Foreword The idea of taking control of our lives, and not being beholden to anyone else, is a dream that most people have had in their lives, but it’s an idea that the vast majority of people never act upon. There is an explanation for that which is both incredibly simple and, at the same time, is incredibly complex. I’ll cover this, and much more too, as we get into the book. This book is about entrepreneurship and building the mindset for success in business, however it’s important to appreciate that success in life is not just about business success and making money. Success comes in many guises and it will mean something different for everyone. One of my favorite Mentors, Earl Nightingale, defines success as the “The progressive realization of a worthy ideal” and that definition has stayed with me now since the very first time I heard it in a recording he made back in the 1950’s called “The Strangest Secret”. You can watch this amazing video here: http://diamondwealthmastery.com/being-successful-strangest-secret/
It doesn’t matter how you define your own success, so long as you define it for yourself. What you want to achieve needs to be thought about carefully. You need to know where you are going before you can plan the route to get there.
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That’s the main challenge for most people, they have not really thought it through and they end up being victims of circumstance. It doesn’t matter how powerful the engines are, or how sophisticated the navigation system might be, a ship at sea, with no one at the helm to guide it, will always end up derelict on a beach somewhere. Tragically it’s the same for human beings. Fortunately we can change that and put a professional at the helm, so let’s get started.
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Chapter 1
How The Mind Works In the beginning there are none of us born failures and there are none of us that are born successes. The outcome of our lives is moulded from that day forward by the people we meet along the way. Initially that’s our parents and family, then it’s our friends and school mates and later on it’s the people we work with too. Throughout that time we are receiving signals from them that we turn into thoughts in our conscious mind. Our conscious thoughts then become the input into our subconscious brain, and that’s the part that you have very little control over other than the input you give it through your thoughts and self talk. It’s much like a computer receives input from us when we tap on the keyboard. Just as the computer’s central processor can only perform based on the input we give it, that’s exactly the way the subconscious brain works.
Just like the CPU in the computer, it can’t choose, it’s robotic. The challenge is, in the beginning, in those formative years, we don’t have much say about what’s going on our lives. We have no choice other than to embrace the thinking and the philosophies of the people who are giving us nurture. That’s the only input we are getting and therefore the only programming being received by our subconscious brain, which is an incredibly faithful robot, which interprets all of the data we give it, consciously or unconsciously, as the absolute truth.
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What is even more incredible is the fact that once that data becomes programmed into our subconscious brain, it actually then creates barriers that prevent us from receiving any new input data that doesn’t correspond with the data we have already given it. Without us even knowing about it, our destiny is being determined at a very early age, as a direct consequence of the thoughts and the actions and the dialogue we are experiencing from the people around us, at a time when we have no control whatsoever over the quality of the thinking they are sharing with us. That’s how we learn to talk. We don’t learn consciously, we learn subconsciously. We don’t think about learning a language, it just happens on autopilot because the subconscious takes over and does the learning for us. Learning a new language later in life is much more difficult, because once the conscious mind is in control of the process, it typically has other priorities by that stage that interfere. What is happening is that our subconscious brain is taking the data we are receiving and, notwithstanding the fact that the data, in the most part, actually has no relevance at all to how we might want our life to turn out, is taking that data as being the absolute truth as to how we see things, perceive things and believe things. Which is a real challenge, because, as I mentioned earlier, what it then does is locks the door to any new knowledge that conflicts with the model it has built of what you like and don’t like, what you believe in and what you will challenge and your own perception of how you see yourself, your self image. Take a few moments and go and read an article I wrote on this subject: http://diamondwealthmastery.com/reticular-activating-system-mind-control/
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I was amazed when I read “How The Mind Works” by Dr Steven Pinker. This is life changing information. It should be required reading for everyone before they even leave school. If people understood this there would be a lot more happiness in the World.
