Paul Counsel

How Bad Do You Want It?

Cathy and Trevor A Financial Education for Kids, Developing a Money Mindset, Enterprising Kids , , , , , , , 4 Comments

We were going to write about Kit and Chayse’s enterprise and how they have gone with working on their goal, but have decided to share an interim and thought-provoking blog designed to make you think about how much do you really want success (in any chosen field)!

Our daughter Kaitlin saw this video on You Tube and sent us the link. We thought it was awesome. So, take the time to watch the clip (it doesn’t go for very long), then read on.

How Bad Do You Want It? Video Clip

How Bad Do You Want It? Click image to view clip.

For those who want to digest the words again, I have taken what I could decipher from the You Tube and written the transcript here.

There was a young man who wanted to make a lot of money, so he went to his Guru and said,

“I want to be on the same level you’re on.” And the Guru said, “If you want to be on the same level I’m on, I will meet you tomorrow at the beach.”

So the young man got there at 4am. He wore a suit, but should have worn shorts. The old man grabs his hand, leads him to the water and says,

“How bad do you want to be successful?”  The young guy said, “Really successful”.

The old man says, “Walk on out in the water. “ He goes waist deep.

This waters freezing. The young man thinks, I just want to make money and he’s making me swim.

I didn’t ask to be a life guard. I wanna make money.

“Come out a little further. “

So he’s thinking. This old man’s crazy. He makes a lot of money, but he’s crazy.

“Come out a little further.” And he did.

This man is crazy.

The old man said, “I thought you wanted to be successful”.

He said, “I do”.

“Then walk a little further”.  The old man pulled him, dropped the young man’s head in the water, held his head down, and continued to hold him down, even when the young man struggled.  He held him down, but just before the young guy passed out, the old man raised him up.

He told the young guy. “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful!”

 

 

 

 

 

After watching this video, it really made us think, How much do we want it? Do we “really” want it or just “kinda” want it? Want what, you may ask?

Well, anything really. How much do we want our fitness levels to be at their optimal levels? How much do we want to be financially free? How much do we want to have a happy and loving family life? How much do we want to enjoy our time with friends and experience unique and exciting experiences?

For us, it’s a little bit of everything. But what we realised as we’ve been completing Paul Counsel’s Money Mastery Course over the year, that splitting our attention between everything (as we have in the past), we get a medium result from everything. There’s nothing wrong with that, it makes life comfortable, and that’s OK for many people.

But for us………we’re ready to challenge ourselves. We’re ready to step up and make a difference in those areas in a big way, not an average way.

So, whilst we may not exist on 3 hours a night (although that’s debatable with our 18 month old at times!), we do put in the long hours. We do stay up until midnight (long after the kids have gone to bed), working on our internet business, studies, trading or Health and Wellbeing business.

We try to focus as much as we can on them. And why do we do it? Because we know that we are already successful in some parts of our lives. We know we have a wonderful family and supportive friends. And we know we’ve achieved that through dedication and focus. Now, we are ready to transfer that focus and skill to other aspects of our lives. We know that when we are financially free, that this will positively affect every other part of our lives.

If we want more time to focus on our kids, we can hire someone to do the mundane things in our lives, thus freeing our time. We can create awesome experiences beyond what we’ve already had. We can take time to enrich our own relationship without worrying about how we are going to pay the next bill.

Now, it may take us a little longer to achieve our goals than it will Giavanni Ruffin (the athlete in the movie). He has MAJOR, unstoppable focus and he WILL achieve, no matter what. It’s not a matter of IF, it’s a matter of WHEN for him.

But even if we used just a tenth of his energy and commitment, it has to be better than no focus at all. Where your attention is held is what will show up in your life. You need to “attend to your intention”. A clear intention with determined focus will set you on the right path to success.

This lesson on focus can be applied by anyone, whether it is teenagers studying at high school, kids with big sporting ambitions or parents developing business. Kaitlin is challenged with maintaining focus with her studies. We are glad she discovered this video, thought about its excellent message, and decided to share it with us.

So, like we said at the beginning of this post, “How Bad Do You Want It?”

