Archives for August 2018

Confidence is too often defined as something that is required in order to become successful.

That is completely incorrect.

Confidence follows success, not the other way around.

You see, there are people who do not appear confident, but who, nonetheless, achieve enormous success.

How is that possible?

It’s really quite simple. Confidence must be earned. You earn confidence by realizing your dreams, achieving your goals, or by becoming a virtuoso in some specific niche.

Expert Skills Confidence 

Through Deliberate and Analytical Practice, you can develop Expert Skills. When you have Expert Skill Confidence, you are very confident in your area of expertise. Your confidence pours through every time you engage in your expertise.

Examples are professional athletes, neurosurgeons, successful authors, bridge engineers, architects who design skyscrapers, etc.

Expert Knowledge Confidence

Through ritual, daily study, in a particular area, you gain expert knowledge and this endows you with Expert Knowledge Confidence.

Examples include NASA/Rocket scientists, neurologists, geneticists, nuclear physicists, chemical engineers, etc.

Entrepreneurial Confidence

Entrepreneurs who pursue success by taking action on their dreams and goals, gain enormous confidence in their entrepreneurial abilities, but only after they begin to realize success.

I can go one and on with examples. My point is this, confidence is not a prerequisite to success – it is the result of success.

And success requires that you do certain, specific things consistently which makes you more skilled and knowledgeable in what you do.

As you grow in knowledge and skills, you become more expert. Success inevitably follows. And that success leads to confidence.

Pursuit of Success —> Growth —> Expertise —> Success —> Confidence

80% of the wealthy in my Rich Habits Study used four core strategies to grow and strengthen their relationships:

#1    Hello Call

#2    Happy Birthday Call

#3    Life Event Call and

#4    Networking/Volunteering

The Hello Call is used primarily to gather information on each contact.

The Happy Birthday Call keeps your relationships on life support. At least once a year you are forced to reach out to your contacts to wish them a happy birthday. About 5-10% of these contacts will reciprocate and call you on your birthday, taking your relationship off life support.

The Life Event Call is the most powerful strategy because it puts your relationships on steroids. This is a call you make to acknowledge some life event: birth, death, engagement, marriage, health issue etc

Networking & Volunteering allows you to meet new people and offers the opportunity to showcase your skills in a safe, friendly and stress-free environment.

Volunteering is also where you will find success mentors. Many of the local non-profits are composed of board members who happen to be the most successful people in the community.

Volunteering also offers a stress-free way to develop new skills. Since you can’t get fired, there is little risk in experimentation with new skills. Mistakes will not result in you getting fired for incompetence. Non-profits are grateful to have volunteers and this positive environment provides a great deal of latitude in developing new skills.

Want to learn how to market? Join a committee that helps market those events.

Want to learn bookkeeping? Offer to assist the Treasurer.

Want to learn how to organize teams? Join a committee that is running one of the events.

In order to be successful in life you must adopt certain, specific success habits. I call them the Rich Habits.

You must also avoid specific failure habits. I call them the Poor Habits.

There are five top sources from which you can learn about these Rich Habits and Poor Habits. We learn them from:

1. Parents
2. Career Mentors
3. Teachers
4. Reading
5. The School of Hard Knocks

Only 33% of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study were fortunate enough to have had at least one mentor in life.

When you find a success mentor, they will help smooth out the pavement for you and help you avoid the potholes that are everywhere.

They teach you what to do and what not to do. Mistakes cost you time, money and reduced stress. Mistakes cause stress.

Success Mentors, therefore, save you time, money and help you avoid stress, which translates into better health, as stress impairs your immune system, leading to sickness and various diseases.

#1 Source – Parents

Parents are often the only shot most of us have at having a success mentor in life.

When you are raised by one or more parents who mentor you to be successful, you immediately leap frog over your peers. And this Parent-Mentor advantage begins to pay huge dividends when you enter the workforce, in terms of better jobs with higher pay and greater career opportunities.

Parent-Mentors tee you up for success as an adult. It is a great advantage.

#2 Source – Career Mentors

Career mentors steer you in the right direction in your career. Often, Career-Mentors are found within the organization you work for. If you find a Career-Mentor early on in your career, this puts you at a great advantage among your peers.

Career-Mentors not only teach you what to do and what not to do, they also open doors for you and introduce you to their inner circle of relationships.

#3 Source – Teachers

Teachers can be another great source for Success-Mentors. A good teacher will motivate you. They will help guide you. They will get you on the right path and keep you on the right path.

#4 Source – Reading

Mentors can be found in books. I consider Og Mandino, Dale Carnegie, Charles Duhigg, Napoleon Hill, Joseph Murphy, Jack Canfield, Malcolm Gladwell, T. Have Eker, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, George Washington, Andrew Carnegie, Calvin Coolidge, James Monroe, Cornelius Vanderbilt, JP Morgan and Nicoli Tesla some of my most important mentors. All, by the way, mentors through books I’ve read either by them or about them.

I have found biographies of successful people particularly full of great mentoring advice.

#5 Source – The School of Hard Knocks

I list this as last on my list because the mentoring you receive via The School of Hard Knocks, is painful mentoring.

You are, essentially, your own mentor. You make mistakes. Those mistakes cost you valuable time and money. The mistakes become like scar tissue on the brain – they are never forgotten because they are always tied to intense emotions – anger, sadness, disgust, pain, heartbreak and worry.

The School of Hard Knocks is the most difficult way to be mentored. If you are strong enough to survive this mentoring, however, the lessons you learn stick with you forever.

One of the myths that I had about rich people before conducting my Rich Habits Study was that they were unhappy, aggressive, cut throat individuals.

