The Inconvenient Truth About Business Success. Ian Marsh

want to use it for drop sheets when I see people in their homes.”

      The universe must have figured it was time to give me a break because it just so happened that the salesperson at the carpet centre said, “This crazy lady in Castle Hill got us to outfit her whole home with this beautiful red carpet. Then, when we’d done the whole job, she decided she didn’t like the colour and we ripped it all up and the carpet is sitting in the back dump at the moment. You can help yourself to whatever you want.” That was it! I got all this red carpet and I cut it into strips and rolled it all up and quite honestly, set forth to replicate the things that FAI did with their clients. I didn’t have many resources but I had time and I wanted to make the most of it. So, when I went into people’s homes, I got the rolls of red carpet out and I put my booties on and I rolled the carpet down the hallways. It was really like walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards. You can imagine what the clients were thinking when they saw this.

      On top of that, when I had time I would get little power point protection plugs and if I saw that someone had little babies or children, I would put the protection plugs into the power points and not charge them for it or I’d change their globes or, particularly with the pensioners, I would clean out their gutters even though they didn’t ask me to. I knew they didn’t have a lot of money and I wanted to help them out; it was the right thing to do. I didn’t have a lot of clients at the time so I spent the time helping them out and I liked having cups of tea and scones.

      Now you can imagine what the pensioner was thinking as I was helping with all of these wonderful tasks that they could no longer do. While I was out doing their gutters they were on the phone to their friends. There would be Mildred, Betty and Sue on the telephone to all their friends saying, “Listen, if you need an electrician, you’ve got to ring this guy. He’s such a lovely person! Don’t use anyone else. You wouldn’t believe what he is doing for me right now and I didn’t even ask him to.” The next thing I knew, I got busier than ever trying to keep up with all of these pensioners asking me to fix things in their homes. I didn’t charge them a lot of money and it was okay because going from pretty much zero to making what I was, was a big improvement.

      My days filled up and soon it was chock-a-block full with helping these people, which was fantastic except for one thing. Pensioners don’t have a lot of money so I was maxed out working for them but I was not making a big income. I did get an awful lot of cups of tea and scones and made a lot of friends though and it was how I started to make an income and started to get ahead.

      To give you an idea of the impact this was having on my finances, I went from making around $300.00 a week to making $1,500 a week, and to me that was a fortune.

      Now, you may think that with this money I would go and maybe try to buy a house or invest it in some savings place like all my friends and family told me to but I did not listen to them, I put it where I believe the best investment of all is. An investment that gives you thousands of percent return on your money. That was myself. You see, every bit of money that I made, I actually reinvested into educating myself. There were some challenges with me doing that and I’ll talk about that in a little while but, needless to say, I started to improve my knowledge on what it takes to be successful in business.

      Now, here’s the inconvenient truth about business owners. Only 7% of business owners ever reach a million dollars in turnover. Only 5% of individuals ever earn more than $140,000 and the worst statistic of all is that ONLY 39% OF BUSINESSES MAKE A PROFIT! Why is that?

      Well, I’m guessing that they probably had a similar start to me when they started in business. That is, they had no idea how to create a successful business and they were just winging it. Essentially, that was how I started to make a success and how I started to get some income coming into my company. In the next chapter I share how I learned to make SERIOUS money but before you read it, please read these inconvenient truths!

      INCONVENIENT TRUTH

      You do not know what you don’t know!

      You understand that other people are making 10 times more money than you are without working 10 times harder and that you have the ability and the right to do the same but you need the courage to believe it can happen.

      You are living in a reality that you created!

      For you to break through to another reality you need to commit to opening up to different thought processes and the possibility of different outcomes than the ones you are used to.