you will never give up, you will eventually become unstoppable.
(Adapted from an article by Brian Tracy)
by Julia Felton | Sep 14, 2016
What choices are you making about your life? Are you seeing life as wealth of opportunities or are you just seeing the challenges that lie ahead? Are you a glass half full or half empty kind of person?
I’ve just spent last weekend at Roger Hamilton’s Fast Forward Your Business event where we were looking at the top ten trends that will be shaping business over the next few years. As a Wealth Dynamics Creator, Roger is definitely always looking at the opportunities in business. It was so insightful to really get to grips with all the trends that will be impacting business and how technology will be changing our world and how we do business.
Potentially, one of the most challenging aspects for business owners, that Roger shared, is comprehending the speed of change. It is estimated that the speed of change in the next four years will be greater than than the speed of change in the last 20 years.
It was just 20 years ago the internet started to be used at work and team members started using email at work. Mobile phones hadn’t been around long and portable computers (what we affectionately called lugables!!) were just emerging, but were really cumbersome and heavy. So much has changed in the last 20 years and if this change is exponential over the next four then the world and business landscape will become unrecognisable.
Five years ago at the first Fast Forward Your Business Event I remember Roger sharing about the future trend of 3-d printing. At that time I recall thinking that it was never possible and yet today 3-d printers are being used to create houses and even limbs. The first 3-d house has been printed in China and 3-d printing is changing the way we do business and as a result making products more accessible.
Much of what I heard at that first event I thought was impossible and just pie in sky and yet much of it is now reality. Think electric cars and solar cities. In April Elon Musk launched the Model 3 electric car and in one day secured 180,000 pre-orders worth USD$7.5 billion. Not bad for one day at the office!!!
The simple fact is that entrepreneurs like Elon Musk don’t see things as being impossible but rather they look at what is possible and see the opportunities all around them. A simple apostrophe is the difference been Impossible and I’m Possible. In business we can choose to see the challenges or we can harness the opportunities and ride the waves of success.
What choice will you make today in how you approach your business and life?
