The Four Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Business, Love, Life, and Beagles

I turned 40 last year.

Instead of buying a sports car, I bought a Mazda. It’s like I turned 50 early.

I didn’t have a mid-life crisis, I had a mid-life priceless.

A priceless realisation.

I realised a few things. I realised that I knew NOTHING… but I knew something.

They say that when you hit 40 you start living. The first 39 years is a dress rehearsal; a warmup.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I know my first 39 years was a journey of many lessons.

I wanted to share these four things with you. Even if you’re 19, 29, 39 or 89. I want to hear what you think.

I don’t profess to know it all.

On the contrary, I’m learning more now than ever before… because I admitted to myself that I don’t know it all.

We’re all here to experience life and we’re all experience it in different ways.

So sit back (in your sports car, bean bag, office chair, or Mazda) and enjoy…

The Four Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Business, Love, Life, and Beagles

1. There’s no such thing as an overnight success

In this social media-driven world where the media put success on a pedestal and then destroy them, there’s a common theme:

People pop-up overnight as a success.

YouTube and Instagram have created influencers; young kids who make millions. It’s easy to think that’s happened easily.

But nothing happens overnight.

My life changed overnight once. I left everything on New Years Eve 2012/13.

It was an overnight distress!

It may look (from the outside) like I made a change overnight. But I didn’t.

For years my marriage died slowly, for years I crafted my social media and content skills, and for years I created a humble tribe who believed in what I said.

It wasn’t overnight.

The decision to make it happen kinda was, but the success wasn’t created or enabled overnight.

The problem with life is that it takes time. A tree takes hundreds of year to grow, a website takes months, a community takes hard work, and a human being isn’t self-sufficient for at least 18 years!

Nothing (that I’ve found) is successful right away.

The problem?

What you do right now, right this moment, may well be the precise thing you need to do to be a success… but it won’t work quick enough for you to believe in it.

Truly successful people seem to trust in some misguided belief that it’ll work and that drives them forward.

Download a new book, diet, programme, or a proven system and you’ll soon start thinking this isn’t right, that you need a new plan.

Sound familiar?

Success takes time. What you choose to do matters you won’t know it’s a successful choice until… it’s a success.

Tough!

Oh… by the way. I’m not a success yet but due to something I’ll share later, I’m gonna keep going until I am.

2. Consistency is vital

Here’s the thing. Once, twice, three times isn’t enough. You gotta pick a system, focus, or strategy and stick with it.

I don’t think anything works if you don’t have consistency.

Sport, diet, business, relationships, content, marketing – nothing.

There seems to be a pattern, a code, almost a level where you need to operate to prove you want it badly enough!

Spaghetti Agency is testimony to this. It’s not there yet.

(Actually ‘there’ doesn’t exist. But you know what I mean, right!?)

But the business we grew from one tweet to a well-known Agency has required a load of consistent action to get it here.

• Consistent work
• Consistent marketing
• Consistent networking
• Consistent training
• Consistent improvement
• Consistent action.

I know it’s a cliché… but it’s true.

(Clichés are only clichés because everyone says them, right!?)

I put something new into my business, life, relationships, health or whatever and it rarely works right away. (See point one). So… you need to build it in a way that you do it consistently!

If you’re going to do anything, look at (and work at) how you can do it consistently!

3. Sometimes it doesn’t go to plan

Ah… this is a kicker. Sometimes, even when you know your shit, you’re shit!

Sometimes, even with the best intentions, the best efforts, the most consistent actions and well set-out intentions – it goes to shit!

Life’s like that.

It’s OK. (It’s really OK.)

When it doesn’t go to plan, stop.

Don’t stop what you’re doing. Just stop… and listen.

“What’s the lesson?”

This is something I’ve been asking myself each and every time something doesn’t go the way I wanted it to.

• What did I do right?
• What did I do wrong?
• What could I change?
• What will I do next?
• What can I take from this and take forward.

