The 11 Deadly Sins of Success – Why People Fail and Keep Failing Unless…

[CASE STUDY] The Results Are In! After 4 Years of Coaching 487 Entrepreneurs. 428 Created $560 Million in Equity While 59 Failed & Quit.

Here’s Why… (and How to Avoid Failure)

This is the story of why the 59 keep failing and why only 3% of people succeed in life.

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to work long hours, working hard every single day, and yet never seem to make ends meet? While there are others who work very few hours and everything they touch turns into gold.

What I’ve noticed about the people who work like a dog to get nowhere versus the people who have that Midas touch is that somewhere along the journey, those people with the Midas touch took a risk, ignored the odds and ignored the naysayers.

They faced failure head on and picked themselves up until they no longer fell down.

You see, it’s my goal to re-brand failure. To change the concept of what it means to fail.

97% of the world views failure as a bad thing, they associate it with not being loved or not being liked. They fear their friends, family or coworkers will laugh at them if they try and fail. They don’t want to look foolish.

When in reality, the 3% of people who are successful and control the world know that failure is where growth lives. Failure is how you learn your lessons. Failure is the best friend of success.

You just haven’t realized it yet.

Check out what Will Smith has to say about failure.

Well after 17 years of research, testing, failing, adjusting, teaching and experimenting on others… I’ve discovered the secret to becoming ultra-successful, but more importantly, I have discovered the 11 reasons most people in life never become successful and keep turning round in circles.

And I’d like to share it with you.

I’ll always remember the day when I was 15 years old, listening to a Tony Robbins cassette tape on my walkman. Yes.. A cassette tape I had borrowed from my moms home study course library.

And Tony said something along the lines of…

“If You Want To Be Successful,
Study The Successful And Model What They Do”

In that deep empowering voice that Tony Robbins is known for.

I was going through cancer treatments at the time, and his statement really stuck with me as I had realized really fast that life is short, and reinventing the wheel is a fools game. We never know how long we have so every little shortcut to success can help.

Since that moment, 17 years ago, I have been completely obsessed with studying the Ultra-Successful. I’ve read thousands of books on wealth & success, hundreds of biographies on the ultra-successful and billionaires, and been through hundreds of home study courses from all the 20th-century greats such as Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Bob Proctor and so many more.

Armed with this knowledge, not only have I implemented it on myself, tested it, recorded what worked and what failed, tweaked over and over, and re-implemented to create 6 multi-million dollar businesses that all went from $0 to $1,000,000 within the first twelve months. Two of them went from $0 to $10,000,000 within 18 months, and all were generating over $47,500,000 in the last 6 years alone.

More important than that, I was privileged to share this knowledge with over 34,000 people in the last eight years and witness tremendous successes.

This, however, is not why I’m writing this today. What I do want to share today is my findings and research after spending 4 years with 487 students/clients implementing my knowledge of the ultra-successful.

“I Want To Share How 428 People Created $560 Million & Why 59 Failed And Will Keep Failing Over And Over Again…”

This article really isn’t about me or how I generate so much income, and how I came to control over $1 Billion worth of real estate. But in order to frame the lessons, I’m about to share with you properly, I will give you a paragraph (or two) worth of background on how I came to discover why 97% of people keep failing, while the 3% control over 76% of all the money in the world.

The 2008 market crash could not have been timed better for me. I had suffered a heart attack in November of 2007 (which scared me to the core and sent me a huge wake-up call) for working way too many hours trying to grow my business, and my son Jakob was born in February 2008.

I had faced death twice already with Cancer, but this one was different.

If I died, I know how to look out for my family. I now had to build a legacy that I could pass down to him and potential future kids. I had never thought it was even a possibility for me prior to that as I tested negative twice for having children after cancer.

With this in mind, I had made a very difficult decision to sell my real estate brokerage Martels Real Estate Inc. to my folks (mom had been a realtor since I was born and dad since 1993) that was making me millions, in favor of a better future life with my family…

After selling over 800 homes as a realtor and growing to “hate” my investors as I worked over 12 hours a day finding them deals while they were relaxing in Hawaii, I decided that there was a better way to go. After I suffered my heart attack, I began investing in the world’s most important commodity after air, food, and water when it was on sale for 70% off.

U.S. Real Estate Was 70% OFF, The Loony Was Equal to the Greenback…
Only a Fool Would have Skipped Out on The Opportunity.

Seemed like a logical choice.

The only challenge was the fact that I was Canadian, and I had not realized how different buying and selling real estate was in the U.S.

It literally cost me over $302,190 to learn “How a Canadian could buy U.S. real estate”. (check out an old picture I found on a 2010 website page I had. Priceless.)

I was on a mission, and failure was not an option. But unfortunately, I no longer had an income and my $100,000/m+ lifestyle caught up.

My saved up money ran out of time, and I was forced to file personal bankruptcy in 2009. Left homeless, eating kraft dinner and hotdogs with our newborn… (blah blah – not the point here)

18 months later, I had built a large portfolio of single-family homes and apartment complexes in a foreign country (Atlanta, Tulsa & Oklahoma), and everyone I knew (friends, family, past clients) wanted to know how I had done it.

One thing led to the next and I owned and operated the world’s most successful educational company based on its results.

By sheer demand from the Canadian public, between 2010 and 2014, I taught over 34,000 people ‘How To Buy U.s. Real Estate As A Canadian’.

If you’re not a Canadian, it kind of sounds silly. But the cheapest real estate we can find in Canada is around $150,000 for a total rehab that may rent for about $450/m in the middle of Whycocomagh Bay NS (Where? Exactly)… to put it in perspective, The Canadian average home price is $474,000 while the U.S. is $234,200. Free healthcare anyone? I’m going to be paying 46.16% on my personal income this year :s

Back to the point here, buying U.S. real estate was a HUGE topic, but no-one understood how (we have lawyers that take care of everything here, they even switch out utilities… no title companies, earnest deposits and due diligence periods… )

U.S. Real Estate Was A Hot Topic For Canadians And I Made Sure To Take Advantage Of It.