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There’s loads of obvious examples of this. Footballers kids who follow them into the sport, racing drivers who follow their Dads into Formula 1 and the children of actors who follow their parents onto the stage. There are generations of army personnel who have followed in their father’s footsteps and many business people who took over the family firm. Kids who go to Eton and Harrow, inevitably graduate towards Oxford and Cambridge, many times because that’s what their parents did. The list goes on and on and in each and every case it was inevitable. They were being programmed from birth to do exactly that. There is also another much bigger group of people, a group which represents over 90% of the population of our planet, that are, in exactly the same way, following in the footsteps of
the previous generation, and they too never consciously know why they are doing it... ...and that’s all the people all over the World who end up working for someone else, all of their lives, and never, ever achieve their own true potential. The shutters were closed and the brakes were applied long before they even left school and no one in their peer group was ever going to show them how to release the shackles. They would love things to be better, they pray for a better life, they wish and they hope and they dream....but they just do not know how to go about it. I find that very sad and it’s why I spend all these hours writing this stuff down in the hope that maybe someone, just one will do, picks up on what I am telling them here and resolves to change things. Could that be you? If you are reading this, then it’s my pleasure to welcome you to a small minority group who ever seek out this knowledge and an even smaller minority who will act upon it. I’d like to ask you to consider something. What would be harder do you think, struggling for the whole of your life just trying to make ends meet or challenging yourself to change?
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The answer’s obvious, change has to be the right decision, to look back with regret later in life with regret would be unbearable. However the decision to change needs to be considered carefully. People will try and hold you back. It’s just the way people are. When you step away from the crowd, the crowd unites against you to bring you back to their level. It’s human nature, people don’t like to feel inferior and would rather see you fail, than feel inadequate themselves. So you will have to prepare yourself for that and arm yourself with a thick skin, total focus and absolute dedication to creating a better life for you and your family. It will challenge you and you will need to align yourself with people who are on a similar path, and share each others strength, so you don’t get sucked back down into the morass of mediocrity that awaits you if you don’t hold true to your purpose. If you truly do aspire to achieve more in your life, then do what most people never do. Design your life now.
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Write down on a piece of paper how you want your life to look in say 5, 10 and 20 years time. Visualize what that would look like, touch it, feel it and embrace it as if it was reality. If you can do that, and go to work on a plan that will get you to where you want to be, then that will be all the armour you will need to fight off the “Dream Stealers” you will encounter along the way. The one thing that empowers the minority to truly achieve in life is the ability to set goals, design the plans that make them achievable and then make the commitment to keep on keeping on, however insurmountable the challenges might be. Wishing and hoping doesn’t work...
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Chapter 2
Employee v Entrepreneur The reality is that the majority of people who might read this book will be in employment. That’s OK, so long as you understand why being employed can be a great idea, so long as you treat it as a stepping stone, a means to an end. 1. You will earn money and that money will put food on the table and a roof over your head. 2. You will learn essential skills that you will need if you decide to become an entrepreneur. 3. You will learn inter personal skills relevant to the work place. 4. You will experience first hand what it feels like to be an employee and that will serve you well later on when you have people working for you. 5. You will have the opportunity to access training relevant to your role as an employee.
Having said that, what you will also experience is a lot of negative feelings too: 1. Feeling underpaid and over worked. 2. Not having the freedom of choice to come and go as you please. 3. Frustration at being overlooked for promotion. 4. Having someone as your boss that you know is less capable than you.
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5. Working harder than the people around you but only receiving the same pay. All of these, and many more, emotions are felt by everyone who is employed by someone else. You will never be truly in charge of your life as an employee, that goes with the territory. What you must do is own the job, do not let the job own you. What happens to many people though, is that they become dependent on their monthly pay cheque. It becomes a fix that they cannot do without and they become increasingly less confident, as they get older, that they can retain their position and protect their financial lifeline. They become insecure. Inevitably therefore they start to ask for less and begrudgingly accept second best. There are literally millions of people in the World today who are living lives of quiet desperation, doing something they hate doing for a level of income far beneath their true worth.
