#93 – Wednesday,I’ll Leave for the USA for Six Weeks

SUMMARY: Stephen discusses his plans about his future six-week trip to the USA.

 

[00:00:14] Stephen:  Hey guys, Stephen Esketzis here from Marketing on the Move.  I am really pumped to be with you today.  I’ve been doing a lot since the last podcast.  But tomorrow — not tomorrow, the day after, I’m actually off to the USA for six weeks doing a lot of traveling.  I’m going to be hitting — where am I going?  Starting at San Francisco then off to Boise, Idaho then to New York, followed by Miami, Dallas, Austin, Phoenix, Cancun, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas.  What have I missed?  Officially that’s it, maybe a couple more and then Sidney on the way home.  Yeah, so hitting up a lot of conferences.  I will be at Funnel Hacking Live, we’ll be at Traffic and Conversion Summit and then I’m trying to go for a super fast business in Sydney on the way home.  So, they’re the ones that I’ll be at.  It should be really a lot of fun, to be honest.  I’m really excited.  And yeah, I can’t wait.  It should be a really good trip.

[00:01:12] So, what I want to talk to you today about is something which I’ve been kind of focused on lately and it’s actually kind of funny because I’ve actually planned out the year really well.  I thought I had a really good plan going into the year but it actually turned out to be a little bit of a road bump early on.  And what I want to talk to you about is kind of facing those obstacles.  It’s quite what I actually had recently it goes along the lines of — Mike Tyson said it, everyone has got a plan until you get punched in the face.  That’s a really funny one because I’ve never kind of — not understood it, but I’ve never kind of been able to relate to it until something recently happened in my business, stuff like that.  You know, like, what’s the plan now?  What’s plan B?  I’m always telling, you know, go then with the big plan A, I’m all in.  Plan A is going to crush.  But what happens when you don’t have — you know, when plan A just doesn’t go as planned?

[00:02:07] And it’s a good lesson.  I’m glad I kind of — you know, something hit me.  It’s not critical and it’s going to shut me down for life, but it’s something important enough which is going to make me think twice about having some saving or some sort of plan B, some sort of safe option available to you.  And I think it’s really important.  I think it’s really critical to know that you need to have some sort of plan B, whether that’s your financial side, having some money put aside for a rainy day; or whether that’s your systems and things like that when things don’t go to plan.

[00:02:45] One way that I actually saw it, I was watching a video on Facebook, I think it was, or YouTube.  One of my friends shared it on Facebook and it’s pretty much taught me about that.  This was a billionaire and he was going through, you know, what was some of the biggest issues that you see with people, what’s stopping them from becoming millionaires and billionaires.  And this guy, recently he’s become a billionaire.  I think he had 1 or $2 billion net worth, grew one or two of his companies, tech companies for the past five, ten years.  So it wasn’t like a snap chat overnight, be he actually grew them in whatever.

 

[00:03:25] So, basically I was watching his video and he goes, the biggest thing is people go in there expecting to win the first time around but it almost never happens.  So, you have these two things involved.  Number one, he was talking about having a plan B.  He literally said the quote that I just shared, and he goes, “Until you literally get pushed out of the way, until you get punched in the face, everyone thinks they’re flying high..” He goes, “You’ve got to remember, when the times are going well, you always have to know that there’s bad times coming around the corner.  However, it also works on the flipside.  It comes to pass.  You always know that there’s going to be good times coming around the corner.” So, you have to be prepared.

[00:04:04] You know, it’s funny.  Being an entrepreneur, it’s not a smooth grasp.  It’s not something — you just stay through it, they go up.  There’s lots and lots of peaks and drops.  There’s lots of ups and downs and something which I think, you know, a lot of people take for granted and never focus on.  You know, whether that’s your business, your money is coming in, your money is going out, there’s always peaks and drops.  It’s never consistent.  And that’s part of the risk you take as an entrepreneur.  That’s how you grow, that’s how you get ahead.  At some point in your business, you want to go a bit riskier and invest a bit more, some other points you want to become a little safer and make sure you’re not playing too hard.  So, all of these things, you have to take into consideration.  That’s the first thing he said.

