Unlock Your Potential: 3 Life-Changing Principles for Business and Mindset Success

These 3 key principles helped me at 28 years old sell a hair and beauty business for $1.2 million. I then took a break for 6 months, chose to come back into the workforce, and I still use these same guiding principles to help me scale my tech startup. So they're really powerful. I'm going to get to them. What I want you to know is I talk about them in the context of farming, which is something I'm passionate about, prison where I spent a little bit of time, and how they actually translate to real life use cases and scenarios and what I do with that in our tech startup. I'm first going to speak to the business things that I've learned. During my time in prison, I learned a very valuable lesson that time doesn't wait for anyone or anything, and it was a hard lesson to learn. As you're sitting in a cell doing nothing on your own, the world outside is moving by at a pace that you can't comprehend. Although I was only gone for a short 3 months, it changed the way that I viewed everything forever. I learned that I could not afford, when I came back out, to waste another day because I'd already lost 90 days. And to me, from that point, which was 2020, till today, I still have a fire that inside that consumes me and drives an important sense of urgency. For business, that's looked like when people say something's going to take a week or a month, my question is, why? Why can't we do this sooner? What is holding you back? Why is your first thought process how long it's going to take to do it? Why are you looking at the obstacles? So time doesn't wait for anybody. This should impart on you, because it imparted on me, a sense of urgency for anything that you do. And that can be used for anything— business, personal, mindset— in any aspect of life. I come down to the next point, which is cold calling. For anybody who's starting a business or is already running one and isn't doing enough sales, wants to be doing more, here's a piece of advice. Is cold calling— here's a question— is cold calling scarier, and do you feel worse to pick up the phone and call a random than you would if you were alone in a cell? And this is a question that plagued me in prison, is I felt like it was the end of life the way I knew it. Nothing was colder, in a more desperate manner, or more isolated than that. So right now, when people want to cold call, they're always shy. Oh, what would that person think of me? I'm embarrassed. What if I get rejected? I ask myself, and I implore you to find your own version of this, I always rest back on the fact that is picking up the phone and calling going to make me feel any worse than I already have in the past? And the answer is no. Now, I'm not suggesting that you all have this, but each one of you watching this has a point in their time where nothing could get any worse. Therefore, cold calling, feeling embarrassed, scared, unsure, are minor and insignificant in comparison to what you've already been through. And your business needs you to act in urgency, and your business relies on your ability to pick up the phone and make things happen. So do not wait, just get started and do not be afraid. The third part here is I used to pray for a miracle. I used to think that if I prayed for a miracle, that God would listen and something would miraculously happen. And there is some truth in something here. So today I still pray for miracles, but I work hard at working towards them whilst I'm praying for them. What that looks like is because I'm working hard actively towards the goal that I've set, and we've set a vision at our tech startup Empire Blueprint, We're all working towards the same thing. We all know that we have to act with a sense of urgency. So what ends up happening is this: you find yourself in this beautiful dilemma at times where you're moving quickly, you're not afraid to call, and because people see you doing things and going places— right now in my work, I'm traveling to the USA and Canada for work solely on the fact that 2 years ago when I began, knowing that time didn't wait, I picked up the phone and called the company, said, this is who I am, this is what I am doing, what can you give me? And now, 2 years later, miracles are happening because I've acted on my beliefs and I've worked towards it. So for anybody who watches this and says, well, what can I do with these 3 facts? Stop bloody waiting, because nothing's going to change if you sit on your ass. Pick up the phone, call anyone—a friend, a family member—scroll through your phone, find somebody who is interested in what you do, talk to somebody about how you could help them. Just start. It doesn't matter what you do right now. Take that first step. If you're already running a business, Pick up that phone and double down what you're already doing. You can do more of a quantity of it, and you could definitely reach a broader audience. But do not let fear hold you back. And miracles do happen, provided that you're actually taking steps forward and you're not sitting your ass waiting on something golden to drop out of the sky. So there's some of the lessons that guide me in business, and they also guide my