Stephen Scoggins recounts his rise from financial struggle to business success, using a personal Hawaii anecdote to illustrate a mindset shift: take ownership of limiting beliefs, change perspective, and focus effort toward goals. He gives concrete financial advice (aggressive debt repayment to create deployable capital, reducing debt ratios over time) and encourages investing in personal growth rather than consumer spending. The overall message: change thinking, take ownership, and prioritize effort and investment to transform your life.
You know, the reality is, once I was broke, broken, and trapped inside of a mental prison. And ultimately keeping me chained to my own limitations. The reality is, none of us have to live that way, including yourself.
Steven Scoggins is a best selling author. He challenges people to break through their obstacles. Coming from a broken home, years of struggle, to launching what would become a multi million dollar construction company. Ladies and gentlemen, Steven Scoggins is in the.
Early in my actual business career, one of the things that happened to me was I was barely getting by literally going paycheck to paycheck, barely making ends meet. And I got an opportunity to actually go to Hawaii on an incentive trip. You know, basically the people I was buying product from were like, buy more product from me and I'll take you to the next level and I'll take you to Maui. I was like, okay. And you know, hindsight being 20 20, I didn't realize then what I realize now, which is how important that trip was. But here's the crazy thing, you know, I was dog tired, I was jet lagged, but I was in one of the most beautiful places on the earth that I never thought I would ever go. And by a sheer miracle, I barely qualified to be on this bus heading to this massive resort in this beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii. I put my head against the bus window and I was kind of looking out, staring over kind of the ocean and the sun was just starting to set. It was like a straight line. And just then a big whale kind of broke up through the ocean and like literally went back in and did what they call breaching. But it was interesting because the tail looked like it was waving at me, almost like more is possible. You can be more, you can become more. Are you actually holding yourself back? That trip is what taught me how to shift my perspective. That trip is what taught me that anything is possible as long as you change the way you look at things or to change the way you think about things. You have to be willing to take complete ownership of every aspect of your life, including your limiting beliefs. Because if you don't change the way in which you think, you will never change the way in which you act. Which means you've got to understand what's actually holding you back. You have to understand where that that trigger came from that's ultimately keeping you from taking the next step towards your ultimate goal or destiny. Most of us go through life blaming and shaming and doing other things to other people, acting like they're the reasons that we're not being successful. They're the reasons we're not in the relationship that we want. They're the reasons we don't have the finances we have. The reality is you are never going to out excel your expectation of yourself. Look, if I was still running around being butt hurt all the time about every little thing that ever happened to me, I would not have the optimism to do the big thing, to do the scary thing, to take it to a whole other level. A lot of times we are where we are today because that's all we've allowed ourselves to be. And the reality is we're going to have to dig a little deeper. We are either compounding our time, our talent and our resources, or we are compounding the time, talent and resources for others. The question is, which perspective is ultimately taking you to looking at one or the other? Which direction are you heading towards? Are you basically building someone else's life based on someone else's expectation, based on someone else's experience? Or are you building your own life based on your own experiences, your own expectations, and ultimately the destiny that you want to create for yourself? If you ultimately change the perspective and the way you look at things, specifically as it relates to your potential and your purpose, you are going to see everything in a much brighter fashion, all ultimately giving you more confidence and taking you to the next level to ultimately take that action. You're going to have to do that. There's not a single successful person in the world who did not have a radical shift in their overall perspective on how they viewed life. Relationships, finance, business, you name it. You've got to find out what perspectives these successful people are using and apply those to your life today. When I first started beginning to get myself out of debt, it took me quite a bit of time, but I spent 90% of my total income throwing it at the debt to get it knocked out and get it off my plate. Why? Because I wanted to increase my personal cash flow. If you increase your personal cash flow now, you have it for disposable income and or investing. Now what I mean by ratios first of all is 90% I was able to get myself to 70% and then 60% and 50% and so on and so forth until I had 0% debt and then I had 100% cash. When you get to that level, ultimately you can take your life to a whole nother level because you now have what's called deployable capital that most people never get because they're so busy spending the very thing that they should be investing in different areas and yes, you may have to invest in getting yourself out of debt. You may have to invest in actually getting yourself some education or some kind of leveling up seminar or conference or something like that. But these are key investments into you that ultimately play out for you. A lot of success along the way. In my earlier days, before I knew any better, I thought that all I had to do was go and earn more money to ultimately build the lifestyle that I wanted. But in order to build the lifestyle that I wanted, I was overspending. And because I was overspending, I was having to earn more to compensate more. So no matter how much money I made, what kind of increases I got, I would just take that delta and I would go and find a different way to spend it. I'd go buy a car with a higher car payment. I would go move into a different apartment or a different mobile home or whatever so I could have. It was endless. So before you go buy the tv, before you go buy the house, the car, whatever, heck, a Snickers bar before you go buy that, I want you to ask yourself, am I investing my money or am I wasting my money? And I can promise you, if 80% of the money that you are spending is not investing in some way, shape or form, in other words, it's not allowing something to come back to you on a consistent basis and double the form, triple the form, quadruple the form, then you are wasting the very resource that you have. You have to focus more on the goal or the outcome or the thing that you want, the thing that you're pursuing. Then you have to focus on the uncomfortable feelings of obtaining that thing again. You are where you are today because that's all you've allowed yourself to be. And all because you've allowed yourself to be that today, doesn't mean you can't change it. You can change it by focusing more on what you want, where you want to go, than actually all the things that are standing in front of you that are preventing you from getting there. Don't look at your friend buying a house or car, getting married or whatever before you do and somehow think you're worthless. Don't look at the job you didn't get and think you're worthless. Don't look at the money that you don't have right now and think you're worthless. Don't let worthlessness steal from you. The very thing that builds self worth, which is the effort, it's the effort that pushes the needle. It's the effort that pushes you forward. It's the effort that teaches you confidence. It's the effort that teaches you experience and wisdom, education and learning.
Don't do what I did. Don't waste a decade letting your sense of self worth hold you back from ultimately doing the very things and making the very impact that you need to make in this world. There is an impact, a destiny, a creative value that only you have. I can't do it for you. Your sister, your brother, your uncle, your cousin or whoever. They can't do it with you. They can't because you were created to bring this thing into the world and you can only bring that thing into the world by actually making it through the difficult times, making it through the uncomfortable times, pushing yourself past the pain limits to ultimately level yourself up in such a way that everyone that used to say you couldn't do it also becomes your greatest cheerleaders. Put yourself in a routine. Put yourself in a circumstance that is going to make you take action. When you take action.
