……I have learnt a few things.

This is my PASSION. There is NOTHING better to me than seeing someone who just has an aspiration to make a change to actually becoming a successful business owner entrepreneur. Nothing better.

Having worked with so many people over the years, I have seen some become VERY successful and some fall by the wayside. There are a number of different contributing factors to people’s success, their failure and mediocrity. I am convinced that 80% of success comes from the mindset – but EVERYONE gives that kind of “lip service”.

There are MAJOR challenges that face any aspiring business owner entrepreneur, a lot of the time, challenges they can’t see, through no fault of their own.

Ask yourself this, “Have you ever tried to make a long lasting personal change and failed to achieve the outcome that you envisaged you would do when you made that decision?” Perhaps you went to a seminar or read a book or something, got all fired up but then found that life just kind of “got in the way”  and you lost momentum?

This happens to maybe 97% of people and it’s something that I go into a lot of detail on in my presentation, “The Missing Link…. between Desire and Success”. The way we overcome this challenge is largely covered by using MOBIvation Text messages that guarantee people’s success.

The factor I am going to cover here today is just one element of what stops people from making long lasting personal change. It’s what cripples businesses and can plunge business owner entrepreneurs deep into debt, bankruptcy and in a lot of tragic cases, severe depression.

It’s one of the most misunderstood element’s in long lasting personal success but if correctly understood and aligned with what you want to achieve, you become UNSTOPPABLE!!

What I am talking about here are your core motivating factors.

What is it that drives a business owner entrepreneur moving forward?

Motivation is horrifically misunderstood! It is NOT “Power one-liners” or “foot stomping”, clapping your hands etc… It’s something MUCH different.

When I am consulting with someone who wants to become a business owner entrepreneur or make more money, I ask them “What are your three core motivating factors?” What is it that is going to drive you forward when you get tired, when you get frustrated, when fear and self-doubt are thundering down like a steam train, right at you?!” What are they?

The responses I normally  get are something like “I want to pay my bills” or “I want to go on more holidays” or “I want a nicer car” . When I hear these kind of things, I need to do something to help this business owner entrepreneur because, I know that person has a VERY real chance of failing.

You see, your motivating factors are like the petrol you put in your car. You can have the “sickest ride” in the city but if you have no petrol in there, it’s not going anywhere! This is EXACTLY the same as having the best strategy in the world to make money and build business – if you don’t have the motivating factors to pull you through, it’s not going to work.

Through my research,  I have found that there are three core motivating factors amongst us humans and they are as follows:

1)      The motivating factor of Contribution – being able to provide for your family, your charity, your children’s education etc

2)      The motivating factor of Peace of Mind – having peace of mind that it will all be okay. This is the one that keeps you up at night!

3)      The motivating factor of Self-Esteem – that you will be rewarded for all of your hard work. After all, you work hard so why shouldn’t you be able to live the life you deserve.

These are CORE MOTIVATING FACTORS.

Everything else, in my experience is a “symptom” of these 3 core motivating factors.

Wanting to “pay your bills” is a symptom of “peace of mind”, but rest assured, you could easily pay your bills if you sold your house but then you would be effected by not having peace of mind.

“Having a nicer car” or “going on more Holidays” will NOT keep you going when the going gets tough. Business owners entrepreneurs will find themselves justifying what they currently have as being “okay” when the pain of the “learning curve kicks in”. I guarantee it.

What I am saying here is that everyone’s thoughts are their own but if you are intending to make changes, motivating factors are absolutely key. Make sure that you really understand WHY you are doing what you are doing.

The strongest of those three core motivating factors that I have found has been the motivating factor of contribution. Think about it, if a business owner entrepreneur have children, a family, friends or a cause that they are really committed to, they would walk through Hell and back not to let them down. We hold ourselves to a MUCH higher level for those we love than we do for ourselves.

PHire it up!!

PH

Business Owner Entrepreneur Success <<<————– For you, for free!

P.S. Please leave a comment below and forward this blog to any other people who may be interested, especially any other business owner entrepreneur .

So I quit my jobs working on the construction sites and nightclubs, sold up what I could, bought a ticket to London and packed my bags, said goodbye to everyone I knew.

I remember being at the Cape Town international airport and my Dad saying to me “What are you going to do for work over there?” I honestly didn’t know but I knew I HAD to go. I sort of shrugged my shoulders and looked away. He laughed at me and said “Boy, you’re like Dick Whittington, on his way to London, where the streets are paved with gold…!” I thought to myself, “hold onto that comment, Paul.”

Getting to London, I checked into a hostel in Earls Court – as you do! I only had £400 that I had come over with so I had to get busy quickly again getting some work. So, in that situation, you go back to what you know. I went back to working the night clubs and construction sites.

Things were going well and I was enjoying working London’s clubs. We had some of the greatest people I have ever met working together at that time, particularly at Tiger Tiger in Piccadilly.People who I am still so lucky to have some of the greatest relationships with, all over the world. These people became like family – and that STILL holds today. It’s a crazy thing when you go through adversity, challenges, pain and chaos and all the highs too, it builds INCREDIBLE friendships.

Whilst I was loving working the nightclub scene, there was something else that was chewing away at me and that was basically that I needed to move forward. I needed to see if I could further things in my life and I wanted to make more money than I was.