[00:04:45] And the second thing he said was, you know, actually surrounding yourself with the right people, having a destination and surrounding yourself — so, first one was surrounding yourself with the right people, second one was actually having a destination that you will know you want to get to.  So, Russell Brunson mentioned this in a recent podcast as well.  It’s funny because all these messages are sort of coming in from different people, but at the same time and I’m not spiritual at all.  But it’s really funny how it all just kind of like turned into something at the same time.  I don’t know if it’s just luck or whatever, but it’s pretty interesting.

[00:05:21] So, one of the things that he was saying was you’ve got to know where you’re going.  You’ve got to have — and I’m going to really butcher[ph] this analogy, but he was talking about when a ship is at sail, you’ve got a captain and it knows 99.9 percent of the time, the co-captain, it goes in the right direction and it gets to where it’s going, to where it wants to go.  You know, without that captain, without that leader and having the force to know where you want to go, the ship is not going to go on the right direction.  So what you’ve really got to do is know exactly where you want to go.  Plan.  If you don’t have a destination, then you’re just floating in the wind.  You’re sitting on this water, you don’t know where you’re going to go, you’re getting pushed around by all different obstacles on your way you don’t have a plan.  So you really do have to set your sight on something and follow through, you know?  Of course, there will obstacles and you’re going to get punched in the face, but you have to have an end result.  And then on the quote, I like that it reminds me of this, is start with the end in mind.  So, start with a goal and work your way back.  That’s something that I screwed up in my very first business, when I had my mobile app.  It kind of started with just wishing to have an app, this would be cool, I didn’t think about monetizing it, I didn’t think about growing it or anything like that.  It just kind of went bit by bit and eventually it just didn’t even take off to the level wanted it to, we couldn’t get anyone paying us.  We didn’t start with that end in mind.  So, absolutely, a hundred percent, you need to have that on sight before you begin your business, otherwise you’re just sitting there, floating around.

[00:06:52] And the third thing is surround yourself with the right people.  So, you have to surround yourself, not only with the right people, I believer, but people that are actually — you know, don’t take advice from people that haven’t gone the path you want to go down.  If your goal is getting to affiliate marketing, for example, then you’re going to surround yourself with a successful affiliate market.  There’s no point surrounding yourself with wholesalers and business owners or whatever.  You want to go down that path, that’s where you’re going to get the best information.  They’re the people that you want to surround yourself with.  Don’t stop following the others.  It’s all good and well, you can follow the successful people.  You’re not making millions and whatever, but at the end of the day, you want to follow people that have taken that exact route to where you want to get.  They’re the ones that have gone through the peaks and valleys, that have gone through the obstacles and push through.  They’re the ones that are facing issues that you’re facing.  So if you can follow, take the advice and follow the people as closely as to what you want to do, I think that’s where you’re going to get the best result and that’s where I’ve seen the best results so far.  It’s really interesting to be able to actually follow these people.

[00:07:52] So, just to highlight these three things, number one, always have a plan.  Number two, start with the end in mind, always have a destination.  Sorry, number one was have a plan B.  Number two is have a destination.  Number three is surround yourself and take advice from the successful people, have the right people around you because you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.  So, absolutely needs to happen.  And yeah, these are just sort of three things that I’ve kind of notice, especially the first one because I had an issue pop up.  I won’t go in the details, but essentially, it was something which I was planning on going really well, had time to pick up, it did not go really well and now I’m going to have to kind of restructure and get myself together and see what’s the next strategy.  It didn’t work, what are going to try again?

 

[00:08:41] So, that’s what I have to share with you guys today and hopefully out of those three points, you can take away at least one of them and start implementing it.  I think it’s really valuable, especially if you want to take it to that next level in 2017 and start off with a bang.  So, in saying that, I’m off to America in a couple of days.  Hopefully, I can get a few podcasts while I’m there.  I’d love to do one in that Funnel Hacking Live and Traffic and Conversion Summit.  I might actually do a Facebook Live or something fun like that.  I really don’t do many lives and things.  But in the meantime, I’ll definitely be doing another review or a blog post and things while I’m travelling.  So, check that out, hit my website.  If you want to reach out to me about anything, let me know.  I’ll chat with you soon.  Take care, guys! And I’ll speak to you from the other side of the world in about a week or so.  Take care!