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Inspiring kids to be entrepreneurial.

A Kid’s Mindset For Success!! Teaching Kids to Be Successful: Part 4

July 29th, 2013

During my “career-path” conversation with my son Jai, he was able to visualize himself, his surroundings and companions in his adult future. A kid’s mindset for success! The final step was to solidify the pathway that would take him to his version of a successful life: A Plan, Natalie Cook’s fifth P.

Natalie Cook stood on a chair for this photo!

A Plan, Natalie Cook’s Fifth P

It’s always a good idea to sit down and plot out short term and long term goals, especially for entrepreneurial kids who are cultivating a kid’s mindset for success.

On an adult level, well-made plans should be a natural component of what you perceive is your life’s purpose, your “Why” in life. (Even kids that are entrepreneurial won’t have solidified their life purpose to this extent, however.)

Sean Rasmussen, our internet marketing mentor, taught me a trick that can be successful with kids, as well:

Write on small piece of paper an intention, but don’t use the future tense. For instance, you might write “I have attracted a healthy, motivated business person to my business this month,” instead of, “I will attract…” A child might write, “I have kicked two goals at this Saturday’s soccer match.”

Place the written intention under your pillow, in your wallet, or wherever you will view it regularly. The idea is to set a specific and realistic goal. The laws of the universe will then go into effect to bring your goal to fruition… that is, if you see it, believe it, and feel it.

People who practice this mindset for success technique go on to set bigger and grander intentions, over time.

Having a Defined Goal

My friend, Michael Clouse, says that not having a clearly defined plan is like an archer who aims at a target with a blindfold on. There’s no chance of hitting the bulls eye if you are unable to see it!

Vision Board Builds a Kid’s Mindset for Success

Another technique is visualizing goals using a vision board. Select the experiences and things that you would like to have in your life and make a poster board of these, using images and graphics. Place the vision board in a place that you will view daily. Visualize the items on the vision board and do so as if they were real and already present in your life.

Facing your fears! Walking on broken glass!

Positive Affirmations Leads to a Success Mindset in Kids

Speaking positive affirmations aloud two or three times a day is another way of setting your intention and belief. Again, these should be in the present tense.

Natalie Cook likes to declare her intentions and plans before a public audience, making herself accountable to a lot of people for achieving her aims.

So be bold! Change your way of thinking. Get rid of the negatives. Affirm the positives. Make sure that your plans are well-aligned with your life vision. Set grand goals, and follow your plan! This is a kid’s Mindset For Success!

Coming up in our Mindset for Success Series

Next up is the “P” I’ve added to Natalie’s other five. After reading this, can you guess what that might be? Leave your guess in the comments or on Facebook.

The winner will be announced in the next post (we have a small prize for them!!) Every success!

PS We are super excited! We’re heading overseas for an adventure of a lifetime! We will be meeting with and learning from some of the most successful people in the world and catching up with family (another blog post in the making!).

Our final Success P article in the series will have to wait until we get back. That may be three weeks time. Here is a sneak peek at where we are going and what we will be doing…

Teaching Your Kids To Be Successful Part 3: Perseverance

July 23rd, 2013

A baby learns to walk by falling over many times. An entrepreneur learns to succeed after stumbling along the way. Teaching yourself, and your kids, to be successful in business requires Natalie’s fourth P: Perseverance (perseverance on their part, and yours!)

For example, Cathy and I have learned that in the business of referring people to an opportunity, many people will just not be interested. With enterprising teens watching, how do parents set an example to persevere in the face when people say “No”? Well, the mindset for success is to celebrate the “No.” After so many of them, a “Yes” will inevitably follow. One of my mentors, David Wood, says to do the Happy Dance whenever you get a “No,” because the rejection only moved you one step further towards the “Yes.”

Your kids, whether entrepreneurial or not, are going to like to see that Happy Dance, making it a practical way to help seal the behavioural pattern of success in their mindsets. Being able to overcome rejection in business, rejection from friends and rejection from family is paramount for kids to be successful.

Our vocabulary also plays a huge part in our ability to persevere. In our family “Can’t” is a swear-word and not allowed to be used at any time; “Can” is encouraged. Many people, including kids, are quick to give up when the going gets tough, saying, “I can’t” rather than “I can.” The little kids in my family actually believe “Can’t” is a swear word, right up there with the other big four letter words!

Another phrase to abandon is, “It’s too hard.” Natalie showed us a little trick she used to change her perception of what is hard. She bought a toy button that calls out, “That was easy!” when you press it. Natalie would strap this toy button to her volleyball net pole. Whenever she did something very well that was also very difficult, she would run up to press the button: “That was easy!” Try it for yourself… press the button below!

Being the best in the world at your sport certainly has its challenges, and my kids would love to try out one of those buttons. You can get them from Amazon.com. But whether or not, the point is not to say “That was hard!”

These tactics to increase the level of perseverance in kids and keeping them on a successful track comes easier when you have a Plan. This is the fifth P we’ll talk about next week.

Make sure you have a look at the short video (click the image above) we made of Natalie Cook giving a special message to our kids. Can you spot the BLOOPER?

If you missed last weeks article “Amber’s Reflection of Green SuperCamp” here it is.

Entrepreneurial Kids… How to Teach Your Kids to Achieve Success: Part 1

June 29th, 2013

Now here’s someone entrepreneurial kids would love to meet: Natalie Cook. Natalie Cook is a five-times Olympian and winner of the Gold Medal during the Sydney 2000 Olympics games in beach volleyball. Currently, Natalie Cook is a successful businesswoman and owner of the sports franchise, Sandstorm.

