image credits: freedigitalphotos.net
Everyone wants to be successful. Its the reason stories like how J.K Rowling went from counting food stamps to becoming a billionaire become viral. Its the reason Oprah Winfrey attained goddess-status because many struggling women wanted to be just like her (a broke lady from a broken home one instant and in America’s top ten richest the next instant).
What is Success?
Success is doing what you love and attaining heights you dream of. Success, for me, is being an entrepreneur with a difference. Success for Micheal Jordan was being the best basketball player of all time. Success for Walt Disney is being the best entertainment company in the world.
Success does not have to be all about money. It is about you and what you want in life. If your ambition is to eradicate illiteracy, then your success is defined by the number of countries you helped build robust education systems that work. If your daily motivation is the reduction of mortality rate, then your success would be the day it is observed that 99.9% of your patients survived. If your life goal is to be on Forbes list, then of course, success for you would mean how much wealth you have acquired.
But there is a problem:
Many times, we want to be successful right now!
There is nothing wrong with a little ambition. Wanting to be successful is not a bad thing. Its expecting to be successful without sweating for it that is wrong. None of the successful people I know had a magic lamp.
Real Life stories of people that built success out of nothing
Before I go any further, I want to tell you the true stories of three people, whom life knocked so hard, and yet they shocked everyone with their brilliant success.
J.K Rowling:
image credits: DailyMail.co.uk
She is best known for her Harry Potter series, that sold over 450 million copies with the last four books setting records as the fastest selling books of all time on both sides of the Atlantic and generating billions of dollars from book sales and the film merchandise.
But J.K Rowling had a rough start.
In 1990, her mother died from multiple sclerosis. Grief led to her first marriage, that lasted less than 3 years. This was the start of a dark period in her life and in her words, she felt like a failure. Christmas of 1993 saw her back in Edinburgh, with her young daughter and living on welfare.
She started writing the Harry Potter first book in 1990 and submitted it to publishing houses in 1997. It was rejected by 12 publishers and nearly thrown out by Bloomsbury (the publisher that eventually paid her a paltry $4000 as royalty for the first book). Her saving grace was the daughter of the editor of Bloomsbury who insisted on reading the rest of the book.
An American publishing house, saw the book and immediately bought rights to publish it in America. The rest, as they say, is history.
Neil Patel:
image credits: Mashable.com
30 year-old Neil has achieved a whole lot for his age. He was recognised as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepeneurs under age 35 by the United Nation. He has made it to Forbes top 10 online marketers list and Entrepreneur Magazine believes he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world.
What company did he create that got him all this recognition?
Neil is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics and Hello Bar; with these companies he has increased the revenue-generation capacity of blue-chip companies like Amazon, NBC, Viacom and HP to mention but a few. To view an infographic that shows all the details of Neil’s life, click here
But he was not always the top-shot internet marketer.
Neil reveals that he started out with crappy jobs: like being a janitor, a salesman for an expensive vacuum-cleaner that nobody wanted, and starting a job board that sucked a lot of money and never made a cent. Even the early days of Crazy Egg was punctuated with crazy losses. After Crazy Egg, he started a number of software companies that failed.
But he did not give up.
Neil knew what he wanted and continued to strive for it. As at 2012, Quicksprout earned $1,000,000 in revenue. Big-shot companies like Amazon, HP have hired his services in millions of dollars and currently Neil is working on transforming an already successful Kissmetrics into a $100 million a year revenue business. Read more of his story here and here
Pat Flynn:
He dubbed himself ‘the crash dummy of the internet’. He has tried almost every single legitimate tactic or strategy there is to make money online. Just last month, his blog brought home a hefty $123,853.51
He might not be a millionaire but he makes a pretty decent income from his internet marketing ventures.
But it was not always this rosy.
Before he started making money online, Pat received a sack notice! During the economic crisis in 2008, he was fired from his 9-5 job but notified on-time by his boss. He had to move out of his house into his parent’s house and start commuting by train to save money spent on gas for his car. Out of desperation, he walked into internet marketing and has never looked back since.
Their not-so-secret ingredients…
When you read through these stories you will notice certain things (what I call the ingredients of success)
1. They wanted success so bad…
When you read Neil Patel’s life story you will discover he had one driving force: he wanted to be rich. He wanted to break free of the shackles of middle-class.
J.K Rowling wanted her books to find a home in every young child’s library. She always dreamed of being a writer.
To be successful, you must first want it bad enough.
How can you do this?
Ask yourself this question: What do I really want in life? What do I want so bad in life?