team. And again, they've been reinforced through farming— this is really important for me— through my prison experience, and every day in my business life. From that, I also lean on very heavily, what do I do in my personal life that allows me to be stable and puts me in a position to grow and continue bringing the energy and bringing the fire that the team needs from me? Which is a bit tough for me because it's really deep when it comes to personal. And so I always ask myself, I've got two siblings that I love dearly that I don't get to see a lot. Would they take any learnings from what I'm about to do? And if you're a boss and you've got staff, I implore you to do the same thing. Is what I'm about to do, is the call, the video, the exercise I'm about to go through, does it have utility or does it have value for somebody that if they should ask questions that they could learn from? Can somebody learn something from this? Can I give advice on this topic? So one of the questions I always ask myself is, What I'm doing right now, would that help my brother or sister or somebody else if they ask me? And if the answer is no, then I have a really long hard think about what I'm doing and I reframe it to make sure that there is a lesson in it for me and a piece of advice that I could give to somebody else. The second point for me in my personal life is my mother. This is an even more deep topic and there's a very long video about how I felt about my father and feel and for the most part what I did in relation to my work life from a father's point of view to an elder son. But this point here speaks to, is what I'm doing in my farming life or in my business life something that my mother would be proud of? Is it something that she could say to others, look at my son, look at what he's doing, the good work, look at the lives they're changing, the business they're helping make profitable and the impact they're having? And so if I can't answer to this point, is it something that someone that I love, somebody that I care would be proud of? I may not do it, I may reconsider all of my options to make sure that my siblings would be able to draw advice from what I give and that my mother would also say, "Well, he's doing a good thing." These are things that are important to me, then it may not be important to you, but in my personal life, based on my experiences and going where I need to go, these lessons are really helping me get there. The final one on personal is my grandfather, his dying wish was, Make sure you keep doing good work and the best thing that you could be is to be a teacher because he was a teacher. And I never truly understood what that meant, for the most part, I only knew him for a number of years before he passed away. In saying that, there's a lesson that rings true is, JP, you've got a moral responsibility once you've done something good and/or bad and you've learned from it, either from its greatness or from the failures, there's a moral obligation that you should go in to teach others, those who would be willing to listen, to share it with them so they wouldn't have to fall or make that same mistake. So this content is really derived at that. That's why it's so personal for me, because every time I do something that says, could my siblings get good advice from this? Would my mother be proud? I ask, how can I teach this? Is there something that's happening in my life, be it in my farming life, my daily life, my work life? Is there something that is happening that I could actually share with you that you would derive value from and could possibly mean that somebody watching could not make that mistake? Finally, I talk about mindset, and this is a really big one. In the time where I'd come out of prison, the first thing I wanted to do was just sleep and curl up in a ball. I had no motivation to do anything or see anyone. At the lowest of lows, I had to keep moving, and that's why it's moving, and for me it was actually running. If you're in a place, or where I was, a place where you just don't want to do anything, you just don't want to see anyone, You're just in this like shitty place, and we've probably all been there, and we hope that you don't go through it. But if you are, or you know somebody, there is one piece of advice that I would constantly give to myself, which was, young man, as long as you're moving, that's progression. Now for me, it became running. I would actually join up to a run club, became one of the fastest runners there, which was cool. And I remember there was a joke, is why are you running so fast? I said, well, I got more problems, so I'm trying to get away from them. But something in here for me which still rings true is I always make the effort no matter where I am, what time zone, and you should do the same thing. Is if you don't know what to do or you feel like you're stuck, because you probably are, get up and move. Jump around, go for a walk around the block, clear your head. Just moving on its own can change your whole physiology, changes how you feel. And I tell you, if you move and you partner that with something like time doesn't wait and you're able to foster a sense of urgency, amazing things like miracles do happen. So