Success and Failure

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When people list their goals it’s common to see ‘to be successful’ as a goal. Which raises question of what is the definition of success. Most people measure their success by conditioned responses e.g. the social importance of their careers, or their income.

I don’t agree with this. I am influenced by other definitions of success. There is the personal industry definition of ‘progressive realization of a worthwhile goal’. Then there is the spiritualist leaning towards the achievement of happiness in life as success. For me fulfilling one’s potential in the gifts they have is important. Creating a legacy of our time on the planet is another. Being a great parent and partner is another. Providing financially for those who depend on us another. Living life with choice another.

Note none of my definitions of success rank high or even exist on the physical preparation industry stereotypes of success.

I believe most of you are living your life in pursuit of the values imposed on you by conditioning of industry and upbringing. I am not suggesting this is wrong – but I am saying you are capable of more.

Fifteen years into my career, I had achieved things few if any had in my country and industry. Yet I realized that whilst I had ticked all the professional boxes and achieved the envy of my peers, I had very little to show for it financially speaking.

And I see this in the communication from many – the impact on their cash flow if they take a day or more away from their work. So I became a student of financial, business, and many other holistic disciplines. No, not what my peers do or did. But as a result – I now do what they can’t or will not. I work by choice – who I want to work with, where I want to work and when.

Will most of you achieve this? I doubt it. Why? Is it because you are not capable? Not at all. The first reason I know most of you won’t achieve this (in other words fail at this) is this – most of you won’t start. Simple as that. Your failure to make a start is a guarantee of your failure to achieve. Why won’t you start? There are going to be many reasons, including but not limited to:

  • That’s not what most of your peers are focusing on or doing.
  • What would they think?
  • You were raised to believe you didn’t deserve or could not achieve these things.
  • What would they think?
  • I need more information or other procrastinating concepts.
  • I will do x when y happens.

Then some of you who do make a start will quit. You will lack the determination to learn new mindsets and develop new skills. You will default to your old ways, your comfort zone. You will fall to the pressure of your peers, friends and family who don’t like that you are doing something they are not.

That’s why I say most of you will not achieve in the area of having choice in life. You see there are strong commercial forces that seek to keep you on the merry-go-round of the economic cycle. In their eyes you are on this earth to work, pay taxes, and pass on. You are not on this earth to learn how to get ahead, break away from the slavery and need to work every day or else you go backward, to learn how to rise above the masses, and to learn advanced ideas such as tax minimization.

So you need to decide – are you going to live your life on your terms or on someone else’s terms. Are you going to be a person of choice or a person of conformity to your industry’s values? Are you going to live life wondering what might have been or working towards what you can be? Are you going to fulfil someone’s definition of success for your life or your own?

Are you striving to be a ‘success’ in the eyes of conventional industry values? Which I believe is a failure to fulfil your potential. Or are you writing your own definition of success?

Only you can decide that. People who put their hand up and say ‘Ian teach me how I can live life with choice’ are not your average people. But I respect how most of you are compelled to be average.

It’s hard

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For over a decade now I have been training and mentoring people in the journey to developing leveraged and passive income, using the same business model. An email I received recently encouraged me to reflect on this experience.

To give some background, I like to use Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘cash flow quadrant’, where on the left hand side of the quadrant you have ‘E’ for employee and ‘S’ for self-employed. The Es have no control over their work or leverage income. The S have control over their work but no leverage. On the right hand side you find ‘B’ for business people, and ‘I’ for investors. They both have leverage, however the ‘I’s have passive or residual income. The great divide is leverage. On the left hand side there is no leverage. On the right hand side there is leverage.

So what’s so important about leverage? Your income is not limited to your personal exertion!

I know it’s not easy for humans to change, and moving from the left to the right hand side of this quadrant is change. In the last decade plus I have watched thousands put up their hand to ‘cross-over’ the entrepreneurial divide. They don’t all make it. That’s life. That’s human nature.

Yes, it can be hard work – developing new skills, new habits, and new beliefs. However let me share what I think is really hard.

Having a fixed income and watching cost of living rise. I think that’s hard.
Having little ability to raise your income and receiving unexpected large bills come in. I think that’s hard.