(For all Americans, please don’t take offense…Admire the headline that made me over $14Million)

Fast forwarding to the point. Touring almost every second weekend to a new city, I was teaching my entire system of buying ‘foreign real estate at 70% off while the dollar was at par”. I noticed there was a huge demand for people requesting coaching and mentoring to fast track their success and kind of spoon feed them.

I started offering a ‘coaching program’ that I wasn’t hugely keen on offering at first as it required lots of my personal time to develop. Knowing the difference I made in people’s lives today though, it’s a completely different story…

Results. I created two programs, one was my Gold Coaching Program (closed now) which was a non-negotiable $40,000 + up to 13.75% Taxes (welcome to Canada) wired directly to my business account within 7 days, no payment plans.

Sounds outrageous, but wait till you see the results. I literally spoon fed them. I gave them the advance knowledge & creative strategies through 300 hours of video content, we all flew in and met in a new hot market where I had realtors to give them deals, contractors to rehab, banks to finance, even brought some of my investors…

The second program was my Platinum Coaching Program which was $100,000 (closed now) to work personally with me buying apartment complexes through my personal connections. The program offered so much more…

Conclusion: I had over 2,000 application, I went through every single application myself and selected 487 students based on a set of very strict criteria to ensure no-one would write a check and do nothing. I needed people dedicated to investing their time to change their future.

After 4 years of running my program, not including the 34,000 that took my teachings…

Out Of My 487 Coaching Students,428 Bought And Sold Over $560,000,000 Worth Of U.S. Real Estate While 59 Failed!

When 2014 rolled around, inventory was dwindling, competition became fierce as speculators were back, the Canadian dollar dropped 20%+… and the Canadian government unfairly attacked me from every single angle possible behind closed doors for being responsible for over $1billion leaving the Canadian banks and economy.

NOTE: This is a whole different story I share publicly (first cause I’m an open book so you can learn) as they managed to force me to close shop after I lost $47million in a day, lost control of my $1Billion portfolio, lost money for some of my investors, wife left me with three kids, and lost the respect of all my students, friends and investors based on false accusations… which allowed me to discover ‘The 5-Steps To Control Your Mind When Doubt, Worry, Fear, Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Tries to Bring You in The Dark Side.” You Can Find the Article Here.

I sold 402 units I had in Arizona, closed shop and took a mini ‘retirement’ to focus on my kids and to realign with my long-term legacy plan.

Over The Last 2 Years, I Have Obsessively Studied Why 428 People Got Exceptional Results & 59 Failed While Having Access To The Same Resources

What really baffled me, was that I had selected every one of those students myself personally out of 2,000 applications based on my strict set of criteria.

First, they all had to pay over $40,000 upfront to for their commitment to their success. Nobody, nobody will ever take it seriously if you give them a handout.

I also made sure:

• That they were all within the same age range (or at least at a certain ‘life stage)
• They all had the similar marital status/support from another
• They all had the same educational background
• They all had the same income range
• They all had the same approximate net worth
• They all had the same access to cash
• And none of them had many connections. None had an ultra-successful ‘uncle’

Everybody came from the same type of background, average middle-income class Canadians.

Most importantly, every single one of my 487 students had access to the very same resources.

So I Started A Case Study

I figured that if Napoleon Hill was successful in studying 500 people over 100 years ago…

It was probably time to update his research a little as we live in a very, very different world today and focus a little more on “Why People Fail”.

Also, these were MY STUDENTS and I wanted to be able to help them (and prevent others from making the same mistakes) as much as I could.

It took me over two years, I studied my notes of over 1,100 books that I’ve read on success and biographies over the last 16 years. I went through over 20 notebooks full of my notes from seminars and courses I’ve attended on personal achievement and success, leadership, business success. I studied my personal life, going through all the successes that turned me into a millionaire, and my struggles and failures.

And more importantly, I went through every single one of my journals from every conversation I’ve had with every one of my 487 students. I went through the recordings of ALL my seminars (over 500+ hours), and over 10,000 coaching conversation transcripts from every coaching call my students had with their coaches.

I Became Obsessed With Studying What Makes People Successful in the 21st Century

I had everything I needed to pinpoint the common key traits the Ultra-Successful possessed that the rest of the population did not.

NOTE: I was able to identify the 7 Core Traits that Every Single Ultra-Successful Person & Billionaire possess, that I now possess and that my 428 Successful Students Created in themselves possess today. You can find every Core Trait here.

But that’s not really what motivated me.

I was more interested in finding out WHY PEOPLE FAIL over and over again.

Why is it that 97% of People in this world settle for a mediocre life?

How can someone that dropped $40,000 not do EVERYTHING they could in order to succeed?

And how could 59 fail while 428 succeeded?

So I Set Out To Study Failure

I wanted to know what separated these 59 students from the rest, and what their mindset was.

Essentially, I wanted to perform an autopsy on their motives, minds, environment & action behaviors.

Because just as “success leaves breadcrumbs”, so does failure…and it wasn’t long before I began to see that…

There Was A Pattern

At first glance, it’s obvious. The 59 didn’t participate!

They didn’t attend any of the events I would host all across the U.S. every 10 weeks, where I spoon fed my students with deals, financing, contractors, inspectors, investors…

They wouldn’t call in every single Wednesday like the successful ones for my “Q & A” calls’ to ask questions about where they were stuck so that I could build them an action plans to move them forward faster.

They would never participate in my facebook community…

And of course, because they wouldn’t surround themselves with my community, they would listen to the negative people around them and never take action…

They Wouldn’t Participate & Stayed Stuck in Their Old Selves

Now before I go any further, I want to point out that these students are great people!!

Some decided to lash out publicly, tried to drag others into their misery and probably still blame me for running out of toilet paper.

Others reached out to me, we kept working together and they turned out to become really successful in different ventures they were more passionate about.

And others simply moved on ignoring it ever happened.

Every one of the 59 that failed took a different approach to their failures.

The important point to note, they all did take massive action by going out of their comfort zone and apply for my program. That right there separates them from most who would only focus on the ‘worst case scenario’ and let that fear paralyze them from doing anything.