this is the cool thing. All of these are interlinked. They have been in my life and they've been extremely useful. The second point here for mindset is to isolate. And this could be interesting based on who you are. I did this for a period of 6 months. On one hand, isolation by choice was the best thing I ever did because it allowed me to refine what I wanted in my life and to define the man that I would become and the path in the life that I would live and lead. To some of you, this also may be extremely daunting because you could go down a very deep, a dark rabbit hole, which could be scary. The point here for me, in my mindset, to isolate by choice is to not let the world sway me on what they think I should do. Rather, I am guided on what I want to do based on what I think is right, and I will forge a way into the world, a path of my own. This has served me greatly, but I will put a disclaimer that there is times where this simple act of isolation can also be extremely detrimental. So if you do practice this, Please be mindful that whilst it could be a very, very good tool, if used incorrectly or for too long a period of time, this can become scary. Therefore, if you isolate too long, you feel stuck and you just want to stay in your bed for too long. Therefore, you need to move. So just practice this one with caution. The last thing I did was start early. I thought, holy crap, there's so much that I can do. There's so much that I felt like I had to do because I'd made these cold calls and I've thrown myself there. People were now expecting something to happen, and because I had a sense of urgency, I'm like, holy shit, it's not enough time if I don't start at 4 AM. So I personally decided to start at 4 AM. I'm not suggesting that it's for everyone, but what that does is gives me more hours in a day. Now, if you're wanting to do more and you need to be able to fit things in, there's only one way to do that. You've got to sacrifice some stuff that you're doing right now or make your day start earlier. For me, it was easy enough to to be able to choose both. I had some other activities that I said I'm not doing anymore. I started my day at 4 AM, and for 2 years I would work from 4 till 11, 4 AM till 11 PM. Again, this is not for everybody, and I can appreciate it, but the combination of moving, refining what I was doing, being isolated, knowing where I was going, and having an early start gave me a competitive edge that has allowed me to grow Empire Blueprint from just a thought 2 years ago on my own to a team of, I think, 3 or 4 by year 1. We're now on 12. We're heading well and truly into 7 figures. It is this mindset that has allowed me to do that. So it's really important that even if these aren't something that you say, well, I don't do them or I don't need to, I would encourage you, somewhere inside your life you can make some changes that would rapidly transform how you think. Once you've transformed how you think and your mindset, you can map that. For me, it's really important I map it back to something personal. I don't want to just wake up with an epiphany one day and think, "Oh yeah, I should do it," and then lose a bad habit or try and create a good one. Because these are so deeply ingrained to people that I love and care about, my personal motivating factors are huge, which allows me to always rock up giving my best even when I don't feel like it, which can be quite common. And then when I map that back into a business perspective, you take what I've learned in mindset, what I've learned in personal life, I then come back up to the fact that I am not embarrassed or scared to get on that phone and call. I will put myself in situations that I know nothing about, but I know that I have the skill set and the ability to work my way out of it. And then above all of that is my favorite one, which was the very first one: time does not wait for anyone or anything. So if you watch this and you think, I'll get around to it, I'm doing my 9 to 5, or it's all okay, well, let me tell you, you're not going to get a perfect set of circumstances. And this is something that I always preach to anyone who would listen. There will never ever be a perfect circumstance where you're good to go. Life is a shit show or a shit storm at best. And so if you can dance in the rain and make the most with what you have, knowing that it's not on your side, and this is my belief, and anybody that I've come around who has a strong mindset says, yeah, time's a real thing, man, we better get a move on. If you can foster some of these things, it doesn't have to be all of them inside of you, and you can anchor those to some deeper beliefs. Something that matters, and you can take action and make sure that you don't stop and give yourself the best chance at starting early, getting more hours in a day, and just wanting to move in the right direction, I can assure you, based on my experiences, you will get to— well, I've got to travel the world, grow a business, but the most important part in this is grow a team who are like-minded and share the same vision along the way. Now, that was the lesson for today. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I'll see you on the next one.