12 Steps to Success
Steps to Success 2: How does our self belief affect our chances of success?
If you have a burning desire to be, do or have something and you’re not working towards it, chances are you’re being held back by a lack of self belief.
Most successful people acknowledge that self belief plays a big part in their achievements. At a very superficial level this makes a lot of sense for why would anyone attempt something if they didn’t think they could succeed?
However, if this thought is carried to its logical conclusion it would mean that successful people never take any risks and this is clearly not the case.
Some of the most successful people I’ve met are those who, at some point in their lives, lost everything. They put their success down to the fact that they already know that if things go wrong, they will cope and come back to fight another day.
And yet, through lack of self belief, most people consistently choose unhappiness over uncertainty. You can prove this for yourself. Just ask everyone you know (including yourself)
“What would you do if you knew without doubt that you could not fail?”
Then ask, “So why aren’t you doing it?” The answer is always, “Because it MIGHT fail”
We do less than we could because what we fear most is our imagined failure.
People who have experienced real failure don’t fear it anymore. They know it won’t kill them.
There’s a lot of talk about what we learn from failure, but the real lesson, the most important lesson, is self belief. When there’s nothing else left – we learn to believe in ourselves.
If we only get confidence and self belief from our successes, we are out of luck when we fail. We need to get resilience and confidence from both success and failure.
The worst thing is letting this fear get the best of us and not even giving something a good shot and then ending up in between – not achieving what we want yet not completely failing, as we didn’t really try.
“We’re hoping to succeed; we’re okay with failure. We just don’t want to land in between.”
–David Chang
Go back to your own definition of success: When you are successful how will you ‘be’? What will you do? What will you have?
What is stopping you from being, doing and having what you want? Whatever it is, imagine for a moment that you’ve been given the wrong information; that the messages that imply that your endeavours will result in failure were really meant for someone else and that you should have got the one that said, “It doesn’t matter whether you succeed or fail, what matters is that you try. No harm will come to you from trying.”
Now go and make a start.
Whether you prefer the ubiquitous slogan “Just do it” or the more esoteric quote sometimes attributed to Goethe “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”, please know that self belief grows from experiencing both success and failure and, safe in this knowledge, you can now go and build your self belief, your self confidence, your self esteem and your chances of success.
This is part two of our Steps to Success Series. A discussion on the subject can be found on LinkedIn here: http://lnkd.in/CpFtke Details of all the 12 Steps to Success can be found here
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Tags: Burning Desire, Confidence, Doubt, Fear, Logical Conclusion, Lot, People, Plays, Resilience, Self Belief, Steps To Success, Success And Failure, Successes, Superficial Level, Uncertainty, Unhappiness | 
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Steps to Success 1: Desire is the starting point
What is it you truly desire to be, do or have in your life?
Success means very different things to different people so the first step in achieving success has to be to decide what this means to you. Knowing where to put your focus and your efforts is crucial and a great help when it comes to making everyday decisions. A great exercise to get some clarity is in the preceding post “How to Create Your Best Year”
Can you complete these sentences?
When I am successful
I am (a state of being) ….
I do (activities) ….
I have (possessions) ….
It is safe to say that if you are not already being, doing and have what you desire, you are going to have to make some changes and this is where many of us run into trouble because we can’t change in isolation. As soon as we start to make changes we affect those around us and our environment and we often hit a brick wall and decide maybe its easier, safer, better to stay as we are. Exit our dreams and desires.
In the 1970’s Dr Clare Graves, expanding on the work of Maslow, developed a table of eight values and thinking systems that affect human existence and development and both cause us to want to change as well as giving us reasons not to.
“At each stage of human existence the adult is off on his quest of his holy grail, the way of life he seeks by which to live. As he sets off on each quest, he believes he will find the answer to his existence. Yet, much to his surprise and much to his dismay, he finds that as he solves one set of human problems he finds a new set in their place. The quest he finds is never ending.”
Dr. Clare W. Graves 1914 – 1986
In the book “101 Days to Make a Change” Roy Leighton and his co-authors suggest that when we want to make changes, we may need to look at each of these levels and rather than ask “Where am I?” ask “Am I open or closed to change at this level?”
