Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Chapter 3 "Ask the Big Questions"

Excerpt from Permission to Succeed due out July 2012. Pre order your copy now ! click on the link below and the click on BY MY BOOK NOW on my Fan Page!

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Chapter 3

Ask the Big Questions


I remember being on the phone with my father the afternoon I had to decide whether to close my second cookie store.

I sat in the store with the lights off and a major decision in front of me…

Do I try to make this work here, or do I cut my losses, fall back to the first store, and fix the damage? As I told my dad what was going on, he seemed a bit distracted.

He said, “This is a tough spot; what are your options?”
“I can take their deal and make the store smaller and roll the build-out into the lease or close it and move.”
“What do you think you should do?”
“That’s why I called you! What are you doing?”
“I’m watching my favorite show. Why?”
“You seem distracted. I need you right now; I have some questions, and you are the only person that can help me.”
“What is your question?”
“What should I do?”
“That’s easy—fold back into your other store and continue to fight. However, that’s not the big question you need to be asking yourself.”
“What is that?”
“Do you think you failed?”
“YES. Miserably!!”

My dad kind of chuckled and said, “Let me make this quick—my show is getting to the good part.

Son, you only fail if do not learn from what happened.

Businesses close every day. I have lost many businesses over my life, some you know about, some you don’t, but the bottom line is I took something away each and every time so I would not make the same mistake twice. You have just learned a very powerful lesson. You have done things that your peers have not dared to try. Now you have seen the whole business ownership experience. You went from dream, to thought, to action, to success, to closing. Which one of your friends has that experience? Once you can answer the big questions, everything else is put in perspective. But you have to ask the big question to get the big answers. I am proud for you trying. I’ll be there in a few days to help you move.”

Several years later came a different time when I had to close my last cookie store after seven years in business. I started looking for work anywhere to make sure I provided for my family. It was a very dark time in my life.

In hindsight, I was probably depressed.

Back then, I didn’t know that, when you close a business or end a relationship, you need to mourn its passing. Sure, when there is death, that’s an automatic; you are expected to grieve and mourn. But I don’t remember the Small Business Association offering a class on what to do emotionally when you have to close down. Surely the loss of a business qualifies as the death or end of something and a beginning of something new. My store, although not a real person, had a soul, life, its own characteristics, and it was an extension of me. When outside forces that I could not control (and internal actions that I did not control) came together, it was the perfect storm for failure. I was about to be flung into a whirlwind where my very essence would be tested.

I had already faced closing one store and then eventually closing the other and lost everything I had.

I really felt I had let my family, my staff, and myself down.

I had to make another call to my father, this time we did not discuss the philosophy of winning or loosing; success or failure. He knew I had learned my lesson from the first store, but now had to live that life lesson as I closed my last store and prepared for a new chapter in my life.

As we loaded the last of the equipment into the storage shed and closed the door, I felt a very strange overwhelming feeling. That feeling was not one of “I failed”

or “I have never been successful”

or “Ill never try that again”

but rather the feeling of

“What to do Next?”

What am I good at? What are my strengths and what will people think of me now that I have lost my business? The feeling of the unknown and the combination survival mode overcame me as I locked up my past.

About a year later, I met a man by the name of Spencer Bartley while working for a local drugstore chain.

Spencer was that type of man who was about his business but always looking to help others who showed potential. A rare find.

We became fast friends, and Spencer began to open up his network to me and to show me how I could become a motivational speaker, since that’s what I told him I wanted to become.

Spencer had this crazy thought of working in reverse.

He said, “I work at night so I can build my business during the day.”

I thought that was crazy.

But while stocking shelves at night, Spencer began to share his life philosophy with me. He dared me to dream big. He became my mentor. Then, one night, he hit me with a phrase that would change my life.

“Mark,” Spencer said, “you need to ask the big question if you want to achieve in life. Looking for others to give you permission about what you want to do is not going to get you where you want to go.” This type of talk went on for a few months.

Finally, I asked, “What is the big question, Spencer, I think I’m ready to ask it.”

He said, “Mark, the big question is,

‘Are you truly ready to be successful?’”

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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Permission to Succeed Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Setup


When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, most father-son conversations with my dad revolved around me asking to do something—“Hey Dad, can I ride my bike? Hey Dad, can I go over to my friend’s? Hey Dad, can I go skateboard? Hey Dad, can I stay up late tonight?” And oftentimes, my dad would say no—“No, you can’t stay up late. No, you can’t ride with your friends. No, you can’t do that,” whatever. Instead of going off and doing it anyway, I did what a lot of kids would do: “Hey Mom, can I ride my bike? Hey Mom, can I stay up late?” And Mom, being a mom, would say, “What did your father say? Did you ask your father’s permission to do that? Did you ask to see if you could do that first?”

This is the common pattern for many of us. Our first experiences in wanting to do something and needing approval involved our parents. They were or are the main source of our confidence. If you have determination and keep asking, eventually you can get your way a lot of the time. If you give up, you wonder what might have happened if you hadn’t. But the point I’m trying to make is, as children, we are taught and trained to ask for what we want to do. No matter the size of the request, it has to meet adult approval before we move forward. When we are young, that is very important. As children, we don’t really know what we want—well, actually we want it all. Our parents or other grownups in our life help us build the framework in how we make decisions and how we move to different levels of achievement. But that’s while we are children.

If you fast forward a little bit, notice that you ask permission to do things even as an adult. We spend a lot of time asking about what we can and cannot do. May I take a vacation, may I set up a meeting, may I devote my work time to this project, may I have your support for my dreams; the list goes on and on. Now, on the outside it doesn’t look like a big deal, but as we get older and less adventurous, we revert back to what we best know how to do: asking for permission. The bottom line is, we want approval and support for what we want to achieve. The upside is that sometimes we get the approval, and the downside is that most times we do not get the permission we need to succeed. But either way, we are waiting for others to give us direction and empowerment for something we want to do or have the vision to create.

Here is a startling thought: the older we get (or the more adult we get), the more we ask for permission. The stakes seem to be higher, and we want to be sure we have it right before we make a decision that can affect our happiness. However, the problem is, as we get older, there are fewer and fewer people to give us answers or the permission we seek. The selection pool becomes even smaller when it comes to getting permission for what we want to do in our personal life. It usually just comes down to our family, spouse, and/or a few friends. Do you really want to get to the point where you’ve relied so long on others for permission that all your sources of approval have disappeared? No—you want to stop looking externally for permission to do what you think you should do and begin looking internally for the permission you need to succeed. It is a change in mental programming, a change in “who” you look to for permission to unleash your potential and allow that potential to become realized energy.

Relying on others for a stamp of approval is a waste of time. One of my favorite quotes is, “If you allow others to define your success, you give them the right to define your failures.” I don’t know about you, but I am not too thrilled about letting someone else determine my success and surely don’t want them to define my failures. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. My goal in creating this book is to encourage you stop becoming and start being. So when you set your goals and start on your journey to success, you can get to where you want to go regardless of whether other people approve or not. So read this book, practice the tools, and make a conscious effort to give yourself the permission to succeed.


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