Unfortunately they are trapped. The alternative, in their minds, being unemployed and having to seek a new job, is even less palatable than feeling underpaid and under valued. Most people seem to just accept it and grind it out. They are never really happy, but fear of loss locks them into a life of struggle from which, in their minds, there is no escape. That is not good thinking. That fear is an illusion and anyone can break out of the straight jacket society imposes on us, so long as they are determined to do so. More and more people today have decided enough is enough and have made the decision to do something about it and take control of their own destiny. That does take courage and it’s important, when you do decide to break out of those chains, that you appreciate that there is a dierence between the way the Entrepreneur thinks and the way an employee thinks: http://diamondwealthmastery.com/how-the-entrepreneurial-brain-works/
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Take a few moments and read my article and then we will move on. So having a job is a great idea so long as you know why you are doing it... and there are only two good reasons for an entrepreneur to have a job: 1. The income that they earn will provide the money and, 2. The lessons that they learn will provide the skills... ...that they need to start their own business. Unless you have that perspective you can never achieve your own dreams and are condemned for life to working to help someone else achieve theirs... If you are going to make the shift from employee to entrepreneur you are going to have to think dierently. The entrepreneurial mindset is completely dierent and if you have only ever been employed you are going to have to make some major changes.
How The Entrepreneurial Brain Works 1.
Attitude to Risk
In the workplace we are taught not to take risks. We are given a framework in which we can operate and a set of tasks to fulfill. The requirement to ever make a decision is exceedingly limited.
This is completely dierent in the World of Entrepreneurship where everything is unpredictable and the responsibility for making decisions lies firmly on the shoulders of the business owner. 2.
Take Action
As an entrepreneur there is no such thing as failure. Entrepreneurship is all about taking action whenever an opportunity presents itself. Action follows decision... 9
Being opportunistic is fundamental to the process, as is failure. It is from our mistakes that we learn and correct.
By being adaptable, entrepreneurs are able to navigate the challenges that they face by ploughing through them, finding solutions or trying a new approach. As an employee we are limited to the set of tasks allocated to us. We have a framework in which we can operate and the concept of “opportunity”, or being opportunistic, is totally not part of our lives. We are expected to conform and not to think for ourselves. 3.
Vision
The first thing to understand is the difference between your vision and your mission. Your vision is the picture of where you want to go or what you want to achieve. You need to think about that carefully, but once you have a clear vision of the future state you are striving for, then that should not change. You can cast that in concrete, and you should focus on that goal every waking moment of every day, it’s the knowledge that you can get there, so long as you persevere, that will pull you through the dark times when everything seems to be going wrong… …and rest assured, you will experience those dark days along the way.
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Your mission however needs to be more flexible. Your mission is the plan of action that moves you towards your vision and you will need to be able to react quickly to anything that gets in your way, adjust course and press on. The most successful entrepreneurs have the ability to always keep sight of their objectives, their vision, and the flexibility to react fast and focus on the big tasks that create the most forward momentum in their business. They will be constantly expanding their horizons as they progress their action plans, embracing all new opportunities that might reveal themselves along the way. In the same way there will be a small minority of Intrapreneurs who see the big picture in the workplace and carve out hugely successful careers… …however they will be very much in the minority. For the majority of employed people the primary goal is survival, just getting through the day, the week, the month and the year. An employee’s vision has a tendency to be limited to self preservation. The ability to make the decision in the first place to self determine and to live, rather than just survive, is a critical turning point in the transition from employee thinking into developing the mindset of an entrepreneur. 4.
Continuing And Never-ending Improvement
This is where entrepreneurs are fundamentally different to most employees. They are continually seeking out new knowledge, new best practice that will help them to move forward more quickly towards the achievement of their goals.