1. Survival – Getting the basics right. Are you waving or drowning?
2. Tribal – Who are your people? Do you make a positive impact on those around you?
3. Self – Who are you? What are your non-negotiable values?
4. Order – Are you building a life on solid foundations?
5. Enterprise – Are you moving forward with self knowledge?
6. Community – How can you deepen your relationships and build bonds?
7. Complexity – Do you see the bigger picture or always sweat the small stuff?
8. Holistic – Do you have an existential outlook? Can you see the interconnectedness of everything?
If desire is the starting point of all achievement, self knowledge and the ability to change go hand in hand. Are you part of this never ending quest?
Next: Steps to Success #2. Self Belief is the Key to Success
More details of the The 12 Steps to Success can be found here
If you have any queries about this or the process of making changes please leave a comment below or join the discussion on Linkedin http://lnkd.in/7AR7ex
Posted in 12 Steps to Success | Tags: 1914, Achieving Success, Brick Wall, Clare Graves, Clarity, Desire, Different Things, Dismay, Dreams And Desires, Everyday Decisions, Exercise, Holy Grail, Human Existence, Isolation, Leighton, Level 1, Life Success, Negotiable Values, Possessions, Relationships, Self Knowledge, Sentences, Solid Foundations, Survival, Table Of Eight, Way Of Life | No Comments »
Get More with Less
Getting more done with less stress, effort and frustration is what many business owners wish for.
At a recent presentation, Steve Hoare (Management by Reflection), explained why, if we want to grow a business, have a home life and enjoy what we do with the minimum of stress, it is important to spend our time doing the things we are good and learn to appreciate the contributions made by people who have different strengths to us.
To illustrate the point, members of the group were asked to put themselves into one of three groups that they most identified with while acknowledging that there may be some crossover.
The Blue Group identified most with the words:
Thinking, creative, problem solving, strategic, discerning, self starting, single minded.
The Yellow Group with:
Inclusive, mature, communicator, diplomatic, co-operative, enthusiastic
The Red Group with:
Challenging, dynamic, action, perfectionist, reliable, efficient, conscientious
Each group was given the same task and assigned an observer.
The idea was to show what happens when people with the same strengths work on a task, compared to when people with a whole range of strengths work together.
The result is that people adapt to fill the gaps but usually feel uncomfortable in these roles. This is OK for a short while (our experiment only lasted for ten minutes) but the longer it continues, the more the cracks begin to show.
The ensuing discussion focused on the importance of not seeing the absence of a particular type of behaviour as a weakness but on playing to people’s strengths.
It is equally important not to let the ‘weakness’ become a crutch or an excuse, e.g. “What do you expect? I’m this type of person not that type.”
In terms of identifying the people most likely to produce the best results we often look for skills first followed by personality but profiling the behaviours needed to complement a team can often improve the way everyone works and reduce the stress, frustration and effort while getting much more done in less time.
There is a huge amount of research that shows that we are really poor judges of others and relying on ‘gut instinct’ is the worst possible way to select people to work with.
When employing people, Steve recommends the Belbin Team Role profiling tool be used along with a suite of other tools for assessing personality and aptitude. Many tools on the market have no scientific validity so it is best to check this out and use an accredited practitioner to analyse the results.
Any double about the value / cost ratio will be quickly dispelled by a calculation of what it costs to make the wrong decision!
Posted in 12 Steps to Success | Tags: Absence, Behaviours, Blue Group, Business Owners, Cracks, Creative Problem, Crossover, Crutch, Dynamic Action, Excuse, Frustration, Gaps, Hoare, Mature, People, Personality, Point Members, Red Group, Reflection, Stress | No Comments »
5 Easy Steps on How to make an Impact
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When Richard Burton, (RIP) was a young actor and was cast in the role of spear carrier in crowd scenes, his presence was so compelling that he stole the limelight from the actor playing the king.
How do you make this kind of impact in a crowd?
More importantly, in business, when you meet people for the first time, how do you get make sure they take notice of you, trust you, want to know you and recommend you to their friends?
There are all sorts of techniques that help people change their self-beliefs in order to become more confident, there are voice coaches, body language specialists, NLP trainers, hypnotherapists and more.
However,
People don’t see your beliefs.
They don’t know what you’re thinking.
They’re not aware of your emotions.