These students aren’t failures!

They simply quit too soon, didn’t push hard enough and let their sphere of influence negatively influence their decision making.

They simply tried to learn a new skill too fast before mastering their core selves first.You can learn more about the 7-Core Traits here.

Now, you are going to learn what pitfalls to avoid from people that had some success generating wealth but for one reason or another were not able to sustain it.

Some showed signs of having all 11 pitfalls of failure while others had only a few.

Like any good cartographer, I’ve marked off where not to go in order to avoid danger. I want you to avoid these 11 principles of failure so that you can sail your ship to success.

In no specific order as they all intertwine together here are the…

The 11 Reasons People Fail in the 21st Century

1- Most Believe Success Is Based On the Next Skill, The Next Shiny Object While the Ultra-Successful Focus on Their Core Selves First.

Even though many people start off with great intentions, they tend to get lost in the details. “If I just go to one more seminar, I will know the ‘secret’ to being ‘rich’“, or “If I only had this one new piece of tech, money would start rolling in”, or sometimes even “If I find the right person, they will make me happy.”

Focusing on the outside without ever working on the core (your mind) stops many people in their tracks. People often do not want to admit that their thoughts are the problem- it is not that they do not ‘have’ something. It is never a piece of information, or a new piece of technology, or another person, or anything on the outside that is often the problem.

They are never ‘ready’ to take the leap of faith to build themselves into something better. Without this, they will never be able to create their life into what it is they desire.

In this new age of technology, people often use the internet as a scapegoat to not having to take a chance. They get stuck in a never-ending cycle of ‘overthinking’, and if they want to try something, will search the internet for ideas, as often will not take a chance because there was one person who complained about it online. Even though it may have been perfect for them, they will not take a chance because they do not trust their own judgment over the opinion of someone else.

In order to understand this properly, I must share with you a powerful story I heard in an audio book with one of my daughters while driving to her horseback riding class.

In the 18th century, there was something spreading across Europe and came to America called puerperal fever. It was also known as the black death of child bed.

What was happening was that women were giving birth in hospitals and would die within 48 hours of giving birth. This disease was getting worse and worse over the course of the century, and in some hospitals, up to 70% of women giving birth would die as a result of this horrible disease.

But this was the renaissance! This was the time with the rise of the ‘Men of Science’, doctors & educated men. How is it with all of these new innovations and leaders in health sciences could this possibly be happening? These doctors and ‘Men of Science’ were continuously studying what was going on, trying to discover a cure.

They searched for every single possibility. They would look at all the potential outside sources that these women could contract before coming into the hospital.

In the morning, they would conduct autopsies on these corpses of the deceased women, in hopes of finding the cause of the disease. In the afternoon, they would go to the other side of the hospitals to assist with new births in the hopes of ensuring smooth deliveries and lower fatality rates.

In the mid-1800’s, a doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes realized that the problem was not outside the hospital, nor was it in the women at all. He realized that the problem was the doctors themselves. Instead of looking at the outside world, he looked inside at the doctors themselves. He realized that these doctors were conducting autopsies in the mornings and not cleaning their hands properly or sterilizing their tools before delivering babies in the afternoon.

When he pointed out this discovery to the medical and scientific community, the entire community all ignored him, and called him crazy for 30 years!

Then someone simply washed their hands, washed their tools, and the problem started to fade away. Mortality rates dropped, and eventually, more doctors caught on, and the disease was eradicated.

As human beings, it’s instinctual for us to try to change everything around us if there’s a problem.

If there’s a problem to solve, if we want to change something, most of us will start changing everything around us, without ever taking a moment to look at ourselves from the inside.

Only When You Change Yourself, Will Everything Around You Start Changing.

This is true in relationships, in business, with wealth, and so much more.

And the era we currently live in really isn’t helping any of this.

We live in a world of instant gratification. If we don’t get something right now with instant results we quit and move on to the next shiny object, pointing blame at everyone and everything around us without actually looking at the root cause.

On the other hand…

The Ultra-Successful Know That Success Is an Inside-Out Process.

If I want a better relationship with my spouse and kids, if I want better clients in my business, if I want to make more money, if I want people to understand and listen to me…

I must first look in the mirror and study my core self.

When the 97% of people, the ‘Conformers’ as I call them, want any kind of change in their lives, they will research for the quickest route possible, as we have a need for instant results and gratification.

For example, if I want to make more money because I can’t seem to make ends meet, I’ll jump on the next ‘hot’ shiny object such as a real estate investing course, stock market investing, or bitcoin mining, because it looks as though so many people are succeeding, so I will too.

They will learn the new skill or trade, completely ignoring that they may have a horrible relationship with money, or they despise landlords or stock brokers, or they do not know how to talk to people, or simply hate rich people… there are SO many different things.

The same goes for a spouse that wants to have more sex. They go online, research some hot tip or trick, a few pick up lines, romantic movie settings they could try… completely ignoring the root cause or why they were not having sex to begin with. Taking a few moments to stop and think about how they act with their spouse. Maybe you are a horrible communicator and you never listen to your spouse, and you’re always on your phone while she/he talks to you about something important to them. Maybe you’ve let yourself go and the physical attraction simply isn’t there anymore…

I could give you millions of examples.

What’s important to retain is that 97% of people approach everything the wrong way.

Conformers do everything upside down.

1. They look at everything around them, focus on learning new skills or trades or gain more knowledge.
2. They then focus on learning new personal attributes such as positivity, motivation, people skills, etc.
3. They completely ignore that nothing will ever work without the right mindset and core traits.

It’s All WRONG! Completely Upside Down

2- Most Live Disempowered Lives And Drift Through Life Playing the Victim and Can’t Take Accountability for Their Own Lives

Everything You Have (or More Importantly Don’t Have) is 100% Because of You and NO ONE ELSE

The statement in itself is self-explanatory and ties in really well with the above lesson.

Conformers drift through life playing the victim mentality of the game of life. They let life happen to them, and are victims of every circumstance.

They point fingers at everyone around them without ever looking at themselves, what they have done, or not done, to get themselves in that situation. They blame everything on everyone else.