If you enjoyed the first video clip, and thought that was all there was, think again………then have a look at this one…

How Bad Do You Want It (part 2)

How Bad Do You Want It? Pt2 Click to view

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related Posts:

Youth Enterprise…. Kaitlin and Jai

What “The Secret” Left Out

Anthony “Tony” Robbins is an American self-help author, motivational speaker and Life Coach. He became well known throughout the world through his self-help books. Our Mentor, Paul Counsel, speaks highly of Tony Robbins and his teachings.

Dale Beaumont – The Next Generation

Cathy and Trevor Becoming an Entrepreneur, Developing a Money Mindset, Enterprising Kids, Inspirational Entrepreneurs! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Part of what we love about this blog is that we get to share the amazing success of young entrepreneurs with not only our readers, but our kids. As we’ve been learning on Paul Counsel’s course, and what Dale Beaumont has reiterated, is that who you “hang with” is who you become like. Now that can be a scary thought or it can be an inspiring thought, depending on your peers and the people you spend the most time with.

Luckily we have wonderful family and friends, but for us, it’s also important to include peers who have achieved success in the areas we are lacking. Some of our family and friends fulfil those needs, but a sure way of increasing self effacy in these areas for us and our kids is to mix with other successful entrepreneurs.

Dale Beaumont is one such inspiring young entrepreneur. He doesn’t see himself as that young anymore, but his success started at the tender age of 19. Prior to developing his entrepreneurial skills, Dale was an accomplished gymnast and probably what you would call an overachiever. When Dale was 19 he co-authored a book called “The World at Your Feet” which was the basis of his successful program “Tomorrow’s Youth”. Here, he taught young kids essential life skills.

Dale started his journey when he was only 19.
Dale Beaumont wrote Secrets Exposed Series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 12 short years he has published 15 books in the “Secrets Exposed” series, built amazing relationships with other young successful entrepreneurs, business owners and “thought” leaders and has recently developed the Business Blueprint model which has amazing systems to keep you ahead of your competition in business and free your valuable time where you can concentrate on things other than work 24/7.

Dale with one of his children
Inside the Sistine Chapel

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dale is married and has two gorgeous boys, so his focus is actually on travelling with his young family to all corners of the world. He is only able to do this because he is financially free and has set amazing systems in place within his business so everything ticks along with or without him! So you could imagine how appealing that is to Trev and I!

I won’t talk about the whole workshop that myself and my good friend Sally went to in Perth, but I thought I would share some highlights with you that really stuck with me as he spoke.

Presenting at Business Blueprint

“Empty bank accounts don’t feed the people.”

“The poor can’t help the poor.”

Just these two sayings alone say it all. Some people in this world want money for money’s sake – so they can have nice things and show off to others how well they are doing. Others want money so they can have nice things, enjoy wonderful experiences, but also do good things in this world and make a difference to the lives of others. We fall into that category.

Dale supports “Hands Across the Water” project in Thailand and it was inspiring to see him obviously making a difference to the lives of many boys and girls there. He even takes other entrepreneurs there with him, so they can have more purpose in their lives and help use their money in useful ways.

New Rules of Business Seminar

The internet has changed business forever and if you don’t embrace that change, your business will get left behind. A classic example of this was the Borders Bookstore. They were a wonderful “physical” resource, but chose not to keep up with how fast the internet was growing and actually sold their software of selling books online to their competitor, who did see the potential of the internet. That competitor was Amazon……..and I think most of you will agree that it has gone from strength to strength, whilst Borders, sadly, had to close their doors.

What I loved about Dale’s seminar is that you don’t have to do it all yourself, in fact, you would be crazy to. There are ways of making your business and your life easier and Dale spells these out with the amazing systems he has in place.

Dale shared with us something he learnt when he was just starting out in  business.

The Coffin or the Hourglass.

The Coffin or the Hourglass

Basically many people starting in business spend more time on taking action than they do strategising or planning where they want their business to end up. Now taking action is important, but you don’t want your business to be like a coffin, where little time is spent strategizing, heaps of time is spent taking action (but sometimes not very fruitful) and the results then speak for themselves.