The only thing they notice is your BEHAVIOUR
For thousands of years, actors have been making us believe in them by displaying the BEHAVIOUR of the kind of person they want to portray.
What happens in their personal lives doesn’t affect their performance.
They are often insecure as individuals but still deliver great, believable performances.
They often do it eight times a week for hundreds of weeks with great consistency.
They can portray characters that are totally unlike themselves with enormous conviction.
How does this help an ordinary person who wishes to create an impact?
Easy! We can copy what the best actors do.
Five Easy Steps on How to Make an Impact
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Define the role you want to play, e.g. charismatic leader, honest salesperson, trustworthy consultant, creative designer, useful team player
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Define the qualities a person in this role displays, e.g. charm, authority, consideration, tact, etc.
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Take each quality and work out what you need DO with your body to show those qualities, e.g to display consideration you may need to show that you are actively listening. What does a person who is actively listening DO? They make eye contact, lean forward and nod.
Repeat this process for each quality until you know exactly how to DO what a person in your chosen role would DO. -
Practice. Practice until you become your behaviour, until its stops being an act and becomes authentically you. (Physical actions trigger emotions and create beliefs)
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Be the best version of yourself that you want to be – consistently.
Do – Be – Have
DO the things you need to do to BE the person you want to be and the things you want to HAVE will follow.
Burton played 136 performances of Hamlet over 18 weeks. The production grossed $1,250,000. It was the highest-grossing and almost certainly the most profitable presentation of the play in the USA, if not the world.
He was born the 12th child in a family of 13 children in a mining village in Wales. His mother died when he was 2 years old.
“I find it ludicrous, learning some idiot’s lines in the small hours of the night so I can stay a millionaire”. Burton, 1972
This post is inspired by a training session with Mark Doyle of Fecund
Fecund provides measurable bespoke training for businesses as well as open Leadership and Personal Development Programmes. For more information contact Mark Doyle at mark@fecund.co.uk
Posted in 12 Steps to Success | Tags: Body Language, Charismatic Leader, Creative Designer, Crowd Scenes, East Steps, Eight Times, Google, Hypnotherapists, Language Specialists, Limelight, Nlp Trainers, Ordinary Person, Personal Lives, Plusone, Richard Burton, Salesperson, Script Type, Spear Carrier, Text Javascript, Voice Coaches, Young Actor | No Comments »
Dare to dream
Marcus Orlovsky
Imagine the excitement of buying, selling and racing cars at aged 19 and making enough money to not only pay for yourself to go to university but to buy a home for your mother and grandmother.
Imagine starting work at one of the world’s biggest firms of accountants and owning two Ferraris and therefore not toeing the corporate line and getting promoted again and again because, instead of telling your bosses what they wanted to hear you told them what they needed to hear.
Imagine owning a string of antique shops while still working in the corporate world.
Imagine borrowing £7,000,000,000 (that’s £7 billion) and re-building vast areas of London, including Broadgate, Ludgate Circus and Stockley Park.
Imagine owning Tiger, Tiger the famous bar and club in London’s West End, a software house (PLT) and starting Lazy Town, the internationally renowned children’s entertainment and lifestyle brand that has a direct and measurable effect on the health of children.
(Marcus has asked me to point out that in most of these projects he was part of team and didn’t do it on his own)
What kind of a man manages all of these achievements?
Imagine having a father who was so violent he beat your mother and threw you down a set of concrete stairs when you were just five years old.
Imagine being taken into care when your father went to prison and your mother was sectioned and incarcerated in a mental health institution.
Imagine working to get yourself through university and caring for a mentally ill mother who committed suicide one day when you forgot to supervise her medication.
Imagine losing £2.25 million when your stock crashed and you chose to try and help others recover their investment, instead of taking the easy way out and selling it while you could.
Imagine raising and giving away millions and bringing all of your remarkable talents and qualities to bear on challenging an education system that consistently fails those who don’t conform and helping to change the curriculum, teaching styles and the physical environment.
Is it any wonder that Marcus Orlovsky left an impression on his audience that most of them will never forget?
Before divulging his own background, Marcus got the audience thinking about why it is better to do the right thing than the done thing. He used examples from the food industry, the oil industry, education and others where decisions that caused misery could have been avoided if there had been stronger leaders instead of managers, willing to speak up.