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Sadly many people in employment learn everything they need to learn to do their job within the first few weeks of starting and then perform exactly the same role, day in day out throughout the whole of their working lives. How unfulfilling that must be… …but there’s millions out there in that rut, with no incentive whatsoever to contribute, merely to do what they have been told to do, until told not to! Entrepreneurs have learned that they don’t know what they don’t know and that they have to constantly be seeking out the knowledge that might give them the edge, turn a loss into a profit or turn a failing brand into a winner. 5.
Self Belief
Because entrepreneurs have a big Vision of what they want to achieve and have a structured plan in place, pretty much nothing is going to stop them completing their mission.
Their motivation is neither temporary nor “Hot Bath” motivation, their self belief is through the roof and they are, typically, working towards a Vision or a goal that is way bigger, even than them. They are not driven by some exterior or trivial reward; they are being pulled through every challenge by a cause which empowers them to ride rough shod over any obstacle that might be put in their way.
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The average employee has little or no self belief, and is unlikely to have a goal or a vision that might motivate them, beyond getting up in the morning to go to work so they don’t lose their job. They are not motivated by a Vision or goal of their own choosing, they are motivated by fear of loss. 6.
Work Ethic
Society has created some ridiculous concepts that most people buy into 100%. To teach people that they should only work seven to eight hours a day, for five days a week, is sheer madness.
It’s training people to believe that they should limit their endeavours to build a future for themselves and their families to less than 40 hours each week… and that is an absolutely stupid premise! An employee might not agree with that, but rest assured all entrepreneurs would. DH Lawrence stated: “If only we had two lives, one in which to make all our mistakes and another in which to profit from them” The reality is that this is not a dress rehearsal, so we all have to use our talents to the maximum if we are not going to look back with regret, later on in life. For me we can have what DH Lawrence was asking for... there is a day in all our lives that can turn all our lives around.
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Maybe it’s today? When that happens the life that went before was where we did the learning. The life that starts today, is where we reap the rewards. Entrepreneurs live with their business, and the decisions that need to be made, 24/7. They don’t compartmentalize the working week. If something needs to be done, whatever day of the week, or time of the day, they will react as necessary to ensure that they stay on track. There are 24 hours in every day and we maybe need 8 hours of sleep. So that leaves 112 hours available every single week to build something of value in our lives. Even if you have a full time job that takes up 50 hours a, there’s still 62 hours left to build a better future, and there’s no way you can tell me that it’s healthy to waste all of those hours sat watching the TV or down at the pub. Society has got things so, so wrong… Entrepreneurs succeed because they are self motivated and have self discipline. They are on a Mission and they treat every waking hour as their most valuable asset. They don’t waste time and they maximize what they can get out of every precious moment. Successful people in all walks of life have a much better work ethic than the majority of employees who, following in the path of the previous generation, typically waste the large proportion of their hours each day on non productive activities… ...and never figure out why they are broke! 7.
Fail Forward
None of us learned to walk without falling, to ride a bike without bruises or to talk without at first talking gibberish. It is the very process of failing that enables us to learn.
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Entrepreneurs embrace failure as an integral part of success whilst employees are scared of failure because they are taught to follow the rules, stick to the process or toe the party line… …initiative is not encouraged in the work place and it’s generally safer to keep your head below the parapet if you want to keep your job. Entrepreneurs are decision makers and action takers who are prepared to stand or fall based on the choices they make. They are adaptable and resourceful and capable of reacting quickly if they made the wrong call. 8.
Network
Have you noticed how people who think the same way stick together? There’s always a crowd of moaners and groaners in a corner of every pub or bar wherever you are in the World. We are a product of the people with whom we associate and there are some people that you just cannot afford to be around. Entrepreneurs tend to congregate with entrepreneurs.
They create their own “Inner Circle” that help them grow, get better and achieve their goals and dreams in life. They want nothing to do with people who suck the life out of everyone they come in contact with.
