Blog

Instantly download your FREE Guide to Success in 2011::

**Your details are for our eyes only. View our Privacy Policy

Search:
Advanced Search

Quick Links

Sometimes, You Just Have to Make It Rain

31st December 2011

('’) Share

So many people in the world today complain about scarcity. How they never get enough opportunities. How things just don’t seem to go their way. How they are never lucky in life. Now it just may be they’ve been having a bad year but those of us who have truly mastered the Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead! philosophy understand that sometimes you have to go through a drought. And other times, you just have to make it rain.


As I wind down the last few days of 2011, I thought about the year gone by. I knew that 2011 was going to be one of the biggest years of my life but I didn’t know how much impact it would have on me in the grand scheme of things.

When I moved to Melbourne earlier this year I only had one goal in mind - to play a bigger game.

Sure I achieved a LOT of success in Darwin but during the last few years of my time there I really felt that I wanted more out of life and business.

This is where a problem started to grow slowly because I wanted more, and Darwin wasn’t ready to give me more.

For example, I wanted to grow my company BLKMGK into a Social Media Consultancy yet Darwin just didn’t have the market to support my desire. With a town of 200,000 people, there just wasn’t enough interest in Social Media to provide a sustainability for my business model.

Having said that, I could have changed my business model and waited for the market to catch up but I honestly would have died of boredom and gone broke while waiting. Not good.

Showcasing The Best Of You

I also wanted to be inspired and motivated to be the best version of myself possible. I never want to die with any music left inside me. To do that I needed to be inspired and motivated as much as possible.

They say you are the sum of the 5 people you hang out with the most, and yet everyone I was hanging out with didn’t inspire me to push myself to the next level.

Don’t get me wrong. I had some AMAZING people in my close circles who have given me countless amount of advice, energy and encouragement but I wanted more. Yes I know I’m greedy…but let me explain.

The Dream

My ultimate dream in life is to inspire and motivate millions of cool young people all around the world to protect their dreams and turn them into reality. I want to be included in the greatest motivational speakers of our time like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Les Brown, Jim Rohn and AJ Kulatunga (okay that was cheeky!)

Now Rewind Back to Reality in Darwin

I wanted to grow a Social Media Consultancy when there was no sustainable market for me.

I wanted to be inspired and motivated to speak in front of a crowd of thousands, when no one in Darwin has ever done that.

What’s a Young Achiever to do?!?

I could complain about the lack of inspiration and motivation in town and heave in a barrel of negativity because people weren’t ready to use Social Media for their business

Or I could…

PLAY A BIGGER GAME!

And that’s exactly what I decided to do.

I gave up my beautiful apartment - Dream Central, along with it’s inspiring sunset and sunrise views::



I gave up my beautiful sports car::



and I gave up the safety and security of my network of friends and family::





all because I wanted to play a bigger game.

How Goes It? - Goes It Well!

In “Rebuilding The Empire” I wrote about what my 1st month was like in Melbourne, but since then I want to talk to you about some of the things going on right now after I made the leap.

The circles I’m hanging around in now are truly amazing. I’m surrounded by people who inspire and motivate me to play a bigger game simply because they are already playing a bigger game themselves.

Just to see that level of success is inspiring in itself but to be able to be a part of it and ask these achievers personal questions on how they got to where they are is just amazing and it blows my mind.

Here’s me with my Speaking Mentors - Warwick Merry, Yvonne Adele, and Tony Ryan::



And these are the people who inspire me in business - Brad Tonini, Paul McCarthy, Dale Elliot::



These two photos mean a HELL of a lot for me because it wasn’t so long ago when I was sitting in my office in Darwin and beating my head against a brick wall.

Finally I took a long hard look at myself, my ambitions and my capabilities and decided that I had so much more to offer the world than the negativity that surrounded me. That was my pivotal moment and I decided to make things happen for me.

I decided to make it rain.

And those two photos are evidence that I achieved my purpose to play a bigger game.

But it doesn’t stop there…

Achieving success Melbourne has a whole new set of challenges. I have to constantly be learning, thinking and taking action to move me towards where I want to be. It’s scary but inspiring!

If you ever find yourself surrounded by negativity and you find yourself fighting to keep your dreams alive, then perhaps my story of 2011 will have given you some hope. Believe in yourself. Because if you truly want to change the world then you can. The trick is that you cannot complain about the drought, you HAVE to make it rain.

And in order to do that, you need to grow. And that brings me to…

The Challenge

This week’s challenge is simple. I challenge you to reflect back on your 2011. The highs, did you celebrate them? The lows, what did you learn from them? And ultimately ask yourself “How much did I grow this year?”

Personal development growth doesn’t have to be a drastic change in your life. It could be something simple as a basic philosophy that you learned during the year and have picked it up for the rest of your life, like my “Don’t teach a pig to sing” philosophy. It’s all about mastering the little things that all stack up together to produce big results.