He asked us to name the CEOs of the world’s five largest companies. We couldn’t.
He reminded us that feelings are more powerful than knowing, talking and thinking and asked us what we would all wish for any new born child.
The answers, universally, are to create unique human beings who show happiness, helpfulness, kindness, creativity, inquisitiveness, inventiveness, resourcefulness and love. And yet their formative years are spent learning facts and they are judged, often for the biggest part of their lives, on how well they remember lessons in maths, history and science and hardly ever on the things we all wish for them to achieve. Worse than that, their dreams are often dashed and they are forced into pigeonholes and punished for displaying behaviour that doesn’t conform to the accepted norms of our educational systems.
And yet there are remarkable examples of people, like Marcus himself, who don’t fit the system and succeed against all the odds. Of the 200,000 iphone apps, many were invented by under 14 year olds and 40% of employees in Google have autism.
Marcus now spends his time at the educational consultancy http://www.bryanstonsquare.com/ bringing his prodigious talents to bear on improving education and helping to build an environment that gives children a chance to make their dreams come true.
The reaction from many members of the audience was that Marcus caused them to re-think their definitions of success and question their own assumptions
He left us with this thought: “If it has never been done before, there are no experts” with the subtext “So dare to dream and give it a shot!”
If you would like to find out more, sign up for the Bryanston Square newsletter and follow them on Twitter @BryanstonSquare
I’d love to hear your views so please leave a comment below …..
Posted in 12 Steps to Success, Inspiration | Tags: Antique Shops, Areas Of London, Concrete Stairs, Educatio, Education System, Enough Money, Ferraris, Ill Mother, Lazy Town, Lifestyle Brand, Ludgate Circus, Measurable Effect, Mental Health Institution, Mother And Grandmother, Orlovsky, Physical Environment, Plt, Racing Cars, Remarkable Talents, Renowned Children, S Entertainment, Stockley Park, Teaching Styles, Tiger Tiger | 4 Comments »
Question Time
David F Smallman, Managing Partner of Pathfinder Team Consulting, invited participants in The Inspired Group to ask him any question about business. These are his answers:
Q. What advice would you give someone in their first year of business?
A. Don’t lose the passion. Ever. Not even in your 42nd year.
Q. Is it wise to use an untested business model?
A. No. Get it tested.
Q. How do you make sure a new idea doesn’t get stolen before you develop it?
A. Keep it out of the public domain until you’ve had it patented, trade marked etc. Non disclosure agreements are hard to enforce.
Q. What is the best way to price your services?
A. Price the project according to the value to the customer. This may mean that you charge two very different prices for the same work. Charge 25% up front, then two further instalments of 25% and 50%. In over 40 years in business we’ve never had a significant bad debt or had to waste time chasing money. Cash flow is vitally important and this way, your expenses are covered before you start.
Q. What is the single most important ingredient in creating a successful business?
A. Passion (as above)
Q. What one channel would you choose to market a business?
A. It depends on the type of business:
Manufacturing – distribution / sub contractors
Service Provision – figure out how your customers/clients like to buy and meet them there
Accounting / Financial services – traditional routes are still working
Q. What will the future economic power of the UK be like?
A. Look out for a debate between David and Phil Jones of Excitant Ltd on this topic. David recommends reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis.
Q. If the three essentials of business are producing the product or service, managing and marketing, what time should a business owner spend on each.
A. In a 60 hour week (which most business owners admit to working)
Marketing 55% – 33 hours
Making 35% – 21 hours
Managing 10% - 6 hours
Anyone spending more than 6 hours managing a business needs to streamline or outsource and ask themselves if they using this as an excuse not to do the marketing.
Similarly, when marketing, use the same equation:
Existing customers 55%
Short term prospects 33%
Long term prospects 10%
Q. Should we strive to continuously make our services or products better?
A. Excellence can sometimes be the death of a business. Quality is what is good enough to satisfy the customer.
Q. Is social media providing businesses that use it with an advantage?
A. Many big businesses just haven’t got it yet but many smaller businesses are using Social Media to great advantage so it gives them an edge in engaging, listening and providing what customers want.