Accountability is not the same as putting the blame on yourself though. It is about being able to consciously analyze a situation with a higher level of awareness to see how you could have achieved a better result in order to either prevent or improve in the future.

It’s about reflection and growth, and not allowing excuses into your life.

It is the awareness that you are responsible for all that happens to you in life.

When you play the victim, you take control and power away from yourself. You choose to put your fate in other people’s hands.

You see, there are going to be events in your life that are uncontrollable. They happen to everyone; the ultra-successful, and the non-successful. The difference between the two mindsets is how you react to the events because that is the only thing that you CAN control. Your reactions, your emotions, and your day to day actions to handle situations differently.

When you begin to understand that, you will begin to understand how it becomes an empowering decision to take control and accountability for your life.

A great example is health. When an adult gets diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, often their first reactions are, “it’s genetic”, it’s “because I don’t have the money to eat healthily”, “it’s because I have a thyroid problem”, etc. These are factors that may have some merit to them, but is not the underlying reason that they are in this position.

In reality, the reason they have this disease is because of choices they have made in their life up until this point. They can try quick fixes to handle the disease, lots of medications, try not ‘eating doughnuts’ or junk, but until they analyse the reasons that they got the disease in the first place, take accountability for their health, and make true inner core changes, they unfortunately will never be able to get a handle on it, and their situation usually worsens.

The Ultra-Successful take accountability for all their actions and/or their inactions. They take responsibility for their reality and the actions that THEY took to create it. They admit when something is their fault, and take the steps to change it. It is not that they never mess up – it is that they OWN their mistakes, and take steps to correct them, and achieve better results in the future. They maintain their power to change their reality, as they are the creators of their own destiny!

The ultra-successful will reflect, adjust and set sail in a slightly different direction without ever blaming anyone else but themselves for their mistakes.

“Every man is the architect of his own future”. – Sallust (86 – 35 BC)

3- Most Live in Their Head, Leaving Worry & Fear Dictate Their Actions… and Inactions

…While Fear was prefabricated by the Ultra-Successful in order to Control the Follower.

The biggest flaw in human beings is the little evolution we have gone through since our ancestors started walking the earth with the dinosaurs. We have had very little ‘upgrades’ since then.

The only reason we have fear is to warn us about the danger. If we are picking berries for dinner and we happen to feel the earth tremble, and hear a very loud grunt that sounds like that of a T-Rex, our receptors intercept it, immediately passes the findings to our unconscious mind that immediately activates our autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the amygdala to increase our blood pressure, glucose and sends adrenaline throughout our body to take immediate action. We do not have to actually be conscious of it – we respond to our fight or flight instinct.

That’s fear requiring an immediate action creating a fight-or-flight response.

Of course, today we still need this fight-or-flight biological response to save us from a falling tree-branch or full steam train coming towards you. But we have taken ‘fear’ way out of proportion.

According to neuroscientists, humans have a natural negative bias. In our ancient days, the one that anticipates the worst case scenario was the ones that lived the longest. Today, that negative ‘instinct’ we have (and continuously gravitate towards) has turned into Doubt & Worry.

You know that little voice in your head that continuously thinks of all the ‘what “IFs”’ of almost every situation, that assumes the worst of everything. That is Doubt and worry.

There are a lot of people who are afraid of airplanes, especially since 9/11. They are worried planes are unsafe, and going to just fall out of the sky, or someone is going to hijack the plane. At the same time, this same person takes a car to work every day. The odds of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11 million, the odds of dying in a car or traffic accident are 1 in 5000. Yet, somehow, these people are not afraid of that because they do it every day. It is unnecessary to doubt and fear, founded on the unknown. These people usually have either never flown, or do it VERY rarely, and it often gets passed down for generations.

Less than 8% of your doubts and worries actually, have a real purpose.

Here’s how specialists have described the importance of doubt and worry:

1. 40% of the things people worry about never actually occur.
2. 30% of things that people worry about cannot be changed by all the worry in the world.
3. 12% of things that people worry about are needless worries.
4. 10% of things that people worry about are petty, miscellaneous worries.
5. 8% are real, legitimate worries that are worth concerning yourself about.

92% of all the doubt & worry that clouds your mind is literally holding you back for absolutely no reason.

The major issue is the fact that most people live in their heads and let every thought run through their minds without any control. And that’s a deadly equation.

Doubt & Worry Turns Into Fear. Think about it Long Enough, Fear Turns Into Stress, Then Anxiety…

I have a full article on “How to Stop Doubt, Worry, Fear, Stress & Anxiety” you can find here. For now, know:

1. Fear is only created for a fight-or-flight response.
2. Our minds naturally seek negativity or the worst case scenarios, which creates doubt and worry
3. Doubt & Worry turns into fear.
4. Fear turns into stress and/or anxiety which stops us from taking any action.
5. 92% is mindless chatter.

The only way to cure doubt, worry & stress is to STOP & THINK.

Stop the mindless chatter (overthinking) running through your head dead on its track and THINK of your future self-laughing at the situation. Take the time to see if it is really something worth thinking of.

Example: I will give you a personal example first. Let’s say your spouse is always home before 6 p.m. It’s now 6:30 without hearing a simple word. Not answering his/her cell phone, not answering his/her texts, and people from work say they left a while ago. Our instincts are to immediately go negative and start thinking of every single scenario that could be going on. Did they get into an accident, maybe I should look in the news. Is it about the argument we had last night, they must be cheating. Cheating! Why would my spouse do that?

After all these years in and the sacrifices I’ve made, what will I tell my parents, what will I tell my friends, what are we going to do with the kids, we have to sell the house, the cars, how will I afford everything by myself? I’ve had so many opportunities and I always said no… How could he/she? ETC. etc. etc.. then the spouse walks in and you’re fuming giving the cold shoulder mad at him/her with a complete fabrication of your mind. Little did you know he/she was buying you a birthday present for next week, he left his phone charger at home and his cell went dead, but he figured that being 35 minutes late wouldn’t really be a bit deal…

Example 2: We had this couple (2 of the 59) in our community that was so stuck in their fear of being broke, they refused to take action, even when everything was handed to them. They had more money saved up for U.S. investing than most of my students, and were able to put a deposit down for their first property in the US, without going broke, but would need to get a mortgage/lender for the property as I taught all my students.