Do not freak out: it mustn’t just be money. Some people want to visit every nation of this world so bad. Some people want to leave a legacy for their kids. Some want to create freedom and equality for all.
Whatever it is, you must want it bad enough.
2…They were willing to work for it
J.K Rowling worked on her novel for more than five years. At a point, she was making notes on scraps of paper or tissue or anything close-by whenever inspiration struck. What many people don’t know is that J.K Rowling started writing at a tender age. When next you watch a Harry Potter movie, know this: It took years of preparation, training and a lot of sweat and blood (her mother’s death) to make that story the stellar piece it is.
When Pat Flynn started trying to figure out how to monetize his blog, he was driven by one compelling force: he had to find a source of income so he could take care of his wife (then fiancee) and their children. Pat had no experience in marketing but he learned it. Pat knew nothing about Affiliate marketing but he learned it.
He was willing to work to make his dreams of fending for his family and spending quality time with them come true.
How can you do this?
After answering the first question, ask yourself this second question: What do I need to do to achieve this? Be brutally honest with yourself. Get a pen and paper and put down everything required to achieve your dream. From skill-set, connections to finances, list every single thing.
3. They believed in themselves
We all have doubts but our doubts must never overshadow our belief in ourselves.
When Pat Flynn found out that a large number of people visited his site, he was scared.
According to him, he had these thoughts:
“What if my notes weren’t good enough? What if I’m forgetting something?
I knew the content was good though, and exactly what I needed to pass, so I internally began to become confident in what I had created and was determined to monetize this site somehow.”
Do you ever feel this way. I know I do sometimes. Everyone does. The trick is to put in your best and when the nagging voice of self-doubt pops into your head, silence it with the results of your genuine efforts.
How can you do this?
After answering the second question, ask yourself: “what are my fears?” Your fear could be that you are not educated enough. It could be that you do not have the right skill-set. It could be even a physical deformity like you do not have good legs so you are not mobile. Whenever I have doubts about myself, I tell myself, “If Nick Vujicic can become a world-renowned motivational speaker, write 4 inspirational books and accomplish a whole lot more, then I have no excuse to keep doubting myself”
Nick Vujicic is one of the men I admire and you can find out more about him and other people who never allowed their weaknesses stop them in this inspiring article by Ikechi Awazie
4. They had goals
When Pat Flynn was warned of his imminent sack by his boss, He knew immediately that he had to figure out how to make money online.
According to him:
My body was still going into the office a few times a week, but my mind was all about online business and learning all about how it worked and what I could possibly do to begin to earn an income online.
In my mind, I was already laid off.
I had a few months left on payroll, plus a small severance package and some emergency savings if I needed to use it – so I figured I had maybe 6-8 months to make this online business thing work – whether it would be something I did with my LEED blog or something else. If not, then I would send out resumes like mad or go back to school to get a Masters and go from there.
As far as I was concerned, I had no other options but to make it work.
When J.K Rowling was receiving food stamps to take care of herself and her daughter, she poured herself into her book. She just knew that she had to make it as a writer or the future really looked bleak.
How can you do this?
5. They explored their creativity (and broke the rules!)
Pat Flynn created a new dimension of affiliate marketing with his website smartpassiveincome.com.
This is how he did it.
First he would create a blog post for a product he was an affiliate of. Then he would create a video showing exactly how to use this product, revealing free-of charge what some people taught at a price. He did this for BlueHost, Samuri products and many others.
The result?
His affiliate links recorded crazy conversions, and shot his earnings through the roof. Don’t believe me? Click on this link to see for yourself. Before Pat Flynn started this form of affiliate marketing, it was little-known. Pat Flynn was one of the internet marketers that made it a well-known strategy.
J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 publishers in a row. Why? Because of literary rules like “Hook the reader on the first page“, “The story must start with the main character”, “If its for kids, then words like ‘wizard’, ‘magic’, ‘dragons’ etc will land it in the slush pile”, “The fantasy genre is overflogged for kids. Kids want another type of hero”
J.K Rowling did not allow all those rules determine what she will write. And she was still optimistic even after receiving all those rejection letters. And today, she has over 450 million books sold to show that certain rules are meant to be broken.
Due to their creativity, they were ahead of their times and created trends that everyone else scrambled to follow.
How can you do this?
6. They had skills
Neil Patel started marketing before he was out of college. Pat Flynn started blogging while he had his 9-5 job and J.K Rowling started writing stories before she was a teenager.
They had skills.
And these skills paved the way for their success. Nobody becomes successful without having a skill.
How can you do this?
Look at your dreams again. What is the one skill you have that you can start using right now to achieve them.The skill does not have to be a direct skill.