There are more questions and answers on the LinkedIn discussion http://lnkd.in/Hw4QVb
Questions that David didn’t have time to answer:
Is there a particular hobby or pastime associated with business success?
Is there a difference between leadership and management? (See http://lnkd.in/xMdyjG for this discussion)
What is the best strategy to cope with a business failure?
Posted in 12 Steps to Success | Tags: Bad Debt, Business Model, Business Owner, Business Owners, Cash Flow, Economic Power, Excitant, Financial Services, Instalments, Michael Lewis, Money Cash, Non Disclosure Agreements, Participants, Passion, Public Domain, Question Time, Service Provision, Smallman, Successful Business, Time David | No Comments »
‘Why’ we do what we do is more important than ‘what or ‘how’ we do it.
Do you know ‘why’ you do what you do in business?
Most people know ‘what’ they do in business (at least I hope so)
Fewer people know ‘how’ they do it. (Most really great sales people don’t know ‘how’ – they just know they do)
Even fewer know ‘why’ they do it, yet this is the most powerful.
Why? Why is that the case?
Because, when we understand our own motivation, when we know that we believe 100% in what we do, it’s easy for other people to connect with us, engage with us and makes selling a product or service that much easier.
Marketing has always been about getting people emotionally involved with a brand, product or service but however big your budget is, old style marketing is finding it harder and harder to make an impression. Everyone is sceptical, everyone is cynical. Advertising and PR only go so far now because consumers now expect exceptional products, value and service but they also want to be involved, engaged and listened to. They are no longer passive receivers of marketing messages, they are active in finding what they need and that includes wanting to feel connected to the brand.
We’ve always been curious about the people behind exceptional brands
We like to know their stories, what makes them tick, their views and values but now it’s not just the exceptional brands that get this attention. We want to know this about pretty much everyone we do business with.
Take Sean:
Sean’s company produces great video for business
“So do thousands of others. So what?”
Sean is *passionate* about what he does.
“Yawn. So is everybody else (or at least they say they are). So what?”
Sean’s company uses cutting edge technology to produce high quality products at very reasonable costs.
“So do many others. So what?”
Sean jumps out of bed in the morning for sheer excitement, adventure and a sense of wonderment. He believes there is nothing quite so fulfilling as working with others to transform an idea into a vibrant, profit generating business – a business where the customers, employees and investors all share in the benefits.
When you meet Sean, he doesn’t tell you this last bit of course but as you talk to him you soon start to feel his enthusiasm, his excitement, his wonder. You quickly get a sense of his values, his integrity, his sincerity. If you share these attributes you’ll be very comfortable with Sean. Even if you don’t need his services you’ll always be happy to see him and get to know him better and before long you’ll be talking about him and introducing him to people you know.
Why? Because Sean is 100% comfortable with who he is, what he does and why he does it. He’s not putting on an act. He’s not afraid of being found out. He’s not holding a position. He’s allowing you to see the real person. He’s exposing the real ‘him’ and because he’s relaxed about this, you will be too. Perhaps most importantly, Sean is not about to start pretending to be something he’s not, just to get a contract or please a customer.
The advent of the ‘social human’
As I was writing this I got an update from a favourite blogger, Jon Holloway*, who says: (my paraphrasing) We are all now looking for more from the brands we engage with, we want to know more about the reason they exist, who the people are and why we should care. We also want to know how we can get involved.
Jon explains that as brands are trying to move from push to pull marketing, consumers have moved to yet another stage and are now looking for a ‘value exchange’.
The advent of the ‘social human’ (Jon’s phrase) via the explosion of the use of social networking in marketing makes this easy for people like Sean who are happy to be their brand and to be themselves at the same time but it makes it hard for anyone to hide behind a brand. It’s not enough to be the ‘face’ of a brand, we need to be the heart and soul of our brands too.
For some of us, this may involve an uncomfortable amount of navel gazing.
The Ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself”, was apparently inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and has been attributed to many Greek philosophers and sages.
If mankind has been struggling with this concept since the days of Plato and Socrates it is hardly surprising that the question “Why do you do what you do in business?” proved a hard one to answer.
There are some fascinating insights amongst the 70 or so comments on the LinkedIn discussion http://lnkd.in/i4iGxV.
