You Can Achieve Anything You Want, If…

As a kid, I was really lucky because several things showed me that I could achieve anything I wanted if… I worked hard enough.

Most of these lessons started with a slap in the face!

You know, the moments when life humiliates you and the world teaches you that you’ve got to work a lot harder to get what you want.

The first slap in the face from the world was getting 10% in an English exam.

The sharp sting of that moment still hurts today.

But…

It was the best thing that could have happened to me because I got a lot of help. It was unwanted help at the time, and it was just what I needed.

So, for 3 months, I did exam practice every weekend.

I wasn’t becoming a better writer. I was becoming better at taking exams. I was learning how to make my point.

This was far from what I would call persuasion. But it was a start.

3 months later, I sat an exam and my result improved from 10% to 55%. Nothing spectacular. I’d improved from terrible to somewhere in the middle. I had improved to the point where I was invisible… and that was fine with me.

But more important than the result circled in red ink, was the lesson. The lesson that you can achieve anything you want if you work hard enough at it.

I could see that I didn’t have to be the stupid kid at the bottom of the class if… I was prepared to ask for help and do the work. It was as simple as that.

Unfortunately, my English skills stopped improving once I was good enough to be invisible. I didn’t want to do the extra work, and I didn’t ask for extra help. So it all disappeared… along with my improvement.

My second slap in the face from the world was when I failed to qualify for the English Schools Athletics Championships when I was 14 years old.

The previous year, I had run the qualifying time and reached the semi-final. So… I thought it was a given that I would qualify the next year.

I knew in the new age category, the hurdles height went up, and the distance increased from 75-meter hurdles to 100-meter hurdles… but what difference did that make?

As far as I was concerned all I had to do was run over some barriers faster than everyone else. Simple, right? What more do you need to know?

As it turned out, there was a lot more that I needed to learn.

For a start, the extra distance means you need to be a lot stronger.

What strength work had I done? Nothing!

I trained twice a week and thought that talent would carry me where I wanted to go.

The following year, I put in a LOT of work. I trained through the winter. I lifted weights. I did endurance running. I did specialist speed training, and I worked on my technique.

What was the result?

I ran the qualifying time the first race of the season!

That’s the difference that hard work and expert guidance makes.

You see, I did the work. But without a coach, I would not have known what to do. I would have done the same things that I did before and suffered through the same disappointing results.

As an athlete, I was never world class.

But when I trained with Bob Smith (the guy that coached John Ridgeon to a Silver Medal at the Seoul Olympics), I could see what I would have to do to become world class!

I was training with world class athletes! People like Matthew Clements who got a silver medal at the world junior championships for 100-meter hurdles.

Everyone in the training group had run for England… except me!

Everyone in the group took training much more seriously than I did. I enjoyed training. I wanted to get better. But I didn’t see it as life and death.

Changing my mindset was the first success change that came from training with a group of elite athletes. We still had fun when we were training. We still teased each other. Trash talk was still the preferred weapon of choice to motivate myself and to force the others to bring their best to the session.

And…

Once I started taking my success much more seriously, I got much more out of each session. I pushed my body to new limits and surprised myself regularly.

But what does all of this have to do with hard work and achieving anything you want?

When Bob first took me under his wing, he set me some training sessions that he called basic conditioning. That was the hardest training I’d ever done in my life! My body heart in places where I never knew there were muscles. And I couldn’t believe that through all the pain I could continue to train.

By the start of the athletics season (early May) we were all flying.

Bob had shifted our training, so we weren't doing so much heavy lifting or endurance running.

This meant that the strength that we’d all gained over the winter was ready to spring free.

But the sessions were not the super light training that you do just before the biggest competitions later in the summer. The hurdles sessions were still focused on technique and strength endurance, rather than out and out speed.

I remember finishing a hurdles session on a Saturday morning at the Cambridge University track. When we had finished, my shoulders ached, my legs were sore, and I knew that I had left everything on the track.

