Weekly Success Tip

How to get started...

Walt Disney said, "There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island... and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.”

Napoleon Hill said, “More gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth”.

And I tend to agree.

You see, recently at my Sales, Marketing and Leadership Bootcamp I met a very impressive young man that reminded me of this. This gentleman was from Queensland and his goal was to generate enough surplus wealth to provide accommodation for people with disabilities. His chosen wealth creation vehicle was real estate and he was in the business of renovating properties for profit.

He was very humble and I asked him how he learned to do what he did. He said mostly from reading books on how to do it and from talking to people that had done it. When I asked why the books, he said simple, ‘I didn’t have any money when I started and at the local library, they’re all free’.

Now the reason this resonated with me so much is because that’s exactly how I got started. When that fire lit inside me to be more successful in my life in everything I did, I didn’t have successful, powerful friends to help me, I didn’t know what to do or where to start and I certainly didn’t have any money. So what did I do?

The easiest and most convenient solution was to start reading about how other people had achieved success, and the cheapest way was through my local library. I was so inspired I read hundreds and hundreds of books in my late teens and early 20’s. And loved it. With every book I read, I expanded my mind and assumed the knowledge and experience of the author.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill said one of the great tragedies of our government education system is that, for the most part, it is free... and it’s true, most people don’t value what they don’t pay for.

I feel exactly the same about libraries. The key to your freedom is available to you during business hours in every single council library in Australia, and yet when you walk in to one, you’ll never experience a traffic jam... I assure you.

Here’s the thing though, Siimon Reynolds, who is one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs said if you would just read the top 5 books on marketing, you would know more than most graduates that have spent 4 years studying it at university!

If you were to read the best books on your topic of interest for just 1 hour a day you would be a world leader in that field within 4 years. The difference in compensation for people that are leaders in their field vs. those that follow, is vast.

Remember, you cannot put your hands into the glue pot without some of it sticking and it’s the same with great books, some of it has to stick.

And that my friends, is what I did to get started.

Let me leave you with this thought... My experience has proven to me that poor people have big wide screen TV’s and rich people have big libraries. It’s your call...

ACTION STEP:

Your Action Step for this week is to visit your local Library in the next 7 days, research your topic of interest and borrow one book to read. Next week I'll give you a tip to read it faster than you ever thought possible.