So, like you I'm a business owner. I've actually been one for nearly 15 years now today, I'd say that I'm successful.
My work is great. The business runs well. There's a little bit of stress, but not really major. And I'm financially stable.
However, things haven't always been this easy.
I've hit hard times. I've worked long hours. I've earned very little money and I've done all of those simultaneously. I've definitely been stressed and my God have I been frustrated! But actually, I did a combination of all these moving from one to the other, for the best part of 10 years. I could easily take two steps forward and one step back, sometimes even one step forward and two steps back, maybe even three steps.
I was going nowhere fast. I damn sure felt like I was trying really hard. I just wasn't making any progress. And if this sounds familiar to you, you're going to love this episode.
I've got the “one tip” that I wished I'd known earlier that would've accelerated my progress quicker. If I'd just known.
Now we can't go back and change the past. We can, however, change the future and the best time to start is right now.
This one thing that I'm going to tell you about today was the biggest hole in my bucket for years. I was the only one in control of it, but can I bloom and see it? Now when you hear, of what this is. You'll probably think “Whatever”, but just stick with me.
I promise it sounds really simple, but it makes such a difference. You want to know that big difference is?
IT’S YOUR MINDSET.
That's it starts with mindset. It ends with mindset.
For years, my mindset was completely wrong and I just didn't know it was holding me back. It was stopping me and my business from growing.
Now, if you're going to change your mindset, you need to stop holding yourself back then it's not an easy thing to. It sounds simple, but trust me, it isn't.
You will mess up and you'll mess up more than once to change your mindset. You need to go to places that you've never been before, and you're going to do things that make you feel uncomfortable.
They don't feel natural, but when you look at the actions that you need to take because of who you want to become; You know, that these actions are going to make you or help you live your true life.
This process or fear is going to trigger your fight or flight reaction. You need to listen to it and be aware of it, but be positive and stick to the right actions.
So, what are those right actions?
There's no doubt that's definitely the first bridge to overcome.
Now for me, I believe it's understanding what your own true values are. What are the three to five things you'd like to be known as what are the three to five characteristics you would like your children to live by.
Mine in line with our companies:
1. To always be open and honest
There's no bullshit. Don't deliver any lies. If you've messed up, be open and honest. Own it always!
2. Show respect
It doesn't matter what you think of somebody. Be respectful. There's no hierarchy within the team in terms of respect. Just because I'm a director of our company doesn't mean somebody should automatically respect me, respect me because I'm a human being.
3. I'll always show the same to take responsibility
I'm not here to blame other people, not here for excuses. I can take responsibility for my own actions and own the things that I've done and the things that I'm going to. To be a team player. This isn't all about me. I might be the one here today talking to you about a podcast and the great things that we do about mindset and great things about my life and what I'm doing, but actually, there's a massive team behind us.
There's my wife. Who's also my business partner. Who's an amazing individual who has a completely different set of strengths to what I have. But we praise those strengths, not highlight her weaknesses.
Then we've got the amazing team at MBS accountants and everything that they're doing right from the accountants through to client managers, through to admin team, through to our outsource payroll.
Everybody's part of that team and everybody's striving and working hard to their strengths and to their capabilities and aiming to improve. I’m part of that team. I might be the face of things on occasions, but it's because of that team.
4. The other one is to do what I say I'm going to do. Don't break promises.
If I'm going to do something by Friday, tell them it's by Friday, don't say it's tomorrow. If Friday's now three or four days away, just be honest. Then take the actions that you said you're going to take. If you don't and something goes wrong. then take responsibility, be open and honest. Now, if I'm faced with a decision, then I just need to catch myself and make sure I don't just react.
Reacting feels easy because it is easy. But in my view, it's what is holding you back. You see, when you have those gut reactions to things, you aren't really thinking. It's emotion. Now emotion's good in the right way but a lot of the time, the emotion that's being reacted is to make sure that you survive and we're not trying to survive.
We're trying to thrive and thriving takes good quality thinking and mindset is slowing down that thinking and understanding that the deeper effects of the decision that you are about to make. "Will this decision I'm about to make, move me closer to my goals?" ,"Will it help me live the values that I strive to identify as?"
I expect other people around me to be living in line with my values too.
I don't expect them to have exactly the same values, but they can't have something that goes against my values.
My view is that you are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with. Therefore, I need to choose wisely and carefully who that time is spent with.