The hourglass on the other hand, is all about putting the time in with the planning, strategising, and “thinking” stage. With well thought out plans in place, the action you take is more focused and the results are more fruitful.

So what would you prefer? A business with the “coffin” model or one with the “hourglass” model?

I think what has made Dale so successful in such a short amount of time is his ability to let go of the things that could be done by someone else (outsourcing), and focus on the things he needs to do to be effective within his business. Dale uses particular software to help systemize his business, so his time is leveraged and far more productive.

Office Autopilot

Office Auto Pilot... an excellent automated system

One such program is called “Office Autopilot” and has an amazing array of uses and ways of streamlining the processes that you must go through to keep your businesses ticking along nicely. I’m sure there are others programs or software, but having just purchased this particular one myself and seeing first hand how Dale uses the software to enhance productivity within his business, I am more than happy to list a few of it’s features below.

“Office Autopilot” Software allows you to split test, track and automate emails through their Email Marketing function. Order forms, memberships, subscriptions, refunds and automated card handling are all made easy with it’s Web Payment Processing system.

The Contact Database is all in one place for the history, purchases, referrals, files and notes etc. The Software covers Market Automation, Affiliate tracking, and Direct Mail Postcards (where you can personalise your business).

I love the If-Then Rule System where you can easily write extremely flexible and powerful rules to automate what happens next in your business. So basically, the system will have your rules “if this happens, send this email, if that happens, sent that email. This is such a time saving feature of the Office Autopilot.

The Software has a WordPress Integration system where you can set up a Word Press site in seconds. You can build a totally integrated membership site in minutes and add smart forms or order forms with a click of the button.

The program builds leads with drag’n’drop landing page creator and can split test pages for marketing purposes. Event Management from events, webinars to teleseminars make follow up easy and with Task Management processes and great Customer Service and Training, what more could you need.

As mentioned earlier, there are many programs out there, but this one is a good email marketing system combined with a good CRM system. Many are just one or the other.

So, how does all of this relate to Entrepreneurial Kids, you may ask.  Well, for any business that our kids choose to start, using the internet will be a given, especially when they are young adults. If we want our kids to be competitive in today’s markets, we need to show them the way by taking the time ourselves to invest in “cutting edge” programs. They in turn, will follow our lead and already have the mindset that says “Get savvy! Learn…learn…learn!”

Bed time reading!

Generation Y (anyone born after 1980) are already building and creating things that will improve efficiency in their lives. Why spend time on something that takes 6 hours if you can streamline it and do it in one hour! That’s what our children are going forth into when they build their businesses.

And we agree totally. Life is not meant to be all about work. We want to work to live, not live to work……and we want our kids to get this concept too.

But in the meantime, if you are looking for an inspiring mentor and stimulating bedtime reading why not get stuck into one of Dale Beaumont’s books. Each of his books are either authored or co-authored by Dale and cost less than $10 from Amazon. His Secrets Exposed Series of books are the perfect gift for someone to kick start their entrepreneurial journey.

Young Achievers
Male Entrepreneurs
Small Business Owners
Female Entrepreneurs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Success Coaches
Entrepreneurs Under 40
Property Millionaires
Great Public Speakers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What “The Secret” left out!

Enterprise For KidsTeam Becoming an Entrepreneur, Developing a Money Mindset , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

My Dreams

As a kid I always wanted to be a farmer.

When growing up I had a framed picture of a farm on my bedroom wall and I would look and think about it everyday for years. It featured a big wooden barn sitting on a grassy hill with duck ponds, sheep, a dog, tractor and kids running around.

Our Farm in summer.

The funny thing was that twenty years later Cathy and I found and bought a little farm and it was just about identical to the picture from my bedroom wall. The little farm house sat on a green grassy hill (which is rare in Western Australia with its semi arid countryside), it had a big wooden barn, sheep, ducks, a dog and a tractor. To top it off we raised most of our kids there during their early years. I had no idea until later that the very farm we owned was what I used to dream and think about as a kid.

