Hi guys! I’m Gary. I’m speaking to you from Melbourne, Australia. I’m looking forward to the next Business Mastery in 2012 with Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes. It’s going to be exciting. I know it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be a long day from 9 until like 12, and who knows whether we actually get lunch or dinner breaks, but it’s going to be good. Over the next four days, I want to share a lot of the key learnings from each day with you guys, so stay tuned and goodbye.
Hi everyone. I just finished Business Mastery Day One. The morning started at 9:00, and it finished at 12:30. Now, it’s like three minutes to 1am. And I’m still pumped with energy, like, when the conference finished, I literally ran back to the hotel, which is like a ten minutes run, bursting with energy. I can’t wait to share like what the key learnings from today are with you guys. Apologise for the bad camera quality. That’s the best that my laptop can generate.
So let’s go into it. The first thing that I’ve learned is—I’ve actually heard this before from a lot of speakers at previous events, but this is nevertheless a very important ingredient for any business leader to know in order for them to succeed. Eighty percent of business success is due to the psychology, that’s the mindset of the business leader. And 20 percent is the skillset.
So if you have the right mindset, the right psychology, what does that mean? It means that when a challenge comes across your way, you have the determination, the courage, the passion, the belief that, “I don’t care what it is. I may not have the answers right now, but I’m going to find the answers. I’m going to find the solution. I’m going to do whatever it takes to overcome this challenge that comes across my way.”
So that’s having the mental power, the courage and discipline to go through whatever challenge you have. A lot of people, whether it’s employees or business owners, tend to give up at tough challenges that they come across. “Oh my God. I’ve tried, but it’s too hard,” or “I don’t have the right people,” or “I can’t get enough sales. Nothing’s working for me.” And they just decide to stop the business.
And we’re going back a bit. Tony also mentioned what is the business failure rate in Australia. Fifty percent of businesses do not last through the first year of the business. Not even the first year. Fifty percent. So half the businesses started will not survive the first year. And in the fifth year, for five years, only 10 percent of business will survive. Only 10 percent. So the rest of the 90 percent will have gone bankrupt or just folded.
And can you guess how many will last for 10 years? One percent. Only one percent survive for 10 years or more. And that doesn’t mean that they profit always. It just means that they survived. E-Web Marketing is lucky to be running for 12 years. Attending Business Mastery confirms my beliefs that for me as a leader or us as an organization, we still have so much to learn, so much we can improve. So the sky is the limit. If you guys take this information that Tony teaches at Business Mastery and implement it, it’s going to accelerate your business growth. The sky is the limit.
So the first part to business success we talked about was the psychology, and the second part is the skillset of the business owner. The skillset is like the skill to sell, to manage reports, to market, to look at financial statements, etc. And it’s quite important, but it’s not way as important as having the mindset from the business owner’s perspective. So if you’ve got the right skillset, but you don’t have the mental discipline or the psychology you need to succeed, you come across a challenge, “Oh, it’s too hard,” and you just give up.
Whereas if you don’t have the right skillset, but you have the right psychology, if a challenge comes across, like, you don’t have the marketing skills, you’re going to be resourceful enough to find a solution. You’re going to talk to enough people so that you can get the answer. You read enough books. You watch enough videotapes, podcasts, go to seminars, whatever you need to do to get the answers. That’s what having the powerful psychology will get you to, a mental discipline.
So the next thing I wanted to share with you guys that I’ve learned from today. There’s three things that drive a business leader in whether they succeed or not. The first part is the strategy. When a business succeeds through a leader’s skillset or similar, a large part is due to the strategy and whether the business leader has the business acumen to implement those business strategies. And that is a key to success. However, for most businesses, that is not a key to whether the business is growing or not.
The second part that Tony talked about is the story, the story that the business leaders tell themselves. And a lot of stories business leaders tells themselves put a ceiling or a limitation on what they can and can’t do, and on what influence they have. For example, “Okay. Well, I’ve done my best, but my team would not deliver the results, so that’s why we’re weren’t profitable. That’s why our growth is not as significant as it could be.” Or they could say, “Oh, you know what? We don’t have enough capital. And we couldn’t have enough funds to buy extra inventory or expand into new premises.” Well, that’s the story that business only tells itself.
So relating back to the mindset, if someone has the right mindset and is resourceful enough, they will be able to find a solution to the business challenges that comes across their way. So if you say that, “Well, my story that I’m going to tell myself is I have no limitation. I can achieve great things.” And that’s how people invented spacecraft. They invented aeroplanes. They invented a motor vehicles, and electricity, because these people don’t have the self limitation of “There’s no way that we can fly. There’s no way that we can drive a car.” People are used to a certain way of thinking, and they can’t break the thinking.