If you find yourself answering “I didn’t grow at all this year” then you’ve wasted 365 days of your life. But somehow I know that if you’re reading this blog, then you would never answer in this way. Those of us who have mastered the “Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!“philosophy continue to grow beyond our wildest dreams. And that’s exciting!

I’m going to be a taking a bit of a break over the next couple of weeks but there’s a good reason for it. I’m redesigning Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead! to make it more modern and make it more easier to share the Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead! philsophy with everyone around the world, but don’t worry I’ll be back soon with more inspiring content to help you protect your dreams and turn them into reality. Maybe 2012 will be your year for success? Now THAT’S exciting!

So have an amazing holiday, stay safe and continue to grow yourself into the best version possible.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

 

Category:

Inspire, Lead, leadership, inspiration, motivation, make it rain, goal setting, play a bigger game, Brad Tonini, Paul McCarthy,

('’) Share

(0) Comments •

6 Lessons From The School Of Hard Knocks

Sunday, 11 December 2011

('’) Share

Hey Super Stars! I’ve got a real treat for you as this week’s post is from Summer Goodwin, who I’ve known for the past couple of years as being a determined dreamer. While Summer is a professional freelance writer today, she didn’t start her professional career in writing.
And you know how I’m always obsessed with finding out people’s back stories? Well Summer has a beautiful back story on how she got to where she is today and she very kindly is going to share with us a part of her early journey. So strap in and get ready to learn 6 Lessons from The School of Hard Knocks!

English was one subject I truly loved at school. As a teenager, I would have three novels on the go at any given time. I enjoyed writing anything and everything - from letters to poetry, from short stories to scripts.

But by the end of year 12 I still had no idea what career I wanted to pursue. The women on both sides of my family were nurses. Even Florence Nightingale was in our family tree, my late grandmother told me.  In fact, my mother was the only one who wasn’t a nurse.

So, when I finished school I started a nursing degree. It was a Bachelor of Science. However, I wasn’t particularly interested in science and the sight of needles made me squeamish. Nursing clearly wasn’t for me and I dropped out in first semester.

Lesson one: Follow your heart; don’t settle for what everyone else is doing. 

I travelled around Australia for the next few years working in hospitality. It was fun, but I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.  All I knew was that I was curious and full of questions.

I was 22-years-old when I decided to travel to India and Nepal to ‘find myself’. And I did. By a lake on the roof of the world, I decided to become a writer. I wanted to inspire others by sharing the extraordinary stories of ordinary people. You can read more about that journey here

Writing was such a broad profession; I had to narrow it down. What was the real job? I decided what I wanted to do was called “journalism”. So when I got back to Australia I wrote my first feature about an area high on the Tibetan plateau in India called Ladakh. My article was published in the Perth newspaper, Nova Magazine. I was on my way.

Lesson two: Your unique voice and perspective is your greatest asset. The truth is powerful.

I decided to go to university and study journalism. My mother has always been supportive of my choices, but the rest of my family thought it was a bit of a joke. I don’t think anyone imagined I’d actually finish the degree.

I applied to go to university and was accepted. This was wonderful - except that between having my first article published and attending my first lecture I gave birth and was now getting a divorce. It was a challenging time to say the least.  But I was determined to pursue my dream and started full-time studies in 1998.

However, I quickly realised the job prospects were fairly grim. Only eight per cent of you will work as journalists, my lecturer told a room of bright young hopefuls. We all looked around wondering who that would be. The vast majority of students were about five years younger than me and weren’t single mothers. How could I compete?

I needed a back-up plan. So I decided to do both journalism and public relations. Employment in PR was growing fast, rather than shrinking, so I figured I could go between the two.

Lesson three: Be creative. Think about how you can utilise your passion and skills in other areas.

I persevered for seven years of part-time study. My son was eight-years-old when I graduated in 2005, with grades that placed me within the top five per cent of Murdoch University students.

Lesson four: Those who think they are least likely to succeed, overcompensate by working harder so may achieve surprising results.

Our lecturers encouraged us to move to small country towns to break into journalism. So I moved to Darwin the day after my graduation ceremony.

It took me eight months of constant phone calls, emails and visits to the Northern Territory News to get a job interview. The job I got was as an advertising features journalist. Working 9am to 5pm, no weekend shifts. Ok, so it wasn’t reporting in the newsroom, but it was a metropolitan daily. And it fitted well with parenting. I worked at the newspaper for the next two-and-a-half years.  So, as it turns out, I was in that eight per cent.

Lesson five: Your dream job may not look like you imagined but it will be just right for you.

From there, I moved into public relations for NT Government and then into marketing, writing online content for Charles Darwin University. I did a stint at ABC Radio. I worked as the freelance senior writer for Darwin Life Magazine. Darwin was a fantastic experience but definitely the school of hard knocks for me. I made some huge mistakes and had some big falls, but I learned so much along the way.

Lesson six: There will be people who continue to believe in you, even when you doubt yourself.