This leads me to my next point, your environment. You need your environment on the whole to be conducive to you and your values to help you have that right mindset, to be a positive environment, not a negative one.
My first goal for you, unless you need it for your work, for some reason is to stop consuming the news. That's newspapers. It's the actual news on the TV. It's news on the radio. I know what I'm asking is huge.
Let me tell you this, it's full of negativity.
It's the best marketing plowing thing there is around. Our brains love to feed off new negativity and they love to go, “oh my God, things are doom and gloom. It's terrible. What am I gonna do?” “How am I gonna survive?”
Survival mode. We need a thriving mode.
Now I stopped listening to news in January, 2018. I've never missed. Yes, occasionally I might have touched on something and I learn about its days after weeks after months after.
But most of the time, the important stuff I find out about other people tell me, and I can then engage with that person and actually give some counteraction to it. If it's come across in a negative light, how do I spin that to make it look positive. What's the other point of view? What am I not seeing? What are they not seeing?
But also, many people have filtered out all the deep rubbish for me. You see, like I said, the news is extremely clever. The negative mindset approach is designed to keep you in doom and gloom to keep you from seeing well, to keep you too sea, actually, what other issues are around? It's never productive.
In my view, it will never help you be positive. It's one of the best decisions that I've made in my life. I've grown so much since I've been far more positive and I've got much more energy.
The next element is distractions.
Our minds are great, but they're also a damn pain. They want the easiest laziest route to result.
They say, if you want something done fast, get a lazy person to do it. As they will find the quickest route to result. Now this does work in the short term, but in my view, rarely in the long term. Now I'm not saying you are lazy as in, “oh, you don't do anything.” I'm saying that your brain has a tendency to want the easiest simplest route to things.
Okay. The lazy part of your brain makes you want to go for quick wins and easy to do tasks, things like answering emails, taking a phone call, making a phone call, jumping on social media. There are loads of them and social media is full of them. It's always hacks and quick wins, but you need to be brutally honest with yourself.
What are your biggest distractions? Mine was social media, so on the phone and it's easy just to waste away time on it. Now, like all of us with any of the phones we've got, you can set your own time limits. I've done my own, right. I don't have access to social media on my laptop. It's only on my phone, but it's a hassle to go to my laptop and log in. Cause I don't save my passwords on there.
I've gone with 30 minutes a day limited to the social media that I need to access, but it's up to you. What it is. I felt 30 minutes was reasonable in order to do everything I need to do. But the point isn't how long you spend doing the distraction, but the things you don't achieve because of the distraction.
It's about slowing down. I mentioned earlier, the danger of just reacting. You want to be making conscious decisions, not unconscious ones. You need to evaluate quickly, but fully the pros and cons of a decision that you are about to make.
So really what I'm saying is the biggest obstacle to you achieving the success that you badly want is
YOU!
Now I know that may seem harsh, but it's true.
I was the biggest obstacle to my own success. I struggled for years to grow our company beyond 250,000 in sales. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sustain it. We naturally just kept falling back below. But once I changed my thinking and started being around people who had bigger businesses and I grew as a person to think better, we just sailed past it.
Not only did we sail past it, but we just kept on going past the next milestone.
The next one, and on now the easiest person to lie to in the world is yourself.
Okay? It's not your wife. It's not your husband. It's not your kids. It's not your friends, it's you. And we all do it. Now, you owe it to yourself to be open and honest with yourself, show yourself some respect, stop sabotaging your own efforts.
If you think things through correctly and then plan your actions, then you have confidence in the actions you're taking. You'll reduce self-doubt. You'll start being successful.
People often go to their loved ones for support. It works well, but they love you. They care for you. However, it's hard for them to be absolutely completely open and honest with you for these very same reasons, because they love you because they care for you. They think maybe that they're going to knock your confidence if they do, or maybe they play down a big idea through fear, either way.
What you need is to seek out somebody who's a great listener. Who can objectively not emotionally understand your dilemmas, someone who can guide you, someone who can help you find the answers. And this is in no way a reflection of your own ability, the absolute best of us works best with guides around us.
It's true in business, in politics, in sports, in movies. Wherever you see success, not very far away is a guide. Someone who's a great listener. Someone who can put aside their own views and give a balanced view of the situation at hand to guide you to where you want to go,
they guide you so you can become the hero that you are meant to be.
Listen to this Podcast Episode here.
Watch the full Episode here.
