Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, is one entrepreneur that has had no shortage of critics, struggles, and massive setbacks in his iconically grand startup pursuits.
Musk is one of my personal heroes, because of his tenacity, since he’s also extremely well known for his ability to rebound -and then, mercilessly blow away the expectations of both critics and backers alike. At this point, he’s become one of the most successful, inspiring people in Silicon Valley, which is obviously not a small accomplishment.
His secret? Perhaps it’s that he’s an introspective individual, who’s proven himself a genius in business -or instead, it’s that he’s simply unstoppable. Personally, I feel as if the answer to that riddle is: yes (it’s both). However, if I were to take a solid guess, I’d have to wager that he was relentless first before he became famously business-savvy. For instance, when asked what kept him going when dealing with ‘insurmountable adversity’, Musk replied…
There is a great quote by Churchill: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
On the road to success within the fitness business, we are absolutely guaranteed to meet hard times along the way; so perhaps the key to getting to our destination is a simple principle of resilience. We’ve got to become unstoppable.
The Common Thread Among the Great Ones
“Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, and not everyone is going to be an entrepreneur, but women who turn to business, turn to economics, because there are people depending on them, I think that their creativity, their resilience, their spirit, embody what’s best about entrepreneurship.” –Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
One of the most difficult aspects of the fitness and personal training industry is that we’ve got to deal with our fair share of localized competition. Because you have to handle regional market saturation (and the fact that your schedule is subject to limited daily hours of potential revenue), it can be tough to make progress at times.
But let’s not forget what was said in the above quote by Gayle Lemmon, as her words provide us with a very big truth: entrepreneurs are creative and resilient by nature. In a way, that’s what sets us apart from the rest of the society, and I’ve found this to be the case from engaging those in my own coaching program. The most successful entrepreneurs that I’ve interacted with all seem to have this in common, and in quite a few cases, the capacity to succeed has very little to do with ‘talent’, per se.
I’ve found that our best quality is the resilience of we, the startup starters, and this is rooted in 3 basic beliefs. And when these ideals are put into practice, that’s when you get to sit back and watch something big grow from thin air.
#1 – “It’s Not About the Money. It’s More Than That.”
“Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.”
-Elon Musk
One of the most common misconceptions about entrepreneurs is that they’re only in it for the money, and that their fledgeling company is basically the byproduct; when in fact, the opposite is true. An unstoppable entrepreneur’s vision is based on their belief that they’ll have a hand doing something of greater value, whether it’s building electric-powered cars or guiding people towards a healthier, happier life through better fitness.
The reason why this makes a massive impact on our ability to remain resilient is that the money is simply the result of successfully penetrating the marketplace with something that fills a market need -but in order to truly see this come to fruition, it takes time and hard work before gains can finally be realized. In fact, Tesla Motors didn’t even see a single dollar’s worth of profit for a half-decade.
Having the belief that what you’re doing is going to provide a positive impact on the world or your community will give you a barrier of protection against discouragement and negatively motivated criticisms …especially during those tough penny-pinching years.
#2 – “I Can See It Now.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the aspiration for taking home a much bigger piece of the pie can’t be something that motivates you.
This just can’t be the only motivator. The main difference is that the size of your dream-pie-piece has to coincide with the quality of your company’s vision. You get back what you put in …that’s just a law of nature.
However, speaking of laws, let’s not forget about the “Law of Attraction” in all this. Your beliefs will define what you think about, and inturn, you’re going to attract what you focus on. So, if you focus on what you want (and not on what you don’t want), then it’s naturally going to come your way. The key to doing this is visualizing what you want beforehand. Before I go any further, I think LOA (Law of Attraction) is missing a few key elements, thus my reason to create the movie “THE COMPASS”.
Actor/comedian Jim Carrey, for instance, was completely scant broke during his early years in Hollywood -but he didn’t believe this to be the case. He believed, instead, that the wealth was his already; he just hadn’t crossed paths with it yet. But in order to cement that visualization in his mind, he wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 and gave himself 3 years to cash it. And what happened? Well, the rest is history…
The man did it. Most work their entire lives and never make it past their first million-dollar net worth milestone (much less $10 million), but Jim Carrey’s visualization placed him in the top 1% of earners within 5 years. I’d say that makes a compelling case for us to adopt the practice of seeing what we want in our minds, so we can see it with our waking eyes later on.
And after having done so, you become darn near impossible to stop in whatever you’re doing in life.
#3 – “It’s Only a Matter of Time.”
“Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.” -Robert Strauss
The interesting thing about human faith is in how it works. Once you have a convincing vision, and you’ve visualized it repeatedly as if it were reality; then it’s not long before this idea becomes embedded in the core reasons that you pull yourself out of bed every morning. The thing about fear is that it’s rooted in uncertainty -but once you’ve simply said to yourself, “It’s only just a matter of time,” then something interesting happens…
Your vision soon manifests itself in physical reality.
So, if you’re a fearful person, then you will attract frightening things to your life. If you constantly dwell on negative and self-defeating thought patterns, then you will attract a negative lifestyle of self-defeat. The same goes with relationships; since it’s actually a generalized myth that ‘opposites attract’. Actually, a more accurate statement is: ‘like attracts like’.
Much of this has to do with breakthroughs in quantum physics, which we’ve been making since Albert Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence, or E=MC2. Einstein taught us that everything is energy, and that matter is simply energy that has not yet released its potential. In a recent blog post, I said that you are a ‘force of nature’, and this isn’t just a poetic figure of speech. You actually are a force of nature. How much of a force? Well, according to Einstein’s theory, your own body contains a greater nuclear blast yield-potential than the Russian 50-megaton, Tsar Bomba, the most powerful device ever made in history, and possesses the estimated potential atomic energy to power the entire US …for 16 years.
Own It, and It’s Yours
Thus it’s no wonder why those, courageous enough to believe in themselves, aren’t daunted by the idea of wrestling Robert Strauss’s ‘gorilla’. We have a tremendous amount of power potential in our thoughts; and when we allow those thoughts to set our actions into motion, then our adopted beliefs will radiate attraction, like planetary gravity.
Once you own your vision, then it’s yours. According to physics, it’s just a matter of will in directing your force of nature and having the courage to apply it relentlessly. You’ll be unstoppable, because you already have the energy, the gravity attraction …and according to physics…
Your success was just a matter of spacetime from the very beginning.
If anything, I feel sorry for the ‘gorilla’ that tried to stop you.
Matthew Francis Gawors says
This article was wonderful. Has motivated me to continue on with a project that I am pursuing in Binghamton, NY. I emailed Mark Teahan about the project and am interested to speak to someone about business development for JSE.
Thank you,
Matt
K R says
Truth. Enough said.
(Now go DO until it gets DONE no matter how long it takes!)
Nathan Jordan says
Great article this morning. I love the part about Jim Carey writing himself a check. Eventually the guerilla will get tired and then it’s my turn. If I read thinga like this in the morning and listen to Tony Robbbins and Jay Abraham before bed like last night and apply certain principles it is only a matter of time before I reach my potential.