In 2013 I was sent dozens of emails from a local, small time business, telling me to stop running my business.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the emails left, I probably deleted them after having a good laugh months later. At the time, I was pretty disheartened. I wish I had kept copies because it got to the point of farce.
They started following me to networking events. Calling up my customers and lying to them. Emailing me from spam accounts about how I’ll be shut down.
They even went so far as to “lose” an award I was offered. They sponsored the event and my award was misplaced.
What caused all this? Fear of success.
They were the only game in town for a long time. Almost ten years of a competition-less marketplace where they were the only place you could get a website.
All of a sudden, a bright eyed and bushy tailed young man moved down and started offering new websites to new customers.
My success was eating up their success. Apparently.
Eventually, their customers started calling me. Asking if I could help them. Evidently, my stalkers’ work had been less than stellar and they wanted to explore their options.
Before long, I was outgrowing where I was and moved away. Taking those customers with me. Most of them are still with me, no matter where I’ve been based.
Here’s where the other company went wrong. They believe that success is a commodity and there’s only so much to go around.
Success isn’t a commodity. Their entire model was based on fear of other businesses being successful. By being the only web and digital business within a certain radius, they based their position on literal geographic location.
They painted themselves into a corner. It meant that if anyone moved into the same space and offered the same product, all of sudden they weren’t unique. So they felt that success, within their industry, was located to a geographic radius of their business.
Mining works like that. Not digital businesses. Your success is NOT limited to how many other people are successful.
We’re taught to that success is for other people
Part of this isn’t your fault. We’re taught at school, university, college, business and in life that success is scarce. We have a totally flipped mindset when it comes to success.
We’ll get jealous of others who appear to have success. Movie stars, CEO’s, inventors, musicians, businesses, writers, bloggers, politicians, the list goes on.
Yet, in the same breath, we’ll play the lottery because we’ve seen one person win. Your chances of being successful are INFINITELY greater if you’re willing to work off your own back, rather than winning some money.
Success is seen as scarce and a commodity. “Must be nice” we’ll hear, or “they just got lucky”. OK, well if that’s true, why can’t you get lucky?
The reason most people aren’t successful has NOTHING to do with how many people have had success before them. It’s because most people aren’t willing to put the work in. They’re not willing to change their habits. Simple as that.
You don’t BECOME a success. You either are or your aren’t a success by choice.
Michael Phelps, more gold medals than any other Olympian. He didn’t become a success in 2016. He became a success the second he decided that he’d train every day. Get into the cold water at 5am for days on end. Even if he didn’t feel like it.
You can either be a success today, now and reap the rewards of success later. Or moan that you’ve never had success handed down to you.
If someone else is successful, that means you can be too
It’s ludicrously simple. Those who ARE successful WANT other people to be successful. You don’t think that Bill Gates, Neil Patel, Frank Kern, Grant Cardone, Gary Veynerchuck, Cal Newport, Timothy Ferriss, Jack Dorsey, Kara Goldin, Sheryl Sandberg, Indra Nooyi and Ryan Deiss want you to be successful?
They’re all rooting for you to be bigger than them. Better, richer, wealthier, healthier, smarter and more successful than them.
Speak to ANY person who you consider to be successful and ask them if a) they want you to be successful and b) if they think you can be successful and they’ll tell you yes on both counts.
The fastest way to be successful, is to celebrate, embrace and ASSIST others in being successful. You don’t get anywhere in life thinking you’re the only person who can do something.
One of my goals, is to have helped over 100 businesses generate over £1 000 000 in revenue. If I helped a customer make more money than me, I’d be delighted.
Success is contagious. You either become a part of it or you see it happen to other people.
You can either be a victim or find success
Victims are people who have things happen to them. Simple as that.
You can choose to be a victim. Or you can choose not to be. Even if something has happened to you, that was unprovoked and unwanted by you, if you choose to let that event define you, you’re a victim.
If you wouldn’t introduce yourself as a victim to someone, why would you accept that title yourself? Shitty stuff happens, it sucks. But to let it define you, means you’re a victim.
You can move PAST that and find success. Success is out there, ready to be found and ready to be taken.
Victims have a habit of making excuses for what happens all the time. “He stole my clients!”, “the market isn’t right”, “it’s too hard”…excuses.
It’s very very simple. You can either be a success of choose to be a victim. It’s all within your own mind.
Choose a market you want to be a success in
The easiest way to be a success? Choose a market that you WANT to be a success in. I’ve never understood why people see this as so difficult.
I love helping businesses expand the number of products and services they can generate sales from. It seriously gets me up in the morning and helps me stay motivated late into the night.
Have I got everything planned out? Fuck no. I have no idea what to do next some days. But I LOVE what I do. Passion is used too frequently now. But if I didn’t have to be making money. I’d still be doing this.
What do you WANT to do? Where do you want to be successful? Where do want to be, when everything still fails but you have fun anyway?
What area is going to drive your success? Because you HAVE that choice. It’s easier to work longer hours, harder tasks and keep chipping away when you’re in a space that you still enjoy.
Find that market and success will find you.
Wrap up
It’s easy for you to say Mike, you’ve got it all. Car, house, big TV, nice microwave oven. But it’s not that easy!
I totally get what you’re saying. Hundreds of businesses have told me the same thing. But here’s the deal. Unless you’re willing to take successful action and BE a success today, it’ll never happen.
Success drives action and more success. People who are successful, people who have “made it”, don’t stop when they’ve reached a goal. They do it again. They keep going because they know that success changes. Your goals, wants, needs and objectives change.
If you don’t want to do it over and over, it means you don’t know what you want. Simple as that.
If I dropped you into the ocean and held you under water, you’d start running out of oxygen. Success, would be fighting your way up for breath. Success would be beating the shit out of me and surviving enough to get a gulp of fresh air. Getting air is the motivation. Not success.
Think about what you WANT to be successful at. You have to be truly TRULY committed to change, habit breaking and your goals to be successful. Don’t say you want to be a champion swimmer if you don’t really.
If you want to help 100 businesses, reach £1 000 000 in sales, is what you’re doing TODAY going to do that? Motivate yourself to success.
