22/11/2011 by Ann.

I was reading an interview in a Sunday paper the other week in which Richard Branson and his mother, Eve, told of his upbringing.

The one thing that stood out for me in this came in the following words of his mother:

‘The thing about Richard was that, 99% of the time he was pretty hopeless, but he always had that 1% spark.’

When you think that she is talking about one of the most successful businessmen that the UK has ever seen, I found this extremely intriguing.

Let’s face it, Richard was not academic and only began doing better at school after he damaged his knee playing rugby and was unable to play sports as much as he used to. This meant that he finally knuckled down to some work, but he didn’t go on to University as you might have expected.

Successful people don’t always come from privileged backgrounds either and you only have to look at someone such as Oprah to see that. Despite all the disadvantages she had, she has become hugely successful.

You see, there are no real limitations when it comes to success; your ability to succeed really does depend very much on mindset and your belief and motivation to do what it takes, as we spoke about a few weeks ago, in relation to Paul McKenna and Anne McKevitt.

The question to ask yourself is ‘Why not me?’

Others will try and give you plenty of reasons why you can’t, and your job is to focus on what you want and to do everything you can to fulfil your purpose.

In just the same way that you have no right to make decisions on behalf of others (e.g. what your clients can afford to pay you) then you are the one who has the right to decide your own path in life.

What are you going to do with your one percent?

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15/11/2011 by Ann.

I went to Wembley on Saturday to watch England play Spain in a friendly match. I took my friend Maureen as my brother was unable to use his tickets, so kindly offered them to me.

So, we watched the match, commented to each other on the play and the one goal and had a very nice time and went home.

Imagine my surprise when I read the newspaper reports the next day about the match: they bore no resemblance to the match we had watched the day before! The reporters were commenting on how well England had played to not only keep play away from Spain but ensure they had very few shots at goal. This was interesting as, from our view, England had tended to get the ball when Spain made an error or a bad pass. It seemed to us that it wasn’t England who were playing well but Spain who were playing pretty badly and the ball very rarely went into the penalty area at either end.  We were really surprised when England scored!

Of course it was  a great reminder about how we map out the world to our own personal viewpoints and so, millions will watch a match and there are just as many opinions over what exactly went on. All of these are based on our programming, beliefs and prejudices.

It can be very useful to reflect on your own standpoint, how it differs from that of others and what may have contributed to this; after all, there is always another point of view and it can be very useful to consider this in order to grow and develop.

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08/11/2011 by Ann.

I was reading an interview with Gary Barlow (best known for being the main singer and songwriter in boy band Take That and now appearing on the UK ‘X-Factor’ TV show) and in it he made a very interesting observation.

Gary said that he writes one hit song in every twenty-five. That is just a four per cent success rate.

‘Wow’ I thought. That changed a lot of stuff for me: certainly it spoke to me about perseverance and also knowing yourself and your market.

It told me that Gary must write a heck of a lot of songs bearing in mind how many successful songs he has written for the band, and for some other people during their hiatus.

It also made me wonder if Gary is setting himself a limiting belief, and maybe he could change that and write a hit song in every ten or even five songs? That could be an interesting challenge!

What I was most taken by is the fact that Gary still believes he can write more hits and he just keeps on keeping on; writing and writing until something comes up that sells like crazy and goes to the top of the charts.

It’s the same for your business: Ali Brown once said that when a product for her business doesn’t sell as much as she anticipated, she knows that is because there is something better that is going to come along, and this is just one of the steps to getting there.

It is very important to remember these two stories from highly successful people when you are working on your business. You may not get it perfect this time but you have endless opportunities in the future and it is this perseverance that will bring you success. As David Neagle says ‘People don’t fail – they choose to quit!’

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