Look… it’s OK to be proper pissed off at first. I certainly am. But it’s not OK to refuse to look, listen, and learn!

It’s not about how many times you get knocked down… right?

GET UP! Get up (RANT!) and then learn and apply the learning.

You need to fail. If you don’t, you won’t feel the pain. The pain will drive you forward if you use it.

Have you ever listened to really great music? Have you noticed the pain and suffering laced with learning and experience in great music?

Great, you understand what I mean then.

4. When you love it, it’ll work out

If you don’t love it, quit.

Seriously. Stop it.

You have to love what you do for it to work.

You have to love what you do for it to be a success.

You have to love what you do to be happy.

And when you’re in love and happy… great things happen.

How do I know?

In 2010 I joined Twitter.

In 2011 I started a local Tweetup.

In 2012 I got great success from it.

In 2013 I quit… my old life, job, house, and town, and went for what I love!

Since then? GREAT things have happened!

Do you remember the Matrix with Keanu Reeves…?

He unplugged and saw what life really was? Yeah?

That’s what happened to me (metaphorically) when I got divorced, sold my house, moved town, quit my 9-5 (8-whenever) and started getting paid for what I love.

If it doesn’t give you goosebumps give it the, “no thanks!”

Seriously.

(I’m deadly serious.)

I was talking to someone at a networking meeting a few years ago and I said something that came from nowhere, but it surprised me, so I feel compelled to share it…

“What if we chose our life, our body, our destiny, our relationships, our experience, and our success in life. What if we picked our life from a shelf and said “I’ll have that life please?”

… and what if we’re fucking it up?”

Can you imagine how annoyed we’d feel?

Do you ever feel annoyed at yourself?

I believe that’s why.

Do you?

• Imagine if you’re holding back on your potential.
• Imagine that your rollercoaster isn’t going fast enough, your business isn’t big enough, your friends aren’t cool enough, your carpet isn’t red enough.
• Imagine if you chose to be David Beckham but you’re actually David Brent?!

Can you imagine how pissed off you’d be?

I like to listen to my intuition, my thoughts, my dreams, my feelings. I like to think they’re little nudges in the right direction.

I’m consistent, I appreciate it won’t happen overnight, and I’m aware it might fail… but I listen.

Because I know I deserve and need to be happy.

And so do you.

Are you?

I believe that when we’re happy, great things ‘just come our way’. And when we’re not, when we stub our toe getting out of bed in the morning and proclaim, “Today is bound to be crap!”, it will.

I have a Beagle and he’s an arsehole…

Harvey the Beagle picks up on human anxiety and stress. He barks at anxious stressed people.

I know, right?

But here’s the thing…

He doesn’t know why he does it, and if he was honed to use that skill, he could save lives and stop awful situations.

Harvey knows when I’m stressed. He knows when Jo is too.

He knows when we’re having a heated debate and he tells us, consistently. By barking and stressing us out while we’re trying to talk. Genius.

But Harvey seems to know what he’s here to do.

He’s here to tell us when our energy gets stressed and angry… he doesn’t think about it (clearly) but it does it over and over again.

Do you know what you’re here to do?

Harvey seems to have this unwavering self-belief that he needs to bark when he feels that signal.

He also barks at people who’ve taken drugs, but that’s not for now.

If he was human, he’d question it, reject it, question it, and when people around him (Jo and I) told him to shut up – he would.

But Harvey is a dog.

Harvey continues on his mission.

He loves barking, too!

WHY ARE YOU HERE?

If you don’t love what you do, you’re not doing what you’re here to do.

These are the four things I believe are important to true success and happiness.

• Working hard (no overnight success)
• Believing in the process (consistency)
• Accepting and learning from failure (fall down and get up again)
• And loving what you do.

I live by those (now) and I believe they’re my mid-life priceless (discovery).

… I just thought I’d share them!

What do you think?

I really wanna know. Comment below. Let’s learn from each other!

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