After we had warmed down, Matthew asked if I wanted to lift some weights. I was utterly spent, but didn't want to look like a slacker, so I said Yes.

I remember loading up the bench press bar with 70kg and struggling to do 4 reps. Matthew then puts 90kg on the bar and lifts it like it was nothing. I couldn’t believe it. I was in awe of his strength and work ethic.

I could see that if I wanted to become world class, I would need to work harder in the company of world-class athletes.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because…

I believe that success is a choice!

I believe that building your dream business is a choice. You can choose to do the work. You can choose to continually improve your skills so that you can achieve your goals.

Or…

You can choose to stay where you are now... and hope that the competition doesn’t steal your lunch.

Or…

You can choose to quit.

Giving up on your dreams is easy. Chasing them is hard. Chasing them is rewarding.

But let’s not sugar coat this… chasing your dreams requires commitment and dedication to do the things that you find hard.

How long do you need to work for?

The 10,000 Hour Rule 

Two books talk about the 10,000-hour rule to become an expert.

The first book to introduce this concept was Outlier by Malcolm Gladwell. I do not recommend that you read this book!

Why?

Because it makes a very compelling case that no matter how hard you work, success is largely out of your hands.

The second book that talks about the importance of the 10,000-hour rule is Bounce by Matthew Syed. I personally believe that this should be required reading for every kid at school because it makes a very compelling case that you can achieve anything you want if you are prepared to work hard enough at it.

That’s a powerful message. That’s a message that can change your life. If… you believe and act on it.

I had to wrestle with this belief. In fact, it forced me to…

Face My Fears Or Quit!

You see, when I started to learn how marketing could make sales on demand without a sales team, what I realised is that copywriting lies at the heart of all promotional activity.

If you want to create a Facebook ad, or a magazine ad, or a Google ad. Then nothing happens until the copy is written.

What about recording a video or giving a presentation? Well… if you want the video to be good, then you need to write out what you are going to say before you switch on the video camera. So again, nothing moves until the copy is written.

If you are giving a presentation, then again nothing moves until the copy is written.

For decades I believed that I couldn’t write well because of my 10% English exam failure. In fact, I made choices about what I was going to study at University and the career I was going into based on not needing to write.

Then I made a commitment to myself to learn how marketing could make sales on demand without a sales team, and I was forced to face my biggest fear. I was forced to question my belief that you can achieve anything you want if you work hard enough at it.

I chose to face my fears. I chose to stay true to my commitment.

So I got some help (a lot of help actually), and I got busy. I got busy writing and improving.

The wonderful thing about direct response marketing is the world gives you feedback on your work. So, when I wrote a sales letter that pulled in £50,000 I started to believe that I could write well.

A year later, I wrote a sales letter that pulled in £120,000 in 48 hours!

That’s when I knew that I could write well. That’s when I knew that you can achieve anything you want in life, if you are prepared to work hard enough for it.

So, I hope this has made you see that you can build your dream business if you are prepared to learn and improve.

To improve your skills, you need a teacher or a coach or a mentor. You choose the word that sits best with you. How they help you is always the same. They push you beyond what you think is possible to the success that you want.

Your teacher or coach or mentor will show you the work that you must do to improve your skills.

You’ve then got to do the work. That’s your choice. And you can do the work knowing that you are on the right path. That if you continue to learn and improve that you will achieve everything you want.

If you have found this useful, then please leave a comment below.

If you know a business owner with a fantastic product or service that struggles to get their voice out there, then please share this with them.

Until next time…

Carpe diem

Roland Eva

P.S. if you'd like to build your dream business then you need a proven system to find your ideal customer, earn their trust, and make them feel good about buying.

After many, many failures, I’ve created a simple 5-step system to find people that need your help, to earn their trust, and to make them feel good about buying. This system made me £672,989 in just 9 days!

I’d like to give you a free ebook that reveals: how to use the simple 5-step system that made me £672,989 in just 9 days!

To download your free copy just click the link below:

http://bit.ly/FREEeBookTEIC