That was how they were portrayed to me, growing up.

However, after interviewing 233 wealthy people, I was left scratching my head because, for the most part, they were among the nicest, kindest, generous people I had ever met.

In Richard Branson’s book, Like a Virgin, there is a section of the book where he is addressing some of the common questions he is asked.

One of those questions was:

Can nice guys finish anywhere but last?

Branson responded that he hated being aggressive and that the culture he fosters at Virgin is to engage with everyone in a positive, inclusive manner, rather than in an aggressive, combative or negative way.

Branson went on to highlight the importance of remaining upbeat, calm and collected when dealing with others – something I recently addressed in my article on Emotions.

Branson, like many of the rich in my study, destroys the myth that nice people can never be successful.

Nice people can finish first, and many do.

People like doing business with people they like.

In my Rich Habits Study, 72% of the wealthy volunteered five hours or more every month.

Volunteering is all about building relationships with other successful or success-minded people.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Most of the people on the board of directors of local community non-profits are the most successful people in the community, or high achievers who are still pursuing success.

Volunteering gives you an opportunity to work closely with the members of the board, as well as the committee members. This allows you to showcase your skills in a very forgiving environment.

As they get to know you and your abilities, these relationships will eventually morph into business relationships. People like doing business with individuals they like, trust and know.

The relationships you forge volunteering will help open doors for you and for the members of your family. They will also expose you to opportunities that will enhance your career or your business.

People who are in a position of power, hold all the cards.

More often than not, those who are in a position of power are those who are supervisors, senior executives or business owners.

But being in a position of power doesn’t always mean being the boss or the owner. It does mean, however, that others perceive of you as a person of significant value.

And when you are in a position of power, people are happy to pay you a premium for your services or for whatever it is you’re selling.

Being a person of significant value requires that you stand out somehow.

You can stand out because you possess certain expert skills (think LeBron James).

You can stand out because you are exceptionally knowledgeable in niches that society views as important (think Surgeon).

You can stand out because you have powerful relationships with other individuals who are in a position of power (think Politician)

You can stand out because you’re rich (think the Walton Family).

You can stand out because you’re some type of celebrity (think Mark Wahlberg).

Building any relationship takes time. Often, many years. If you are pursuing success, as many of my readers are, you want to devote time to building relationships with individuals who are in a position of power.

People who are in a position of power are able to move mountains. With one phone call they can turn a dream start-up into a Facebook. They can open the door to bankers who will fund your business or idea. They can remove barriers that stand in your way.

In my Rich Habits Study, 69% of the poor people in my study said they ate several times a week at fast food restaurants.

Conversely, 93% of the self-made millionaires in my study said they made a conscious effort to avoid fast food restaurants.

For the most part, the food at fast food restaurants is junk food.

Junk food is high in calories and low in nutrition.

To compensate for the low nutritional value of junk food, the vagus nerve sends out an “I’m hungry” SOS signal to the brain, just a few hours after eating junk food, in order to seek more nutrition.

And then its back to the fast food restaurant for more junk food.

The microbiome is responsible for extracting energy from the calories we consume. It also synthesizes vitamins out of the food we consume.

Having the right microbiome in your large intestine makes you healthy.

Having the wrong microbiome in your large intestine causes colds, flus, upper respiratory infections, cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and all sorts of other horrific diseases.

Because the microbiota in junk food is bad microbiota, the more junk food you consume, the worse it is for your health.

Thanks to mirror neurons, children mimmic the behaviors of their parents. This includes eating junk food, just like their parents.

Eating healthy, nutritional foods, packed with fiber and good microbiota, is a Rich Habit; one that creates good health and longevity.

Healthy people have fewer sick days, more productivity and a longer work life. This translates into more income and lower health care costs.

In my Rich Habits Study, 80% of the wealthy called certain people religiously at least once every other month, just to say hello.

These were individuals the rich wanted to foster relationships with. Think millionaires, successful people, influencers, etc.

In reality, this Hello Call was far more than a hello call. It was a reconnaissance mission.

There are two purposes to the Hello Call.

The first is to keep the relationship alive through constant contact.

The second purpose is about gathering certain information about the individual they wanted to forge a relationship with. They were making Hello Calls in order to gain intelligence on their contact. The more information they were able to obtain the more they could use that information to grow the relationship.

Rich people have been doing this for years for good reason. They understand that one day these Rich Relationships would pay dividends.

It might be a new client or customer. It might be access to money. It might be a new partner. It might be an open door. It might be any number of things, even just a call to head of the admissions office for you college-bound child.

So, what information should you be gathering in your Hello Calls?

1. Basic contact information: name, address, phone, email, Twitter, Facebook etc.
2. Name of spouse and children.
3. Birthdays of contact, spouse and children.
4. Interests/Hobbies of contact, spouse and children.
5. Schools attended by your contact, spouse and children.
6. What their spouse does for a living.
7. Previous employment of contact and spouse.
8. If their children work, what do they do, where do they work?
9. Where did they grow up?
10. Where did they live previously?
11. Do they like sports? If so, what sports?
12. Do they drink alcohol? If so, what do they like to drink?
13. What’s their favorite foods?
14. What groups, non-profits or community organizations are they affiliated with?
15. Where do they like to vacation?
16. What did their parents do for a living?
17. Significant achievements/accomplishments?
18. Licenses, designations they may have?
19. Do they exercise? If so, what do they do?
20. Who are their most important relationships: attorneys, CPAs, financial advisors, religious etc. This one comes with time. As you the relationship grows, you will be introduced to the people inside their circle.

This information should be documented and reviewed periodically. The more you know about the relationships that matter, the more those relationships will grow.