There are many tools and techniques that help us to get to grips with who we are and why we do what we do. At our April TIG event, we heard about Motivational Maps supplied by Nick Ratcliffe of http://www.partnersinmotivation.co.uk ; Myers Brigs personality questionnaires from Sue Parsons of http://www.vamonostraining.co.uk/ and Belbin Team Roles, Transactional Analysis, NLP and more from Steve Hoare of http://www.legacyinterim.co.uk/. Steve’s blog is http://mbrfan.wordpress.com/
All of these people are experts in helping people to discover why they do what they do and how to apply this knowledge to business and would be happy to answer any questions.
*Jon Holloway blogs for http://www.bethehurricane.com/ and is on Twitter as @socialvation You can read the full text of what Jon says here: http://www.bethehurricane.com/2011/04/forget-push-pull-marketing-exchange/
Would you like to share your ‘why’ or add to the discussion? We’d be delighted to hear from you either here on the LinkedIn group.
How to grow a business
Why so many businesses don’t grow
Lots of people have great ideas for businesses.
Lots of people start new businesses.
Not many grow them into thriving enterprises that provide employment and contribute significantly to the economy of the country.
Too many people spend all their time working IN their business and hardly any time at all working ON it.
There’s nothing wrong with “lifestyle” businesses if that’s what you set out to achieve but so many people set out with different aims: to build a business that can exist without them; that can be sold; that won’t die when they retire; that will provide them with a pension; that provides other people with a good living; that is more than simply swapping their time for money.
A good idea is not enough to grow a great company.
Being great at what you do does not mean that you have a great company.
Companies consist of three main things:
Product + Process + People
Many businesses have a good product and great people but it’s the processes that allow them to grow.
This means that any job does not rely on just one person being able to do it.
Invest as much in the processes as you do in the product and the people.
Poor pricing is what keeps most businesses small.
Too many new businesses think they have to compete on price in order to get into the market. This is only true if everything else you have to offer is unremarkable and will only work if your whole business model is based on very small margins.
Keeping control of cash flow and understanding management accounts is probably THE most important factor in growing a business.
Money allows you to take the right business decisions at the right time but often the biggest decision that needs to be made isn’t a financial one but “Are you the right person to run your business?” Just because you started it doesn’t mean you have the right skills or temperament to do the day to day work of managing it.
If your aim is to grow a business rather than create a job for yourself, assuming that you already have a great idea, these are the top tips to make it work:
- Get enough capital before you start. Working just to cover your own wages is not a business.
- Estimate what you need and how long it will take to turn a profit and then double it.
- Don’t do any job that you can hire someone else to do better or quicker.
- Understand the finances of how a business works. It’s the most important job.
- Invest in processes so that no one person is irreplaceable – especially you.
Share below your experiences of growing a business – I’d love to hear them ….
Posted in 12 Steps to Success | Tags: Aim, Aims, Bu, Business Decisions, Business Model, Business Money, Cash Flow, Economy, Financial One, Growing A Business, Invest, Job, Lifestyle, Management Accounts, Many People, Margins, New Businesses, Right Time, Temperament, Understanding Management | No Comments »
The Philosophy of Success
What does success mean to you?
We live in a culture that is pretty much obsessed with success, and there’s a lot of advice on how to be successful – how to set the parameters of success and how to model the behaviours of successful people.
John Turner, philosopher and visiting Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire Business School led a discussion on The Philosophy of Success
Phil Begnett | Web Video Producer filmed and produced two short videos taken from the nights excellent seminar.
As the evening was very “Interactive” with the audience, the video had to be shot from the “side” of the stage ….
Funky Philosophy – Activity based Philosophy
Deep Networking – The antidote for speed networking!
This post is related to a previous post “What does Success Mean to You?” and to a lively discussion on LinkedIn with 71 comments! http://lnkd.in/Htuywx If you’d like to join in, leave your comments here or on the LinkedIn discussion!
Posted in 12 Steps to Success | Tags: Advice, Antidote, Audience, Behaviours, Business School, Fellow, Interactive Video, John Turner, Linkedin, Lot, Networking, Parameters, Philo, Philosopher, Philosophy, Sophy, Success, Successful People, University Of Hertfordshire, Video Producer, Videos | 1 Comment »