When I moved to Melbourne this year, I had a job to come to. I am a public relations executive at Swinburne University of Technology and it’s another fantastic learning experience. 

The reason why I have a successful career today is not because I’m especially talented - it’s because I’ve persevered. I’ve never given up. I may not have my name up in lights, I haven’t won a Walkley award and I still have dreams left to achieve. But I have built a solid and fulfilling career as a writer. To me, that is success. I had a dream and I chased it. And I made it. After 15 years, I’m still compelled to write. I still love it. It’s what I do and it’s all I can imagine ever doing.

Meet Summer Goodwin

Summer Goodwin has been a professional writer for 15 years. Her blog, Summer’s notebook, aims to connect, inspire and support emerging and established writers.  You can follow her on twitter @summer_goodwin

Category:

inspire, school of hard knocks, writing, career advice, lessons in life,

('’) Share

(0) Comments •

Are You Past Oriented or Future Oriented?

Sunday, 4th December 2011

('’) Share

There are three types of people in the world. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happened. Last week I came across a gem of a video that challenges you to figure out what sort of a person you are. Are you past oriented or future oriented? It raises some very interesting questions about how you roll out through your life. Check it out…

The Challenge

This week’s challenge is a simple one. I challenge you to discover your own time perspective. Start by thinking about what type of person you are:

Past Negative?

Past Positive?

Present Hedonistic?

Future Oriented?

How do you feel about your own time perspective? Are you slow and steady? Or Fast and crazy? The next thing I want you to ask yourself is - how are you different to the people that you hang around with? Are they all just the same as you? Or does everyone in your circle have a different time perspective?

For me I’m very fast paced because I’m constantly working on projects and connecting with people who I can either learn from to move me closer to my goals, or contribute to in order to help them achieve their goals. It’s a crazy cycle but I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

I just have to constantly be aware of keeping the balance between my friends and family and my dreams. It’s easier said than done. Luckily I’m blessed with great people in my life so that always makes my quest easy.

So let me know what your time perspective is via Facebook, Twitter or the comments section below.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

Category:

Inspire, time perspective, phillip zimbardo, cultural understanding

('’) Share

(0) Comments •

The Six Principles of Ambition

Sunday, 20th November 2011

('’) Share

You can always recognise when someone is ambitious but how on earth do you actually describe the characteristics that makes a person ambitious? Last week I listened to a bit of Jim Rohn’s The Power of Ambition and in his typical enlightening style Jim led me to the Six Principles of Ambition. Here’s what they are…

1. Positive Self Direction

Jim says that it’s important Knowing who you are and where you want to go in life because this leads to accumulating the knowledge and being prepared for opportunities that come your way.

2. Self Reliance

Jim says that it’s important to take responsbility for your own life. It’s about taking responbility for whatever happens to you and knowing that you have made the conscious decisions that have led you to where you are today. He says pay attention to the fact that whatever is happening in your life right now is the direct result of your activities. If you don’t like where you are at today, change your activities!

3. Self Discipline

Jim says this is “ambition at the daily level”. Doing whatever it takes to get you where you want to be at the end of the day. This is such an important principle because if you study all of the great achievers in the world they all would have this one habit embedded deep within them.

4. Self Enterprise

Jim says consistently being able to create opportunity is a wonderful skill. Self enterprise allows you to be aware of opportunities that enter into your life and provides you with skills to make those opportunities work for you. This is the real essence of Entrepreneurship and how powerful it can be in turning your dreams into reality.

5. Working with others

Success is rarely a solo event and you achieve greater levels of success when you perform a service to help others succeed. As a great businessman Jim was very big on service. The most successful businesses in the world are the ones that perform a service to others of great importance.

6. Self Appreciation

You need to appreciate your accomplishments because they give light to your potential. This is something I see many great achievers struggle with because we constantly compare ourselves to those around us.

I wrote more about this in “Me vs You”. We each have our own set of challenges and we do not have the right to compare our level of success to others because we don’t know what their challenges might have been. We do have the right to be inspired by people better than us because in life there are many out there who compare themselves to us because they feel we are better than them. And it’s up to us to be inspired but continue to inspire others along our journey.



So those are The Six Principles of Ambition through the eyes of the greatest business philosopher - Jim Rohn. In closing Jim says that we know when we have become ambitious when other people describe us as having “focussed concentration, resilience and integrity”. What a powerful achievement to aspire to.

The Challenge

So this week I challenge you to adopt The 6 principles of Ambition and roll out during your week utilising them as much as you can. Practice them over and over again and you’ll see beautiful things will start to happen around you.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

Have you checked out Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead! on Facebook yet? Like us and you’ll receive Inspiration and Motivation during the week when you need it the most!

Category:

Inspire, Build, 6 Principles of Ambition, Jim Rohn, The Power of Ambition, Entrepreneurship,

('’) Share

(0) Comments •

Comments

Post a Comment

---