This is usually what our students would do on their first property, as they are often learning the power of leverage, and to not putting all of their personal funds into one ‘basket’. Why bother putting $100,000 into one property when you could put 10 deposits down on 10 houses, get a mortgage for the rest, and make that much more money from cash flow?

A few months went by and they had not attended any weekly calls with me. They refused to partner with anyone in the community because they didn’t want to have any money partners, they did not attend the networking events, and they refused to use the power of leveraging to grow their money. They did have regular coaching calls with their coach, and she had set them up with quite a few deals over those months, and they were very close to closing on all of them. I had contacted her to find out how they were doing because I had not heard from them.

Their coach was concerned because she had set up so many opportunities, where they had been handheld right up until the time of closing, with all the pieces in place to have an excellent deal, but…

The moment it came time to take the plunge to actually close on their deal, they quit. They had a whole bunch of excuses, that were all based on fear. No matter what was given to them, they refused to believe they could do it. Even when it was handed to them on a silver platter, they were too afraid of taking action. I watched as the other people that had started the program at the same time as them starting finding success, while this couple never moved a muscle.

They had completely succumbed to their fear, doubt, and worry. They let it dictate all of their choices, and even though they had watched the videos, had a coach and went through all the motions, they could not get past those emotions, to push themselves out of their comfort zone and towards their dreams.

The biggest fear in the 21st century is the lack of security. People avoid risk and seek security as it’s easier for us to “free up” our inhibitions and responsibility, and liberates us from the burden and potential embarrassment of failure. Leaving our lives and future in someone else’s hands.

Consider this; as of 2016, the credit-rating agency Moody’s says state, local, and federal governments are about $7 trillion short in funding coming pension payments.

On top of that, “ The Social Security funding gap is estimated at $13.4 trillion… while the shortfall from the Hospital Insurance component of the Medicare program amounts $3.2 trillion.”

“That means the US government is $20.4 trillion short in funding for retirees,” Moody’s says.

None of this factors in the medical technology advancements which is doubling the retirement length of retirees.

And the US debt ceiling is already at crisis levels at $19.4 trillion increasing every year since 1929 with major countries threatening to call their debts with no signs of slowing down since Trump forced the Treasury to increase the ceiling as it was facing 25% default on all its loans…

I don’t know about you, but these are frightening statistics that can no longer be ignored.

Most fear risk. I fear regretting not taking risk until I’m 90, and unable to change the past.

As Rollo May, a renowned existential psychiatrist, quoted in his book ‘Love and Will’,“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.”

“Where fear is… happiness is not”. Seneca (4BC – AD65) – Roman Philosopher and Playwright

4- Only 8% of your doubt, worry & stress is something you could actually do something about.

Newly immigrated people who fought for their rights are 200% more likely to become successful than American-born children.

Why?

They had to fight for their rights and success. While people born in the Western hemisphere take everything for granted, and end up conforming.

As Earl Nightingale says in “the Greatest Secret”.

“Our society is fixed. Not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire Society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the Naval Convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its smallest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today.

I live in Ontario Canada (by choice), and the minimum wage just went up to $14/hour and scheduled to go up to $15/hour in 2019. The Conformers like this concept as they see their bottom line going up. But the thinkers have completely different feelings towards this change.

The bank of Canada predicts there will be 60,000 jobs lost due to this minimum wage increase. And that’s just the beginning.

McDonald’s, who employs 375,000 people worldwide, 1 in 8 Americans have worked at a McDonalds has a simple solution. We can increase the prices of customers meals by 30%, or we’ll replace you with self-serve Kiosks that costs no more than $2.50/hour.

One of the biggest challenges we have as a society is that people are too afraid to leave their comfort zone and take risk.

People are afraid of failure.

People are afraid of the “what if”.

They refuse to ‘jump’ and take that leap of faith, not knowing that if they actually persisted long enough, they would actually become successful.

So what do most people do?

They keep their back up plans, their ‘plan b’, so that they never have to worry about failing.

What’s wrong with that you ask?

Well I’ll tell you…

You’re lacking commitment!

You’re trying to swim with only one foot in the pool.

And the first sign of hard times will drive you back to your plan b… exactly where you didn’t want to be.

Alexander the Great has a quote that resonated with me and I want to share it with you here.

Alexander the Great arrived with his army on the shores of Persia and the troops quickly realized that they were extremely outnumbered.

They pleaded with him to turn around and to come back with more men.

So what did Alexander the Great do?

He ordered his men to burn their ships and told them “We go home in Persian ships, or we die”.

So the moral of the story is this….

Your success is determined by what you focus on. When you create a plan b you are taking focus away from succeeding on what you truly want and instead putting that focus on what you don’t want.

5- Most Drift Through Life Without Actually Having A Plan Or Purpose

“As a man/woman thinketh so shall they be”

Now, I’m not going to talk about having a positive mindset and attitude here… because some of these students did have these attributes.

Instead, they lacked a commitment to being successful. Now we’ve all heard the phrase “you have to give 110%”, but really when it comes right down to it, you have to“act as if”success was guaranteed.

Not delivered on a silver platter, but guaranteed and that it is only a matter of time until it arrives.

Look at it this way… would you wait until all of the traffic lights are green before driving to work?!

Of course, you wouldn’t! You would drive to work, sit through as many red lights as it takes to get there, and you would probably go through your day not even thinking of traffic lights.

So why is that when these students came across their ‘red lights’ along their path to success, they stopped and quit?

The answer is that they didn’t have a greater purpose and they weren’t following a plan. When you don’t have these two critical elements in your life, it makes it that much easier to quit and blame the events as to why you aren’t successful.