When the movie, “The Secret” came out, I was fascinated by the featured stories of people visualizing in their minds what they wanted and then over time, having those same things arrive for them in their physical world. I guess that is exactly what happened to me… though it did take twenty years!

Kit camping on the Cocos Islands... a dream come true!
Our Cocos experience!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This unique “law of the universe” came to play many times in our lives over the years. Our experience living on the Cocos Islands was a visual thought ten years before it became a reality, and traveling Canada and the US in our motor home with the family was another example of a visualization becoming a reality.

Vision Boards

Making a Vision Board is one way to build a visual picture of what you want. Cath and I have created Dream Boards and stowed them away, only to pull them out again some years later to see that several of the dream pictures can be ticked off as having been achieved… kite surfing, large aquarium, more kids, fishing boat… to note a few more examples.

Kite Surfing
My Vision Board from 2005. All these images, bar one, have become a reality.

We believe that Vision Boards help with visualizing what you want and because of that, we encourage our kids to make and display dream boards too. They think it’s all great fun!

The Problem with The Secret!

See, believe and you will conceive is the universal law that The Secret portrayed. It is amazing how your subconscious mind has so much power as to bring about reality from thoughts. The funny thing is that when I read forums with discussions about the laws of the universe I see many people being very frustrated about not being able to bring about in their physical world all the things they are visualizing and believing. They meditate, focus, make vision boards and think about what things they want in their lives, but despite all their efforts they are unable to conceive it to reality.

The Solution…

Our Money Mastery mentor says that there was an important ingredient that “The Secret” left out. He explained that whilst you need to visualize what you want, then emote it into existence, if you don’t have a persistent focus (or clear intention), then it is unlikely that what you want will easily come about in your reality.

He said, “The problem is that people have their focus elsewhere”. Like in our situation… we’re busy all week at work and when we’re home our whole attention is taken up with sorting the kids, doing the household chores and keeping up with our social life.

Our focus is drawn away from the things that we want to achieve, even though we may visualize them.

Often when people hit a rock bottom point in life, it is only then that their minds pinpoint their focus. This may be a near death experience, serious illness, break up with a partner or suddenly becoming financially bankrupt. It is only then that your conscious and subconscious minds align with an inner drive for change.

Our Subconscious Limits

The other thing that Paul (our Money Mindset mentor) explains is the “Belt” concept.

Our subconscious mind has an upper and lower limit to every aspect of our lives, including wealth, happiness, relationships, health etc. This is what we call our Comfort Zone.

Using money as an example, let’s say my subconscious is only comfortable earning $100,000 a year. That is my upper limit and if I ever exceed that by 10%, I will do something to self sabotage and bring that amount of money back to what I am comfortable receiving. Self sabotage may include spending it, losing it on the stock market, giving it away, gambling it away and so on.

So even though consciously I think I would like a million dollars, that will never happen until I have changed the upper limit of my subconscious around money. Subconscious mind is far more powerful than my conscious mind and that is why mentors such as Paul are so valuable because he helps us develop strategies to push our upper limit higher to allow more of what we want into our lives.

The same principle holds true for all areas of our lives. We may have a limit on how much happiness we are allowed to feel, so if a relationship is going along brilliantly, but we don’t think we deserve that much happiness (on a subconscious level), then we will do something to sabotage that happiness – more often than not, it involves picking a fight, creating a drama in our lives or doing something to hurt the other partner.
The same can be applied to health, relationships, weight loss, finances, anything really

The trick to mastering this law of the universe is to gradually work up to the bigger dreams by visualizing and intending for smaller dreams that will lead to the ultimate one. In other words, take smaller steps, then celebrate them once they are reality. The idea is that over time your subconscious mind will raise its upper limit to meet that of your conscious mind. When the two are aligned the physical reality will, in time, materialize.

Vision Boards for Kids

Ambers Vision Board

It took up to twenty years for dreams of mine to come about, so don’t allow a moment more to pass you or your kids by. Encourage your kids to make vision boards, teach them how to visualize and emote what they want. Establish a plan and then, most importantly, help them make it their absolute focus! If you need some help, then have a look at this book written by John Assaraf.  He is an expert on the topic as he himself was a major feature in the DVD “The Secret”.

