Takeaways from London event

How to succeed beyond your wildest dreams & imaginations

Sometimes I sit to study and my brain hurts.

Right now I am studying for a new insurance license. My test is supposed to be in July. I don’t want to study right now. My brain hurts just from thinking about studying.

In the last hour, I’ve re-read the same 3 or 4 pages over and over again, just trying to understand it.

I have a series coming up on Walt Disney (the entrepreneur who built the theme parks — he went broke dozens of times while trying to get his imagination off the ground, very inspiring). I’ve gotta study a bit more because his life was a nonstop beating, and I need to figure out why he didn’t quit.

There are half a dozen frameworks and playbooks I need to turn into the team for publishing through our flagship consulting training product. I built the ground rules for much of the online training & consulting industry — and now they’re being rebuilt. We are on the cutting edge of that. Now the team is waiting on me to submit the materials.

And I just finished up the London event. I taught ~4 hours of brand new curriculum that had to be finished before I left Nashville.

Needless to say, there is a lot going on.

Oh and I almost forgot, on the plane from London back home, I finished and turned in my 2nd book in thirty days. It is a time for producing…

Here is my point: I really don’t want to study right now.

The last thing I want to study is a life insurance exam. It ties into a long term plan — a lot of my clients get rich, and then they need to know what to do with their newfound income.

Building wealth is different (very different) than creating income. At some point we’ll create a financial group or a wealth-building arm of the portfolio and help folks store, protect & multiply the money coming into their organizations. I have to study and earn the licenses to do that.

If you zoom out as high as you can go, the the reason I’m doing it is simple: it needs to get done.

There’s a mistaken assumption that being successful is about “finding what you love” and “never working another day in your life.” In the words of current sitting president of the US of A — malarkey.

What a joke.

Building success is not about finding a passion - it’s about doing what needs to get done.

• You make investments before you feel ready.

• You workout before you know what you’re doing… and then you do it again after you’re already sore.

• You make the call when it doesn’t feel like they’ll answer.

• You do the work because the work needs done.

Last week in the UK, the night before we were supposed to board a flight and come home, someone stole my wife’s purse. It had all of our passports in it. I spent Monday morning, with the entire family, at the embassy to get emergency passports.

Imagine going, “I can’t go to the embassy because I just don’t feel like it and it’s not my purpose and I just don’t really think that is going to recharge my batteries and I need some self care.”

If you said that to me, I would never talk to you again.

My family was in another country, and it didn’t matter if it was fun or not — it needed done. So we smiled, got some coffee, then loaded ‘em up and spent the day at the embassy.

Your life is the same way.

Theodore Roosevelt, one of the most accomplished presidents in our history, explained his success this way:

“There is nothing brilliant or outstanding about my record, except perhaps for one thing: when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.”

You don’t need more talent.

Nor do you need more opportunities.

We are surrounded by opportunities to the point they are almost not even helpful anymore. Too many opportunities, one after the other, can begin to teach the brain the wrong thing…

But what has happened to our necessity? Or our urgency?

There’s a good chance you will die before you are ready.

Most people aren’t chomping at the bit to pass on into the unknown — Viktor Frankl said the key to a good life is this: picture you are going through your life, right now, a 2nd time… and the 1st time you did everything wrong.

What does this create?

Necessity. Urgency.

You get done with a long day at work and the last thing you want to be is a dad or a mom with responsibilities at home. But you lived that way the 1st time, your kids are grown & old, they’re not particularly fond of you because you were never there — and now you get a 2nd shot to maximize the moments while they are young. How do you live?

You have a chance to write the book, sing the solo, or take the trip. Yes it’s scary - but the first time you f*cked it up by avoiding it altogether. Now you have a chance to take it seriously - how do you live?

When I am forced to answer these questions, my mind begins to shift…

• I’ll get the license because I need it to accomplish a mission

• I’ll stay up later to be with my kids because they need to see their dad

• I’ll have the tough conversations because other people depend on me to tell them the truth

• I’ll write the essay, the book, the play, the text - because what if I die before I get another chance?

• I’ll make the call because it’s what needs to get done

Who are you, when it matters most?

If you don’t know the answer to that, let me help you:

You’re the person who does whatever needs to get done, whenever it needs to get done.

It won’t always be fair but it will always be worth it.

Lessons from London:

• Failure is data, not personal — harvest the lessons and go again

• Front-loaded failure is the best kind of failure (get the lessons quick then deploy them in the field; not many people can survive repeated failure at the beginning of a new level)

• Every failure you avoid accrues interest payments (typically these are paid via insecurity, self-doubt, and victim spirit)

• People are afraid of two things: being alone, and physical death — everything they buy is a roundabout way to avoid those two things (if you sell income, for instance, you’re selling a way to avoid being alone or a ploy to live longer)

• Risk-aversion is the most dangerous aversion there is (it permanently guarantees risk; as you avoid small risks you rack up percentage points that push you towards big risk)

• Mostly, we want what other people want (mimetic desire); humans copy everything and that can either be a positive or negative thing, depending on who you’re surrounded by

• The best person to copy is yourself from the future (build a model of your future and describe - in detail - who that person is and then try to become them)

• The best sales people work with their prospects - they don’t convince them, they enable them

If you want to be at any of our future events just reach out, I’ll connect you.

-T