From the time we are born, we are never taught how to think. We assume that it is just something that ‘happens’ to us. We don’t discuss these existential questions with children, like “why are you here”, “what makes you special?”, and “what are you going to contribute?” We ask children “what do you want to be when you grow up”, but when they say something that we deem silly or unrealistic to our own level of awareness, we discourage it as they go through life, crushing these dreams with the need for security.

No one, and I mean no one, gets through life without falling down, but what separates the ultra-successful from the unsuccessful is that they get up more times than they fall because they have a greater cause that drives them.

They can go through the temporary defeats without getting discouraged because they are striving for something greater… something that they have decided is why they are here on this beautiful planet.

Elon Musk is a great example here. His purpose in life is to “…aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” With this in mind, when he was launching SpaceX, he had failure after failure.

His companies were on the verge of bankruptcy, the country was going through a recession, and he was going through a divorce at the time. He had three rocket failures in a row, and if he had another, he would have been forced to close SpaceX.

But even with all the failures, he tried again, because he knew why he was doing it… and the fourth time, he succeeded. Do you think he would have been able to accomplish this if he would have quit when times were tough?

He is currently achieving what most people believe is impossible, and his passion drives him forward because he knows where he is going.

“When something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor.” Elon Musk

Let’s look at another example of how living with a purpose can transform your life. In 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus.

Rosa Parks had been working with the NAACP, fighting for civil rights for 10 years before that day came. She knew on a deeper level, that it was her purpose to fight discrimination and to push for civil rights.

On December 1st when she refused to give up her seat, she hadn’t planned to publicly protest segregation, she was simply tired of being mistreated, tired of putting up with segregation and discrimination.

Do you think that if she wasn’t aligned with her greater purpose that she would have been THE ONLY person of color that didn’t move from her seat? Do you think that she would’ve been ok with getting arrested?

If she hadn’t known that it was her purpose to stand up for civil rights and equality, she would have never left the legacy that she did for all of us to remember who she was and what she stood for.

6- Most Simply Don’t Think For Themselves

I’ve touched on this earlier in the article and it deserves its own section.

Most people do not think! Sadly, everyone thinks they do, which is why it is so strange. Why is this?

Our brains look to automate almost all of our decisions in order to simplify our lives.

Stop and think about it… have you ever broken down all of the minor decisions that your mind makes when getting out of bed?

There are probably 200 commands that your brain gives your body in order to get out of bed and to start your day.

Well, imagine that your brain does this for almost all of the tasks that you do on a regular basis.

Then combine that with the time that you spend watching tv or on social media.

Most people cruise through their day on autopilot.

Taking your mind off of autopilot and beginning to stop and think about what you want out of this life and how you are going to get it is the first step to taking control of your life.

Another reason why people don’t stop and think for themselves is that they confuse overthinking with the actual act of thinking.

Overthinking is allowing worry, doubt, and fear to control your thought pattern, which will create a negative environment within your mind.

The art of thinking is more like the art of asking yourself better questions…

… what is the outcome that I want out of my day?

… what is most important to me in this situation?

… how can I add value right now?

… how can I be better at doing this?

This is what separates the ultra-successful from the conformers.

The ultra-successful have taught themselves to think 10 steps ahead and to have purpose and clarity with every action they take.

If you were to begin by having a daily 5-minute reflection on what you did, why you did it, and how you did it, you would begin to see a shift in your awareness.

You would go from being a victim of circumstances to having an awakening that will allow you to see the world for what it actually is.

Conformers act emotionally which is always short-term thinking for immediate gratification rather than Stop and Think constructively 10-Steps ahead like the Ultra-Successful do.You can learn more here.

As important as it is to be focused on the positive and growing, (and I would rather not focus on the 59 people who did not succeed), it is important to learn from those around you and discover new ways to succeed. We can talk all day long about being positive and having better habits, but not realizing that YOU may be the source of the problem can be the biggest hurdle that holds people down from achieving their dreams.

Once we realize the things that are holding us back such as not being aware, a negative environment, not truly committing to our dreams, and not becoming resourceful, we can take steps to change these in ourselves to be able to succeed in whatever it is we choose. I am glad to be a part of your journey towards success!

7- Most Have Limiting Beliefs That Hold Them Back From Achieving Success

Your beliefs control your world. Every single thought you have goes through your Unconscious mind which holds all of your beliefs. If you think you are not good at remembering names, you won’t be able to remember names (even though there’s scientific proof everybody is capable). If you think you’ve tried everything and can’t lose weight, you won’t be able to lose weight. If you hang around the 59 people that believe Steve Martel is a Scam Artist, you will forget about the 427 other successful students and all the good he’s done in the world…

Limiting beliefs are what holds most of the 97% of people in our world. You can learn more here.

Have you ever stopped and thought about why you have the beliefs that you do?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if they are empowering or disempowering you?

Have you ever asked yourself where you developed these beliefs from?

We all develop our beliefs at a young age, and research has been conducted that indicates that our beliefs about ourselves, our world and others are formed between birth and the age of 8.

This happens because at that age we believe everything we are told is true, whether it is coming from our parents, our teachers, or the media. Our minds haven’t developed to be able to stop and think for ourselves yet.

When we do receive this information during our childhood, it goes into the 3 components of our mind

The first component is our unconscious mind. This is where we store everything we believe, whether beneficial or harmful, true or false, factual or fictitious. It’s where our beliefs are stored; Limiting or Empowering.

The second component is our subconscious Mind which stores all our experiences and memories of the past. After retrieving information from the Unconscious mind, it determines how you feel based on past experiences and the beliefs stored in the Unconscious mind.

The third component is our conscious Mind. This is the part of the Mind that allows us to STOP AND THINK (when well trained), depending on our level of awareness. This is the voice in our head, the words that come out of our mouths, and the decision maker.

Over the years these beliefs that are passed down to you become encoded in your mind, and it is how we form our opinion of ourselves.

Conformers do everything upside down.

1. A belief that is repeated over and over again on a conscious level
2. A belief that you feel and value on a subconscious level
3. A belief that is hardcoded into your unconscious mind

Now that you are raising your level of awareness, your surrounding beliefs, and realizing that you probably have 1 or 2 things that aren’t serving your best interests, I bet you’re wondering “so what now? How can I change?”