Who Teaches Your Kids About Money?

Enterprise For KidsTeam A Financial Education for Kids, Developing a Money Mindset, Enterprising Kids , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

If you don’t teach your kids about money, then there are plenty of people out there who will! And not all of them will teach your children what they really need to know.

Kids are conditioned by media and celebrities.

Our kids are educated financially from many sources whether we like it or not. Everywhere they go and everything they look at is conditioning our kids around money.

Teenage kids, for example, are very influenced by their peers, TV and social media. They are pressured to want to have all the latest and greatest of everything! AND…they have to have it now! If you have a teenager in your house (or even a preteen!), you will understand this very well. They will tell you that they are the “only” ones in the “whole world” who doesn’t have one! And if you try to compromise with a cheaper version from Target,… well, forget it! Brand name or nothing!

Many parents fall into the trap of giving into their kids’ persistent demands. We have…..more times than we should have!… and the older a kid gets, the better they are at arguing their point. Some parents may lend their child the money with the view of having them pay it back when they can afford it, or some simply pay for the item fully and don’t expect their child to pay anything back.

But what is this teaching children?

Our son Flynn was preparing to go on a camp with his school. He claimed that ALL the kids would have iPods and that he wanted to buy one to take on camp.

He counted up his money and found that he was short about $100. He was very persistent in his request and we decided to sit down and have a conversation with him around the value of money.

Our dilemma was this – If we were to say an outright “NO, we can’t afford it” then we would be conditioning him with a mindset around “lack of money.”

If we said “YES”, then we would be conditioning him with the mindset to “borrow, then spend!”….and probably not appreciate it too much.

So……………we came up with a solution we had been taught in our mentoring course.

We said “YES”. He could buy an Ipod……however, we weren’t able to pay for it. We brainstormed ideas with Flynn on how he could raise $100. Time was of the essence as he was going on camp in three days.

We came up with ideas such as increasing the marketing of his honey that he was selling through his Honey Enterprise; sell some of his unwanted things such as his surf board; or do a deal with his sister and buy the items she had lined up to sell as part of her “New from Old” enterprise and then resell them with mark up.

The discussion gave him motivation, and we took the punt that if he was really keen for the iPod, then he would make it happen.

The point of all this is that we didn’t automatically say “No, we can’t afford it”…… and we didn’t say “Yes, and we will pay for it”. Rather, we put the onus on Flynn to work out a way to achieve his goal without getting himself into debt. We used this opportunity to teach Flynn about money.

Our Money Mindset Mentor, Paul Counsel, says that in our society, kids are conditioned to “earn, spend and borrow” from a very early age. This conditioning carries through to adulthood and ties people to a job. They need this job to pay for the interest payments on their “things”.

Sporting heros are used to condition people.

It is hard for our kids to avoid this type of conditioning. Their sporting idols appear on TV advertisements telling them what a great investment they are making if they buy x,y or z……and finish with a trusting wink!

Celebrities promote all sorts of things from insurance and jewellery to holidays. Retailers offer low cost, easy monthly payments for expensive items that people really can’t afford. There goes the “earn, spend and borrow” cycle again. Even airlines offer credit these days!

The education faculties don’t teach your kids about money either. In fact they will also put young people into tremendous debt by financing their higher education courses. Young people who spent five years working hard for a qualification, come out at the end with a massive debt!

Locked into debt before you can even begin!

Here is a hard fact… this year the total amount of student loan debt in the US hit the $1 trillion mark. Back in 2010, the amount of U.S. student loan debt surpassed the total amount of credit card debt, and it continues to grow. The trend in Australia is following that of the US.

We can look at life as being a game full of experiences! We are here on earth to play the game. Yet from an early age the odds are stacked against us to achieve personal and financial freedom when we are “conditioned” to earn, spend and borrow for unproductive things.

Can this change? Absolutely.

And who is the best person to teach this change to your children?

Well, if you have already achieved financial and personal freedom, then the best teacher is YOU!