Having to turn up for work at times and places determined but other people – I think that’s hard.

Having to work with people you don’t necessarily like – I think that’s hard.

Not receiving income when you don’t turn up for work – I think that’s hard.
Worrying about the fact that if you miss days of work you will not receive income – I think that’s hard.

Falling behind on the bills because you did take some days off work – I think that’s hard.

Having to go to work knowing you are doing little more than paying the bills – I think that’s hard.

Spending more time with strangers in the work environment than with your kids or those you would prefer to spend time with – I think that’s hard.

Living with the regret you were not there at the crucial times for your kids when they were growing up because you had to go to work – I think that’s hard.

Realizing that if something were to happen to you your family would not be financially looked after because you can no longer go to work – I think that’s hard.

Getting older and realizing you will not be able to work for as long as you are alive, and wondering how you are going to support yourself and or your family in your ‘golden years’ – I think that’s hard.

Living in poverty during the final 10-30 years of your life because you can no longer work in the way you spent your life working and now there is no income – I think that’s hard.

Waking up one day to realize your adult life to date has been built on a flawed economic model – I think that’s hard.

I have also concluded that it would be lot easier to simply give seminars on how to become an entrepreneur and walk away after the 2-5 days course. After all, most do this, and the majority are conditioned to believe that this is the way to go. They go to a course on ‘business development’, and walk away with ‘all the information’ they need to succeed.

I note with interest listening to John C. Maxwell (US business leader, speaker and author) in a live presentation recently agree with my conclusions on this point – that staying with people until they achieve their success is a lot harder than giving them a course in how to do it for a few days and then walking away.

However the short term gains of taking someone’s money for a few day entrepreneur / business seminar are outweighed by the long term success of sharing the true financial success of your student.

So yes, I find some things hard also. However like most things in life hard is on a continuum. And I find ‘working for a living’, ‘working for money’, harder than creating a purpose based life for yourself and your family through entrepreneurial development which includes guiding others to share your entrepreneurial breakthroughs.

It will take you five years

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I didn’t know what the word ‘entrepreneur’ was until I was in my mid 30’s. At this stage I took stock and realized with great shock that life hadn’t panned out as I had expected. Yes, I was one of if not the most successful and highly paid service providers in a rare space of physically preparing elite athletes. I had trained more athletes than anyone else in the world possibly. No-one I had met or know worked harder. I know this sounds arrogant but this is not a marketing piece for physical preparation – you don’t see me talk like this in that arena.

What was shocking though was my realization that for all my effort, for all my industry-recognized success, I had very little to show for it. I was time poor, and asset poor. I had great cash flow, but if I took a day off work – I was a day further behind on paying the bills. I have zero leverage.

I spent the next seven years as a student in the area of entrepreneurship, seeking to develop leveraged and passive income. When I say I was a student, I didn’t limit this to collecting information – I also took action, learnt by doing, and investing tens of thousands of dollars in my education. Yes, most of what I attempted in the next seven years caused me more pain, because it failed.

By 2001 I had mastered leverage and was on my way to creating residual income. In the ensuing decade plus I have guided thousands on this same path, and leant many lessons. I will share one of them with you.

It will take at least five years to develop the entrepreneurial mindset as measured by tangible success. You might be quicker, you might be slower. There are no guarantees on this. What I can guarantee you is this

  1. If you don’t start you will never get there.
  2. If you start and quit you will never get there.

And that is perhaps the most valuable lesson I can share with you from my pursuit of entrepreneurial success, both as a student, practitioner, and as a teacher, during the last eighteen years.

Your success will happen some years after you start. The longer you procrastinate, the further off that date will become.

I could sugar-coat it. I could tell you what many sharp marketers do, of the instant success you will experience. But I don’t – they won’t serve you.

I will share however my intrigue at how many will spend this time frame in a university course, so that they can graduate with an average of $100,000 in debt, and the right to pursue the forty year plan – work at a job for forty years, get paid a salary, and then retire broke forty years later.

Yet are not prepared to spend this same time in a real-world entrepreneurial ‘course’. It’s not one or the other. You can do both. It’s just that most feel ‘comfortable’ doing the forty year plan only. Isn’t that interesting….