Well in order for you to change your limiting beliefs, there usually has to be one of two things that happen in your life.

The first is a traumatic incident that happens to you or to someone that is close to you. For example, your father gets lung cancer which causes you to quit smoking because of how negatively it has impacted your life.

The second is by developing a strong desire to create change through conscious repetition of a new, empowering belief.

Hopefully, you don’t need a traumatic incident in your life to make changes, so as the saying goes, “change before you have to”.

Here are the 5 steps that you need to go through to create change within your belief system.

1. You must first develop a deep burning desire and a strong need to change from a life of conformity to a new lifestyle of proactivity and purpose.
2. You must be accountable for where you are right now. You are the maker of your own life, and everything that is you was created/caused by you and your choices. There are absolutely NO EXCUSES. You need to know and realize that every aspect of your life is completely within your control and that no circumstance is because of anything/anyone around you.
3. You must become self-aware of what your conscious, subconscious and unconscious beliefs are in order to reprogram them.
4. You then have to create, as Napoleon Hill called them, ‘Auto-Suggestions’ (from his book Think & Grow Rich) in order to consciously repeat to yourself over and over again, in order to persuade and influence your Subconscious mind of the new reality.
5. You must feel it to believe it. The mind is a two-way street. If we react to something starting with our Unconscious belief, it will go through our Subconscious mind to retrieve feelings to pass down to our Conscious mind for constructive thought.

The reverse also works. The more we consciously repeat something over and over, and the more we stimulate feelings in our subconscious, the more the Unconscious mind will register the thought and feeling and over time it will permanently register in your unconscious mind.

It is our emotional power center that helps strengthen our beliefs and push our thoughts both in and out of all levels of our mind.

8- Most Have A Low Level of Awareness and Are Blinded By Opportunities Sitting Right Under Their Noses

Let me ask you a question.

How many times per day do you see this logo?

If you already know what I’m going to talk about, stick with me anyways because I promise, I’ll still rock your world…

You Have Been Programmed From Birth To Believe “What You See, Is What You Get.”

I recently read an article in a magazine I picked up at the grocery store called “Your Brain” presented by “It’s All In Your Head™ ” that had an article from Neil deGrasse Tyson.

He shared a story about going to an art class in college. The first day he arrived, his professor walked in and stacked a bunch of pumpkins on a table. He then tasked all the students to draw the pumpkins.

The next day the professor came back and asked the students to draw the pumpkins again. For two weeks straight, Neil and the other students had to draw the pumpkins over and over again.

On the third week, the professor came in the class and said: “Okay, now do not draw the pumpkins; draw the space between the pumpkins.”

Neil explained how his brain almost short-circuited from being told to focus on one thing for 2-weeks, 8 hours a day straight.

All he knew to draw were pumpkins.

All he could see were pumpkins.

All he knew… were pumpkins.

Then, all of a sudden, he was told to do something that went against what he was used to… Completely out of the ordinary.

So let’s try to view the world through Neil’s new perception.

Let’s take a look at the empty spaces in the FedEx logo, and see if we’re missing anything.

I want you to take a look between the orange E and X.

What do you see?

Do you see the right facing, secret ”hidden” arrow?

Were you aware of this secret ‘hidden’ arrow before?

If you were aware of this secret ‘hidden’ arrow, let me ask you… How many times have you shared the secret ‘hidden’ arrow with your friends, and your coworkers or any family member?

Almost every time, right?

If it’s the first time you noticed this secret ‘hidden’ arrow, you have now experienced what’s called a Paradigm Shift.

Something that’s been right in front of you this entire time.

All these years since 1994, suddenly, out of nowhere, an arrow just “appeared” right in front of you because you changed the way you looked at it.

I’m going to share a quote with you that’s so important:

When You Change The Way You Look At Things, The Thing You Look At Changes

All this time, the arrow was right there, in the ‘empty space’, under your nose, but our mind simply wasn’t trained to see it…

Don’t worry, I had to be told as well 😉 and then, all of a sudden, I started looking at the world a whole new way, I started seeing opportunities everywhere that are sitting right under our nose, but we simply can’t see them as we have ‘blinders’ on.

Being aware of these opportunities that are right underneath your nose is what separates the ultra-successful from the non-successful.

They see opportunities where others see challenges. They see possibility where others see closed doors.

Use Bill Gates as an example. I’m not sure if you are aware of his story however, its started with him seeing an opportunity where others didn’t.

It was the 1980s and IBM had just created their first line of home computers. Gates realized that they didn’t have an operating system yet and wanted to provide a solution to their problem.

Gates didn’t wait until he had developed the operating system, he had the courage to pitch IBM on the idea of an operating system.

No product yet, no comparable products on the market either.

Can you believe that?! He saw the opportunity, was aware of what it meant to him, his business and his life, and he took massive action.

You can also look at his competitor, Steve Jobs.

Jobs was fired from Apple and then went on to create Dreamworks Entertainment which was later bought by Apple.

Neither Jobs or Gates had anything exceptional about them. What set them apart from the others was their level of heightened awareness and their ability to take action on what they saw. They have changed the world and left legacies that will be around for centuries because of those 2 things.

Every human being lives life interpreting every single circumstance of life-based on one of the 7 Levels of Awareness. The Naive live a reactive life acting as a victim of every circumstance, while the Ultra-Rich lives a proactive life in control of every circumstance and solve problems for the Naive, in order to help others and make money. That’s a very important lesson you can learn here.

9- Most Can’t Develop Enough Willpower To Persist Based On Their Habits.

Willpower is not the same as discipline. As I said earlier… these were accomplished people that I was working with. They knew all about discipline.

There’s no passion and no juice to discipline, at least the way most people understand discipline.

What was missing was enthusiasm to overcome whatever obstacle came their way, and that’s where willpower (or self-discipline) comes in.

Much like anything, willpower is a muscle that needs to be developed. A great example of this is writing out your goals daily. 3% of people do it, and it isn’t a secret that there is a correlation between the 3% that write out their goals and the 3% that become financially independent.