I felt that, with no disrespect to the AWESOME people at the night clubs, I felt that I wanted to get a “normal job”. I wanted to work in an environment where I could wear a suit. It’s kind of crazy but wearing a suit was a big thing to me at that time. It was my goal that I was able to return to SA for holidays etc as a “different person” , a “better person” than who had left SA. I needed to see progress in myself, I know that you reading this, can relate to what I mean…

This all culminated one night when I was standing in the Club at Tiger Tiger, shooting the breeze with Kevin, an old school doorman who was as wide as he is tall and he said to me “We’ve gotta watch ourselves tonight, Paul. The City lot are coming down….!” I had never heard about this “City lot” but Kev explained to me (not sure if he was being serious or blagging it) that they were basically the UK’s equivalent of Wall Street (a very rough comparison, but there you go! )

I decided, at that moment, that I wanted to work in the City! I wanted to work in the financial markets and wanted to make a lot of money…. And that was that!

So that Monday morning, I started applying for jobs. I wanted a job where I could wear a suit, make lots of money and be very proud of myself. There was only one problem: I had no qualifications, no London experience and no contacts or connections to get me even an interview, let alone a job.

I am not sure why this is but that didn’t register in my mind as a huge problem but it soon became evident that it was thought. I managed to go through the next 2.5 years and received more than 3000 rejection emails for jobs that I had applied for…!! In hind site, this is where I was grateful that I was an ugly teenager and NEVER good with the ladies, so rejection was nothing new to me…!  

 I remember once getting an email back that said “Please contact us for an interview”, so I called up with my best telephone manner voice only to be met with some confusion and then explained to that the recruitment consultants had 3 “auto-respond” buttons  1) Thanks but no thanks 2) Please contact us for an interview 3) You’ve got the job…. My consultant had pushed the wrong button….!!

Ugly teenager or not, going through 2.5 years of getting rejection after rejection for job applications is tough. Looking back on it now, if I knew now what I knew then or had someone to mentor me, I would have stepped back and taken a different route which would have got me to where I wanted to go in a much quicker time – but as they say, you don’t know what you don’t know. Looking at it now though, I HAD to believe that the experience is something that will serve me for the rest of my life and not give up on the goals I was striving for.

I was literally working nights at the clubs and telling people that I was “keeping my days open” to be able to go for interviews. Not they really did but I guess wishful thinking is not a bad thing…

Part three (“The BREAK-THROUGH) to follow ASAP

For some reason, this was one of those little gems of motivation that I picked up as a youth. It was a line from a Russian band called Gorky Park, from a song called “Bang!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fmVkWdiVfM ( VERY 80′s!!)

This was my favorite “Pre-rugby-motivation-song” and anyone who knew me back in the “School Daze” will attest to me having it on a tape (that was the thing that preceded CD’s for you younger folks!!) 6 or 7 times, one after another.

I don’t know why exactly I remembered THAT line but my guess would be that because I was not very academic at all growing up. In fact, I had to attend extra studies classes in junior school and was in all the “streamed” (a nice way of saying “slow”) classes in high school. I could spell “F.E.E.F.E.E” with my final years results. So perhaps I had to hold onto that line and keep faith in it to believe that I would still be able to learn the life skills that I needed to be successful but that success only comes after the motivation.

A whole lot of motivation for what lay ahead…

Straight out of school, I went looking for manual labour work. Being a “generously built” lad, I had little trouble finding occupation in warehouses, construction sites and nightclubs. After about 7 year of what could be broadly termed as “manual labour”, I started to develop an urge to get a job where I was using my mind more than my body to keep the landlord at bay.

This was way before I got off my hamster wheel but at that time, if the truth be told, I believed deep down that I could do a lot more with my mind, personality, passion and motivation than perhaps my school results had shown me and after about two and a half years of trying, I eventually managed to get a job as a filing boy for a large Brokerage in the City. I guess I was still doing manual labour but I kept saying to myself that “at least I was in the environment where people could spot my talent that I believed I had..” and I was getting to wear a suit which seemed to motivate people to treat me differently than a hard hat, visibility jacket and safety boots did.

Eight years later, I am very glad I put the effort in to get into a different environment and actually believed that I was able to do more than a piece of paper said I was capable of.

The more I research some of the most successful people in the world, I am coming to the conclusion that perhaps schooling is not the be-all and end-all for success.

If we look at some of the greatest business people in the world, these are not all people who have MBA’s or masters degrees from big name universities. A lot of them are people who didn’t complete university or even make it to the lecture hall.

I read recently that over the last 40 years, there has been a significant shift in the background of people who are running big multinational companies. This shift was basically that previously most of these companies were run by people who tend to think in a very structured fashion such as Accountants, Engineers, Doctors and Professors but as time goes on, more and more “out of the box” thinkers have been given the reigns. Mainly people from a Sales or Marketing backgrounds. The reason for this is said to be that as we move into more and more competitive environments, the more creative you can be, the more advantage you will have over your competition. I am still to find a junior school or high school that teaches Sales or Marketing….

The motivation to buy from Henry was always there…. But was the money…?

Henry Ford said about his Model T : ” You can have it in any colour, as long as its black”. Now, Mr Ford was no doubt a great thinker but can you imagine any producer being motivated to be that inflexible to their clients demands now-a-days? It wouldn’t happen – the competition out there is far too great and far too motivated to let anyone get away with that.

In my opinion, a good school education is very important, but not only because of the academics. I believe that school is also very important to develop more and more of ones social skills, to create friendships, be involved in team play and a greater understanding of what it takes to be successful in a situation – most of which is taught outside of the class room.

I don’t believe anyone’s success is going to be based on how many numbers they know the square root of, how many historical dates they can remember, or how to find the location of point “X” using a mathematical equation. I believe that success going forward is going to come to people who have the ability to see a situation for what it is, have a vision to work from, be creative in the achievement of the outcome and the passion to inspire others to follow them.

Therefore, I do believe that, “The street teaches what you learn at school” …. and then some

To your Health, Wealth and Happiness.

Paul Harrison

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