And if you haven’t, then find someone who has achieved the type of financial or personal success you would like for your kids. You may even learn something in the process. 🙂

Portrait Artist in the Making!

Enterprise For KidsTeam Developing a Money Mindset, Enterprising Howitt Family, Enterprising Kids , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Kait with that winning smile!

Before we revisit Kaitlin and her Portrait Artist Enterprise, we wanted to share about the idea of manifesting what you desire into reality. We believe having a little understanding about this will make all the difference to achieving goals, dreams and enterprise for kids.

 

If you have ever watched the movie “The Secret”, which is all about understanding the Laws of Attraction, then you would have some understanding of Quantum Physics. The Secret explains how to manifest things that you desire into reality. It explains that you must firstly see and believe whatever it is that you want, then you evoke it (or emote it) into existence. If all goes well, the thing you desire will at some stage certainly materialise.

 

Kaitlin procrastinating!

The more we have been learning about Quantum Physics through the studies that we are doing at the moment with our Mentor, Paul Counsel, the more we have come to understand and believe that what the Secret portrays is all real and true, however, the movie doesn’t go into a lot of depth with one very important point (actually there’s another point as well, but that can wait for a later blog!).

 

For all of the above to actually happen a person needs to make what they want to manifest, their “highest value”. That means they need to put it ahead of all other things, making it their focus. With determination, will and focus, then and only then, will you be able to manifest what you want.

 

Now that sounds pretty easy, but I will be frank, it is easier said than done! If you are anything like us, you will have very busy, complicated lives and are over-run with distractions. Work, family, social life, worries etc. Your highest value, quite likely is one of these other things and as a result you would be having troubles pin pointing your focus on what you really desire.

 

Kaitlin’s enterprise plan that she shared in her home video is a very good one, but one that requires time management, focus and diligence. Once the article about her enterprise was posted on “Enterprise for Kids,” Kaitlin received two customers requesting her to do portrait drawings of their families. Kaitlin was delighted that people had actually appreciated her talents and were willing to pay for her service. This was a real opportunity for Kaitlin to follow a passion of hers and she was motivated to get started.

 

Kaitlin Sliding into Action.

She had bought half a dozen quality timber and glass frames from a garage sale, which would beautifully show the portraits… if her customers wanted them framed that is! She also had the $100 loan from me to buy the art materials required for her to run her enterprise.

 

 

 

So what has happened so far?……….

 

Distractions, distractions and more distractions!

 

Distractions!

Kaitlin, being a popular teenager has many demands put upon her and she certainly doesn’t have her focus set on attending to portrait drawings…..yet! It has not become her highest value to develop an enterprise, despite the fact that she really does want to have her own enterprise doing something that she has passion for.

 

Kaitlin on the Bali Green Supercamp

The list of distractions could amost fill a blog on their own! Kaitlin has been on the Country Week Camp, had sleepovers, caught up with friends, and is currently on the Bali Supercamp. She has had work commitments, baby sitting, sporting commitments, school, boyfriends, homework, modelling classes and family commitments that have all stolen her focus away.

 

To do portrait drawings, it requires a lot of concentration, patience and most importantly, a “distraction free” amount of time where she can get her head around it. Kaitlin understands that she needs to establish a time management plan where she can devote her focus to what she wants to achieve. Admittedly, Kaitlin doesn’t need to complete the drawings straight away. She has a few months…….but you could see how easily those “few months” could whittle away to nothing without a plan of attack, then taking action to bring that plan to fruition.

 

That being said, we all must do the same with our dreams and desires in life. Without making what we want, our highest value, with a written plan and then finally focusing all our energy upon it, then it is unlikely that those dreams will come about very easily.

 

We will keep you in the loop with Kaitlin in coming Enterprise for Kids blog articles. For my next post or two we will have a break from following our kids’ journeys and discuss understandings about developing a mindset for success. We’ll be looking at how we (and 98% of people) are conditioned to think in a certain way about money and how this conditioning may prevent us and our children from achieving success (and we are not just talking about the financial kind either :)………… Until then……………….