I wish I could tell you the number of different students that I had the same conversation with…

Student: ”Steve, I just can’t seem to make any progress and I am unsure of what to do next.”

Me: “When was the last time that you wrote out your goals?”

Student: ‘I don’t see how that is relevant….”

Let’s just put it this way…the students that “saw the relevance” weren’t in the case study.

Writing your goals is the most important habit that you could ever establish. Goals give you direction, purpose, a way to measure progress, and essentially are your blueprint for success.

It’s easy to lose your enthusiasm when you don’t know where you are headed!

The more you exercise your willpower, the easier it becomes to use it when you need to.

Trust me, investing in a foreign real estate market is not for everyone and much like life in general, there are a ton of curve balls that get sent your way. When you have the willpower to persist with building positive habits, you will develop the skill set to knock the curveballs out of the park.

That leads me to my next point; keystone habits.

A keystone habit is a habit that leads to the development of other positive habits which in turn leads to building momentum. A ripple effect so to speak.

A great example of a keystone habit is writing out your goals daily. Have I emphasized that enough??

Ok fine, I will give you another example, exercising in the morning before you start your day. Here are the ripple effects of that one keystone habit: you have better cognitive abilities, as there is a direct link between exercise and brain functions. It will increase your energy levels throughout the day. It will cause you to think twice about what you eat. It will allow you to get better sleep at night., and of course, it will have long-term benefits on your health.

All of that from one act of exercising to start your day.

10- Most Lack The Ability To Be Resourceful And Solely Rely On Accessible Resources.

You have to understand that there is a difference between resources and resourcefulness.

When you realize that pursuing success is really like a game of ‘hide and go seek’, and that it is only a matter of time until you find it, then it allows you to use your creativity to look for solutions that may not be obvious to you.

During the case study, I heard a lot of “I didn’t have enough… (insert any resource; money, time, support, connections, etc.)”.

This is a BIG one here folks… if you don’t take the time to stop and think about the questions that you are asking yourself when you need to overcome a challenge, then you will always end up thinking that it is all about the resources.

Money is the obvious example of a finite resource that people get hung up on. While money may be limited at times, there is an abundance of it in circulation. When an investor says to me that they don’t have money to start a side business, the first thing that I will challenge them on is having them think of who they know that has money, but no time, to make their money multiply.

Let’s look at one that doesn’t involve money.

If you happen to be a single parent, then you are forced to be resourceful to be able to provide for your family. A single parent may have to rely on friends and family to help with pickups and drop-offs, babysitting, and moments when they have to play both roles of mom and dad.

Do they quit just because they have to take an unconventional route to get the outcome they want for their children? Of course not! They find a way to get it done!

I can give you an example from my own life. While I was going through my legal battles and my income was basically nothing for over a year, I lived off of my Aeroplan points. They could be used for groceries, gas, etc. It was outside of the box and was something that my partner & I were not very comfortable doing, but sometimes you have to put pride to the side, think unconventionally, and use leverage to get the outcome that you want/need.

It is never about the number of your resources – that is always an excuse. Be creative, be resourceful, and be committed to finding a solution.

11- Most Have A Suppressing And Negative Sphere Of Influence And Let Them Make Control Their Lives.

Did you know that almost every single welfare recipient are 3rd or 4th generation welfare recipients?

Did you know that 85% of people in jail grew up with a family member that was incarcerated?

This is because it was the only environment they were exposed to, and this became their ‘normal’.

This is the same reason that a child growing around a smoking parent has a 400% chance of smoking by the age of 12, over a child whose parents never smoked.

While 76% of successful entrepreneurs grew up in an ‘unconventional’ household where 9-5 parents didn’t exist.

Putting yourself in a positive & supportive environment is extremely important in order for you to be successful (and, long-term, and heirs you do/may have). As we discussed previously in this article, humans have a tendency to have a natural bias towards negativity. It can be hard enough to overcome your own negativity, not to mention someone else’s!

If the previous examples didn’t drive this home, consider this. Look at the 5 people that you spend the most time with and take the average of their incomes. That is likely what you are earning.

This happens because you eventually adopt the same mindset as the people that you are around, and that is exactly what happened in my life.

It was 2012 and I was 26 years old earning roughly $26,000,000 a year. A call came into my office from someone claiming to be Sir Richard Branson. Now I rarely took phone calls at that time but my team insisted that they thought it was him, so I picked up.

Well, it was in fact him. He was inviting me out to his personal island, Necker Island, in order to brainstorm on how we could work together to grow our charities.

While on his island, I daringly told him that I wanted to buy his island from him and he asked me my age. When I told him that I was 26 he said, “really? I was 26 when I bought this island”.

That comment right there lit a fire under my ass. I told him that I wanted to buy his island but I definitely did not have the means to do so. I felt challenged by the comparison of my life to his.

Just to specify – I felt a drive and challenge with the comparison to Sir Richard, not jealous. Jealousy triggers negative emotions towards someone and their lifestyle. What I felt was admiration and the desire to be able to achieve that type of greatness for myself. It is a push forward for myself to do better. It is a positive mindset – and is a very important distinction.

I returned home and less than 12 months later I had turned my portfolio from controlling millions to billions. All because I changed my environment to being surrounded by billionaires.

So back to my students… my students that were, unfortunately, a part of the case study because they had failed to control their environment.

… They lacked the support of positive people around them. It is unfortunate that at times in life we need to “fire” friends. With that said, there usually comes a time when you outgrow certain types of people.

Make sure that you surround yourself with the right people that are contributing to your development and growth.

You are who you surround yourself with. If you’re with news watching people that are always worried about WW3, or how the president keeps lying, or how rich people keep ‘screwing’ the average class, guess what? It will become part of your beliefs and you will end up complaining, drifting through life, and conforming. Cut the news, change your circle of friends, and only hang around people that like sharing your ideas and actually take action. If you are not around people who push you to be the best you that you can be, and make you want to be the best you can be, then they are not the right people.

It is never about the number of your resources – that is always an excuse. Be creative, be resourceful, and be committed to finding a solution.