Another story I’ve heard is certain Olympic records that people couldn’t be broken, like the 1,500 meters Olympic swim race—until someone had broken the 15 minute mark. People think that is the pinnacle that can’t be broken, but once somebody started breaking it—I think it was Kieran Perkins that started breaking it—everyone else followed and started breaking it as well, and it became easier and easier.
So it’s the self limitation that people, the story that people put in their head to say that, “What I can’t do or maybe it’s my upbringing, like I don’t have or I’m not as lucky as other individuals who have family connections or a well-educated background. That’s why I’m not as successful.” This is the story that you tell yourself. If you’re hungry enough, you’re passionate enough or you have enough drive, you find a way to make it happen.
So the last part is if you have the right strategy and you have the right story, but you don’t have the right state. The state is the state of mind, the emotion in you at the time. When you guys are at a high state or a good state with a good, high emotional energy level, you’re pumped up. You feel that you can overcome whatever challenges that comes your way. Think of yourself just winning whatever sport or tournament or your latest business success that you’ve experienced. You probably feel like a winner and like you can overcome whatever challenge that comes your way.
But think of the times that you’re really beaten down with numerous business challenges, and you’re just feeling really depressed. At that time, your state is down and you’re probably thinking, if it’s your team member leaving you, “Oh geez. It’s like the end of the world.” Or maybe you lose one of your clients and you think that, “Oh my God, my business is going to be over.”
But if you have the right state of mind, you’re going to think, “Well, you know what? That’s bad, what has happened, but with every crisis, it comes opportunity. So what can I learn from this? So if a client leaves, maybe we need to improve on our products and services. Maybe we need to improve on the customer service. So having a good state will help your business grow.
So the three things are having the right strategy, having the right story, and having the right state. And with most people, it’s having the right story that is the key determination of whether they break through to the next level. For some people, it’s the right state, and with the minority, it’s the right strategy. What with the internet and so many books is available on Amazon and the Kindle and so much podcast is available, learning from success of businesses and copying and replicating what they have done to make their business, what strategy they’re making to make their business successful, it’s easier than ever before.
So the next thing that I’ve learned is: don’t fall in love with your product but with your client. Some people just put so much focus on their products, they forget that at the end of the day, your product is there to serve the client, not the other way around.
Wow, it’s already been 10 minutes. I’m going to burn for you some of these key points quickly so you can get an idea of what you can learn when you attend Business Mastery. The stuff that I cover is just on a surface level, like the reasons Tony puts you in a room from 9:00 until like 12:30 at night. And there’s no breaks except at 8:30, he gave us a 15-minute dinner break. There wasn’t any lunch break. So it’s totally emergent by you being in that space and repeatedly hearing the same thing or similar things the whole time. You really start to understand what this is about.
So the next thing I want to share with you is that leaders anticipate, and losers react. Tony taught the lifecycle that a business goes through is like a human being’s lifecycle. It goes from a toddler to a teenager, to the peak stage of life, to midlife crisis, and then starts to become old, and then eventually dies. At each stage you need to treat it differently, change the decision making process, the way that you manage your cash, the way that you manage your key staff. It’s all different, so you need to understand that. If you do the right things but at the wrong time, it has the potential of collapsing your business.
Another thing they taught us is the seven triggers of crisis, what are some of the things that you need to watch out for. Say for example, a change in technology can really screw up your business, a change in the culture, a change in government, any of these things that can really affect your business, and if you don’t anticipate these things getting changed and just assume that business is always going to keep growing, then you’ll be surprised, and your business could go down overnight.
The other part that I’ve learned is, for leaders to break through, usually it’s triggered by pain. And I’ll talk a little bit more about the pain later on, but before the pain part, people usually will get into a state of confusion, like, “Oh, geez. What do I do?” When you don’t know what you’re doing is usually an indicator that you’re looking for answers, and breakthrough is not too far away.
Another point, quickly: a leader that needs to be loved is not a leader. Leaders have make tough decisions. Sometimes, you have to be tough on people to give that tough love, but if you want people to give you love in return, you won’t get that. You may get that some of the time, but you’re not going to get that from everyone. If you’re a pleaser by nature, and you want to please everyone, being a leader is most likely not what will be the best role for you. You can still be a good technician, and a good technician can make a lot of money. In fact, some of the highest paid people in the world are salespeople. And performing artists, musicians, and dancers, they make a lot of money as well.
So another thing is that to grow your business, you have to learn what your business’ chokehold is, what in your psychology or what in your skillset. By understanding what is your bottleneck or what are your weaknesses that you need to work on, you can really accelerate your growth, which in turn will really accelerate your business growth.
For the people attending as employees at Business Mastery, you need to start looking at yourself as business owner. When you start making yourself like as a business owner, the business owner will actually start to take notice of you because of the things that you do. You constantly add value to the business that beyond what a normal, typical employee will do. And it’d be crazy for the business owner not to give you power of at least half of the profit share, if not a share in the company. And if you just get profit share, you get all the upside of the company, but yet you don’t get the downside. You don’t get any of the liabilities as well.