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The best of the best know how vitally important it is to surround themselves with a team of like minded people who are going to help them win in all aspects of life. Start up business owners get trained by Millionaires. Millionaires get trained by Billionaires… …they invest in their education and rub shoulders with the people who have what they want. Employees, spending every working day with employees, will inevitably get dragged into an employee perspective of the World. In my experience, that is not the most positive place to go seek out your life coach or mentor. That’s the group that will do everything in their power to drag you back to their level the moment you give them the slightest inclination that you aspire to achieve more. They will see you as a threat and resent your ambition. There is the danger that your success might make them look like failures. So rather than rise to the challenge with you, it is much easier just to shatter your dreams and get you back in line… …that way they can continue gratified that they were right all along and that all this “Pipe Dreaming” was a total waste of time. 9.
Never Give Up
Entrepreneurs have a never say die attitude to everything they do. It doesn’t matter how many setbacks and failures they encounter, nothing will stop them from waking up each morning and getting ready to go to work.
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It is all about your “Vision” and the clarity of your goals. If your goal is big enough and your belief strong enough, then anybody can transition from employee to entrepreneur. It just takes great programming, re education, stamina, persistence, tenacity and commitment. To summarise, please take some time out and go and learn from some of my favourite Mentors. These are people who you should associate with regularly along with Earl Nightingale. Did you watch that video? Earl Nightingale If not please go now and listen to the “Strangest Secret”: http://diamondwealthmastery.com/being-successful-strangest-secret/ I was entranced by Jim Rohn when I bought a copy of his “Art of Exceptional Living” training. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you go and seek out his work. Just Google his name, there is fabulous content all over the Web. Here’s an extract that I think is foundational: Jim Rohn http://diamondwealthmastery.com/jim-rohn-quotes-the-art-of-exceptional-living/ Go there now and watch the video. Steve Jobs Steve Jobs inspired so many people and this video in which he gives his “10 Rules of Success” should be watched by every budding entrepreneur. Every time I hear him speak it reminds me that we lost a great man when he died at just age 56: http://diamondwealthmastery.com/steve-jobs-10-rules-of-success/ Richard Branson How Richard Branson became the Master Marketer that he has become makes great reading and his video and his top 5 entrepreneurial tips are again great to add to our portfolio of knowledge on being successful as an entrepreneur: http://diamondwealthmastery.com/richard-bransons-top-5-entrepreneurial-tips/
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Chapter 3
The Next Step To succeed in business you need to believe in what you are doing. I can’t tell you what sort of business you should start... ...but I can tell you that you should! If you are in employment today there is no rush to quit. That wouldn’t make sense. However you can change your perspective of what your job is providing for you. The entrepreneur will appreciate that his or her job is providing a revenue stream and will use that revenue to accumulate the seed capital to fund their business. There’s loads of businesses you can start in your spare time and that’s the best way to do it... ...yes you will read people saying you should burn your bridges and make a total commitment, but that is not good advice. Don’t cut off your primary income stream until your new business is rock solid and capable of providing you with the income that you need for a quality lifestyle. Full time on your job, part time on your fortune is a great mantra. The business you should start should revolve around an area of interest that absorbs you and in respect of which you have good knowledge and a passion.
You will need to brand yourself in whichever business you choose, as an expert, so the closer you are to that, the better. 18
In the same way, when you turn your passion into a business your days of working for a living are over. You will be doing something you really enjoy and getting paid to do it. For me, after years involved in Finance and Marketing, the integration of the innate power of people with the capacity of the Internet to connect people from all over the globe, inevitably led me towards a business that harnesses the power of the Internet to teach people how to create and preserve wealth. If you would like to connect with me at any time, please reach out to me at: http://diamondwealthmastery.com And connect on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/markprosserblog
To your success, Mark Prosser Skype: moneywikia For Personal 1-on-1Coaching, please visit: http://diamondwealthmastery.com
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