For instance, you might be a really good writer but you want to develop an app that helps women get their finances right. To develop this app, you need to know technical stuff like a programming language.
But you do not.
Don’t let this dissuade you. You can hire a programmer to do your app for you, while you make money for to pay the programmer by freelancing your writing skills on job sites like Elance or even on your own website. 21 year-old Brandon did something similar and you can read all about it in the article: Crazy Dog Apps Used Fiverr to Build App Store Empire
The important thing here is you have to have a skill that will make it easy to achieve your goal. So ask yourself again: What is the one skill I have that I can start using right now to achieve my goals?
7. They surrounded themselves with the right people
J.K Rowling went to stay near her sister who believed in her. Neil Patel co-founded most of his companies with his sister’s husband. Pat Flynn says: When I told my wife [of the imminent sack], she took it well. She has always believed in me and I owe her everything for that.
Another connection that shot Pat Flynn’s internet marketing career to the top was his affiliation with the Mastermind Meeting with the Internet Business Mastery Academy.
According to him: This mastermind group started to meet regularly, and for a while included Dan Andrews, which many of you may know from the Lifestyle Business Podcast – but it was that first meeting that changed everything.
Because it was in this meeting that Sterling told him to write and sell an ebook on his first website, since it was getting thousands of visitors. It was through this group that Pat Flynn got this idea that generated $7,126.91 alone.
How can you do this?
8. They found one idea and stuck to it
J.K Rowling knew she wanted to be a writer and stuck to it. Pat Flynn decided he wanted to be an internet marketer and stuck to it. Neil Patel decided to take the internet marketing scene by storm and has never looked back.
Regularly you see people chasing the latest fad and abandoning it when it does not give them the results they desire immediately. You see entrepreneurs abandoning their young businesses out of frustration because they are not yet earning money from it. It took Pat Flynn more then 15 months to earn a substantial amount of money from his first website GreenExamAcademy.com
It took J.K Rowling 7 years of dedication to her novel before she got her first payoff.
It took Neil Patel years of dedication to learning internet marketing, even failing at his job board and losing money initially with Crazy Egg before he started racking in millions.
Every good thing takes time to grow. A plant will take its time to poke it head out of the soil, even if you water it endlessly for 24 hours. It will never break through the soil in that 24 hours.
How can you do this?
9. They were not afraid to fail…
The fear of failure has crippled many people making them prefer a mediocre life than to achieve their dreams.
Don’t let this be you.
Neil Patel states clearly that many of his software companies were failures. But this did not stop him from founding Kissmetrics. Instead of succumbing to his failure, he learnt from them.
According to him:
Eventually, we learned that Crazy Egg succeeded while our other software companies didn’t because of two reasons: not only does it solve a unique problem that enough businesses are experiencing, but it does so in a very simple way.
With our new found knowledge, we decided to create another analytics company that would solve a much larger problem than what Crazy Egg solved.
How can you do this?
Do not see failure as an indication of your weakness. No. If a project failed, you are not the problem. The failure of the project is not a reflection of your capabilities as a person. Instead understand that failure is a way to learn something new you did not know before. Neil used the knowledge gained from the failure of his software companies to build Kissmetrics. When something fails ask yourself, “What next? How can I fix this?”
10 …And when they failed, they got right back up and fought again
Despite the fact that J.K Rowling felt like a failure when she found herself as a single mother with no achievement whatsoever, she continued writing. Pat Flynn’s eminent sack pushed him to work harder on his website. Neil Patel’s failure did not stop his craving for success. Instead he used his failures as a tool to create a powerful company.
How can you do this?
Everyone is scared of failure. But I want you to know this: Should any of your plans fail, simply get right back up. Do not give up.
Every single successful person I know has tasted failure, rejection, losses and pain. And that’s what made them stronger and moulded them into who they are.
If you learn just two things today:
1. You must want success so bad that you are willing to do everything legally possible and ethically right to get it. By this I mean, that you should not allow your ambition steal the precious moments you spend with your family or make other tasks like a trip to the gym impossible. Instead I mean that you should cut your time spent catching up on social media, TV bingeing and instead spend this time working on your success. I mean you should be ready to sacrifice an hour or two of sleep to build yourself up for success.
2. You need to start being with like-minded people: You are a product of the people you spend your time with. If you really want to be successful, you need to start building connections, relationships and friendships with successful people.
Over to you. In the comments below, tell me the one thing you do everyday to achieve your dreams of success. Are you having challenges being successful? Tell me about and I will get back to you with tips that could help. A problem shared is half-solved.