THREE VALUABLE LIFE LESSONS WE HAVE LEARNED THE HARD WAY: Wendy and I have developed two very successful home-based businesses over the past 22 years – one in Direct Sales and one property company funded by the proceeds of the Direct Sales operation. These have taken us from a start of being £20k in debt outside of a large mortgage to now having assets that we count in the millions. More importantly to us, we have managed to do this stress free and with complete freedom of time for us both to spend with our three children as they grew up. At one point we took them on a seven week educational trip around the world only to return to a Direct Sales business that had grown 15% in our absence. The catalyst that started this journey from humdrum life to luxury lifestyle was the sudden death of my father at just 59 years old. It was a slap in the face reality check – he had worked hard for someone else for over 40 years and then it was all over. We both said that we had to find a better plan than that for our lives. We concluded that the only way was to have a business of our own. So we started looking and fairly quickly learned three valuable lessons in life that have kept us in good stead ever since. Life lesson number one: We made the classic mistake of joining a “Ground Floor” business opportunity. It was all very exciting but within 3 years it had gone bust as most start-ups do. We then joined a very well established business opportunity that had been around for decades, with the result that we still have that thriving business 22 years on. Lesson 1: Look for long-term stable growth rather than the excitement of “get rich quick” ideas. Life lesson number two: We had earned over £100k from that first opportunity and somehow managed to spend about £120k, leaving us wondering where we had gone wrong. A mentor suggested we read a book called “The Richest Man in Babylon”. We said we had already read it. He replied, “Read it again, but this time actually do what it tells you to do!” As a result we turned our finances around over the next 3 years and have never looked back. Lesson 2: There is no point in getting good advice, whether from a book, a person or elsewhere, if you don’t put it into practise. Life lesson number three: Don’t worry about losing what you have. The key to a stress free successful lifestyle is to just enjoy it whilst you have it. Lesson 3: Hardship and tragic events quite often prepare us for an extraordinary destiny. The quote that affects our thinking more than any other is by Jim Rohn: “Any thing in life that is easy to do is always easier not to do!” The fact of the matter is that it’s actually very easy to start making small incremental changes in our daily actions that have massive compounding effects over the next 90 days, let alone the next five years. It is very easy to read tried and trusted advice books written by other successful people from all walks of life. It is very easy to develop a positive mental attitude if you decide to. But of course, this is all much easier not to do – it really is just an individual choice for us all as to which way we choose to go through this very short life that we have.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:12:28 +0000
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