Natalie Cook Gold Medalist 2000 Olympics Beach Volleyball

She recently gave an awesome talk in Perth, saying the similarities between professional athletes and successful business owners were many, as both have a self-motivating desire to win. Natalie’s message was captivating, humourous, and very useful in cultivating the mindset for success in entrepreneurial kids, as well as in their adult counterparts.

The Five Ps

Natalie’s talk was built around her Five Ps: principles for your kids and in the boardroom, alike.

I will share these with you in a series, over the coming weeks, the last part of which will contain a surprise: a P I’ll be adding, myself. After reviewing Natalie’s, let’s see if who can guess what my P will be.
Here goes:

Part 1: Purpose

A person who truly reaches for success has a mindset that carries with it a very strong “Why,” or purpose. Your “Why” must be stronger than your “Why not?” If not, you likely don’t have enough purpose to muster up the will to make your goals happen when you are faced with barriers.

Your “Why” has to be specific and something close to the heart. It needn’t be complicated. A friend of mine is driven to success because she desperately wants her Mum to be happy and not have to work anymore. Another wants to buy a villa in Tuscany so that it solidifies her Italian family roots with a sense of belonging. These “Whys” are far from saying “Why not?” They are set purposes, not poor explanations.

Your “Why” will often come from one of two emotions… pain or pleasure. Usually it will be pain as it is the stronger of the two. For example, consider all those rags to riches stories of many of our success mentors (JK Rowling, Colonel Sanders, Sylvester Stallone, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Susan Boyle, Richard Branson). Their experiences with the emotion of “pain” lead them to having a strong “Why” and their “Why” ultimately brought them success.

Amy, Cathy, Natalie, Tracey, Kym and Trevor.

I recently carried out a “Why” exercise with my son, Jai. We’d just returned from a career path meeting for his upcoming senior class. Every pathway the school offered ended in landing a j-o-b (just-over-broke). Their end result was the same, whether the route was through university, technical school, or a straight shot into the average 40-year career hold. There was nothing for an enterprising teen to grab hold of. Worse, because the students were just about ending high school, the pressure was on to make a choice… a limited choice, one based on hastily presented ideas.

The result was confusion and “Why not?” to this and that idea. Jai seemed to be torn between going to Uni with his mates, for it sounded like fun, or leaving school with his cousin and going to make money in the mines. This inconsistency told me that Jai’s “Whys” on both of these career paths were just too vague.

So, we got to work. We discussed why these two ideas sounded interesting to him. We canvassed what it was about “Why not?” that wouldn’t likely carry him through the hardships of either choice.

Then I asked him to ponder a few questions:

How do you want to contribute to this world?
How do you want to grow as a person?
How do you want to be remembered when you pass?

It was a lot for him to think about. We’ll discuss what steps we took next in Part 2: People and Passion.

Always looking for feedback on our entrepreneurial kids articles so be sure to leave a comment. What is your “Why”?

If you are not already a subscriber, then I invite you to fill out the form on the side bar of this blog, that way you won’t miss Part 2 next week.

Teaching Enterprising Teens How to Achieve Success (Part 2)

June 4th, 2013

After my son Jai and I discussed the first of Natalie Cook’s Five P’s, Purpose , in choosing a career path (in Part 1 of this series), I asked him to make a timeline of his life. He was to focus on his surroundings, and more importantly, on the people who would be with him.

People

You see, Natalie’s second P is People. Attracting the right people in life is key to building a successful kid entrepreneur. But whether Jai chose to be an enterprising teen or not, it was his mindset for success in whatever path he chose that was most important to me.

So, I asked him where he would like to be sitting five years from now and with whom? Ten years from now? Forty? I had him picture what was around him, his associates, and what made these kids so valuable to him right now that their presence remained visible decades into the future.

Natalie Cook discussed the value of surrounding herself with the right people, while training to be an Olympic Gold medalist. Around her were coaches, mindset mentors, professionals, and peers whose encouragement always lifted her up, instead of bearing criticism that tears a person down.

Jai contemplating the people he would like to surround himself with. People with Passion that will assist him with his enterprising teen journey.

At the same time, it is important, especially for enterprising teens, to hang out with the sort of people they want to emulate. Qantum physics and studies in neuroscience have discovered that there are mirror neurons in the brain that mirror or copy the brains around them. That is, a person becomes like his/her closest friends. This is besides peer pressure! They should be encouraged to make conscious choices of mates who will add to their mindset for success.

As adults, what I love about the new business that Cathy and I have become involved in, Isagenix, is that it is all about people. Natalie Cook understands this, too, as she is a partner in the same company. In fact, it really doesn’t matter what is your business or your kids’ enterprise for one reason: When being helpful to other people, your success increases. This is because helping people gives enterprising teens and adults an energy that attracts the right people into your lives, and who, in turn, help you.

Passion

People are also attracted to those who have a passion for what they do. Passion is Natalie’s third P. Natalie said in a Sparkmag interview that passion is

“required when times are tough. If you are not passionate about what you do and you don’t love the process and the product… it makes is much easier not to feel as emotionally involved, or eventually shut up shop and walk away.”

Now, Jai rightfully wanted something he could stick with for the long term. Having him visualize himself, his surroundings, and companions way into the future really took him to a place that I could see was his passion, something apart from what others were expecting of him, a desire that would not fade with time. His spirit guided him, instead of the social conditioning of his school, friends, and family.

Want to know more? The next P is inseparable from Passion, and that’s Perseverance. See you next week (Check out the very funny video of Natalie Cook giving our kids a message!)

If you enjoyed this article, then you may find this one just as interesting “How Do Entrepreneurs Think?”

If you could enlist three people in the world to personally be your friend and mentor you, who would they be? Mine would be Richard Branson, Robert Kiyosaki and Michael Clouse. Make sure you leave us a comment…