Another exercise that Tony did was about handbags. In general, people buy state and identity. They don’t buy parts. So many people buy handbags. And when they hold their handbags, Tony asked, “Why did you buy the handbags?” Nobody said, “Oh, do you know this product or this type of leather, I really like that type of leather.” Yes, that may be a small part in the decision making process, but a large part on why people spend that $3,000 or $4,000 on Chanel or LV is because of the identity it gives them when they carry it. What do they associate with that identity of carrying an LV or Chanel? And what state does it bring them to? Do I, did I feel a lot more… Did I feel a higher self-esteem? By holding that handbag, they feel a lot better about themselves, and it makes them happier.
So if you can sell people on the premises of the state and what identity it gives to that person as opposed to just selling the product, you’re going to get a lot more sales. You’re going to be a lot more successful with your business.
Another point: find the right people, the people that have the right hunger. You can’t train hunger, so you need to find the right people for your business. It’s very, very important.
Multitasking. Multitasking is for entertainment. A lot of people multitask and check email and when someone comes in and asks for five minutes to talk to them, while they’re trying to work on an important document or business process – and they’re getting distracted all the time. Multitasking is for entertainment. If you really want to get results, you need to focus. Focus and no distraction. Do one task, get it completed, do the next task. Have really good management of your time. Your time is your greatest asset. No money can buy or buy back your time, so if you gave away your time so easily and don’t maximise how you spend every single minute, your business is not going to be as successful.
Problems in business. Some people think that the problems in business are because they have enough resources, but spend all their time finding the right capital, the right people, the right skillset they need to solve the business issues. So whenever the business does not grow or is stagnant at a certain point is always due to the leaders thinking “I’m not able to take it to the next level.” So I’ve always been a strong believer that if my business hasn’t been more successful, I take a large part of it. Now, with our business, we’ve empowered every single person to be a leader in themselves, so they should take their part of the accountability, but I will continue to always self-reflect first on what I can contribute to the business.
Tony also talks about a slight touch of happiness. What you get, it doesn’t make you happy. A lot of people start a business, they want to make a lot of money. I started because of the money. I wanted to become a millionaire. But for the people that have actually attained it, like they have made hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, every single one of them can tell you they continue to work, and it’s not because of money. It’s because of the joy they have for what they do.
People become happy because of the person they’ve become. It’s not from what they can get from life. So there’s a very important lesson there for those who are still primarily focused on money. Yes, you’re going to get short-term success if that’s your focus, but I can guarantee you’re not going to get long-term success because money will only get you to a certain level. If your passion is truly to help people or have a greater purpose, you’re doing what you love, and the money will come as a result. Profit will come as a result.
So we’ve touched on the chemistry of breakthrough. This is a very interesting thing that I’ve learned. There’s five stages to it. So just before someone is about to make a significant breakthrough in their personal understanding of business, the first step is citation. They’re kind of like stagnant in where they are, and they’re not really happy. And they’re open to changes, so they may grab a book from the library or start to talk to some friends to get an idea on “How could I make a difference to this business?”, but they don’t actually take any action.
The next step is dissatisfaction. They become quite dissatisfied and just by being stagnant things are actually going down, going worse, and the pain is increasing. So at the stage after dissatisfaction, they’ve reached their emotional threshold saying, “I can’t take it anymore. Like, there’s just so much pain. I can’t bear it anymore.” And that’s when it gets to the moment of insight: “Wow. It’s so painful that I’ve started researching. And now that there’s a possibility outside that I didn’t think about before. Why didn’t I think about it before? Because during the citation stage and even during the dissatisfaction stage, it wasn’t painful enough for me in order to drive me to take action. It’s only when I reached my emotional threshold where I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
Think about when you’ve been in a relationship in the past. When was the point that you decided to break up with that person? It’s when you felt “I just can’t stand this person anymore.” Prior to that, there was probably a significant period where you were dissatisfied, but you didn’t take action to end that relationship. Or maybe it’s not ending that relationship, it’s taking a massive action to make changes to improve that relationship.
So after the moment of insight that you know that possibility, there’s a moment of opportunity. It’s called the opening. You can either go and take the dive to make things happen, and it changes your life and you break through to the next level, or you can let the opportunity pass and maybe change careers, change relationship, or quit whatever that you’re doing, or change spots.
So it’s 22 minutes now, so I’m going to cut this now and save the rest of the interesting things I’ve learned for you for Day Two. I can’t wait because actually Tony’s given us a later start at 10:00, but life is good. So implement some of those changes that you’ve learned. Hopefully, I’m able to help you become a lot more happy, successful, and have a lot of fun at the same time. Goodnight, people.