This Black History Month we are highlighting the perspectives of Black individuals from our community with a story to share. This blog marks the first in the series.
Image credit: Lisa Gilby ©SelfMadeAndSeen
Who Am I?
I am David Kamara, a young entrepreneur who launched a production company a few years ago. During my entrepreneurial journey, I unfortunately became significantly ill. My condition deteriorated to the point where I was bedridden with chronic pain. Unable to move or even talk, I voiced my opinions through messages on pen and paper. However, I can proudly say that I’ve overcome that chapter of my life, I’m fully mobile and have a lot to say! I learned a lot of lessons through my journey of entrepreneurship through adversity and I plan to share those lessons in this article.
Without A Good Self-image All of This Is Useless
A plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz once wrote a book (one of my favourites actually) called Psycho Cybernetics. In the book, he tells the story of a discovery he made as a surgeon. He found that, naturally, a lot of patients who came to him with “disfigurements”, experienced new heights of self confidence and esteem after his procedure, but that wasn’t always the case. Even after a drastic change in appearance, some of his clients, would insist they look the same as before and the surgeon didn’t do a thing. The amazed response of friends and family, even, before-and-after photos comparing the visible change of a scar removal from the client's face did little good to convince the patient, who insisted they saw no improvement.
Maltz wondered ‘What's the difference between successful and unsuccessful surgeries?’ The X factor he was looking for was found in the internal self-image. His findings show that we all carry a detailed mental blueprint of ourselves (whether we realise it or not). The self-image is built up from our beliefs about ourselves and is mainly formed unconsciously from past experiences –our triumphs and humiliations. The interesting thing is, once an idea goes into this concept of ourselves, it is “true”, as far as we’re personally concerned. Without questioning it, we act upon it as if it were true. This means your actions and behaviours are always consistent with the self-image, you act like the person you conceive yourself to be.
Psychology lecturer, Prescott Lecky, later theorised an idea of self-consistency, where the personality is a system of ideas that must be consistent with each other. Ideas inconsistent with the system are rejected and consistent ideas are accepted. At the core of this system is one’s concept of self.
The point I’m trying to make is that, in my experience, a lot of success in business comes from simply taking action. Yet, I’ve seen a lot of people hold themselves back because they don’t believe in themselves. As entrepreneurs, understanding the profound impact of our self-image is crucial, it can either empower us to act or shackle us with self-doubt. It’s not just about believing in our business idea but believing in ourselves as capable individuals to drive that idea to success.
The more you commit to becoming the best version of yourself, the more you like and respect yourself, the more your self-esteem and respect goes up and opportunities seem to be attracted to you. - Brian Tracy
You Might Be Falling Behind
In today’s world knowledge is becoming increasingly obsolete at a rapid rate. So, to stay relevant, you must develop the skill of continuous life-long learning. There’s a Brian Tracy quote that goes “Half of everything you know will be irrelevant in 2 years and 2 years from now half more”. The entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant expanded on this idea, saying “there’s an old model where you go to school, get your degree and work in that profession for 40 years but things change too fast now. Now, you have come up to speed in a new profession in 9 months and it’s obsolete 4 years later.” The point is, if you’re not continuously learning, you’re not even simply standing still, you’re falling behind.
Naval also made a valuable point when he said “one of the most important skills for achieving success is to become a perpetual learner. You should be able to take any book from the library shelf and learn it. As a perpetual learner, you’ll never be out of options to make money because you’ll always be able to see what’s coming in society - what the demand is and where there’s value.”
The highest paid people in our society are typically the people who know more on a particular subject. My suggestion is: limit the distractions and read in your field each day. If you can, take courses in your field and seek out mentorship. Mentors and coaches are people who have experienced doing what you want to do. They have put hundreds or thousands of hours into their practice and they've tested their methods. You can learn more from them in a few days than what you can learn alone in a few years.
Knowledge and skills are the keys to the 21st century - Peter Drucker
No One Is Coming To Rescue You
During my illness there was a period when I was consistently going back and forth to the hospital, seeking answers, medication, help… I don’t know. But one day I was in the room with the doctor, awaiting test results, and they weren’t able to diagnose the issue. I just wanted answers so that I could “fix” the situation, and that’s when the doctor who was looking through my medical information changed his tone of voice and levelled with me. He said something to the effect of “David, I’ll be honest I see all these medical professionals giving their opinions, but I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on. You're looking for a solution, but I don’t think anyone other than yourself is going to help. I think the solution is going to come from you.”
I immediately went home. I read what I needed to read, learned what I could about my condition. I started practicing what I learned, making intuitive decisions and setting plans to rectify the situation as best as I could.
It’s important to recognise that, aside from your family and loved ones, most people may not show the same level of concern for you. So, you must learn to find the saviour in yourself, and be the one to offer yourself the support, strength, or guidance that you’re looking for. The top performers in our society are typically those who see themselves in charge of their own lives.
There’s a concept on two modalities of thinking: external locus of control, the belief that things happen to you because of others, luck or timing etc. and internal locus of control, the degree to which you believe you have control over events in your life. Harvard Leadership Coach Shade Zihrai gave her opinion on the subject saying “I thought how is it possible that others who have objectively challenging lives - health complications, loss, divorce, etc - were able to remain so positive. They had a way of explaining everything as something that helped them grow. These two people are authors of their life story, one writing what I see to be a doom and gloom story, and the other about triumph through crisis.
Successful people always seek the valuable lesson in every failure or obstacles. Failures whine & cry and blame their problems on something outside of themselves.” - Brian Tracy
The truth is everyone is self-employed” - Brian Tracy
You’re Going To Take Some Ls (... a lot)
Life is never one continuous trend but a cycle of upward and downward trends. The most important question is ‘What is your general trend?’. One thing I’ve found every entrepreneur must come to terms with is that most ideas won’t work. The entrepreneurial life is like fight night you’re going to be knocked down, the key is
learning to bounce back and not break. Brian Tracy said, “life is a continuous series of problems, the people who succeed the most in life are those who just keep going”. Say to yourself right now, “During life things will inevitably go wrong but when they do, I’ll not get upset or cower, I’m going to take it on the chin and learn from it”
With this comes risk. Entrepreneurs take on risk by making themselves the face of their endeavours, and this too, requires resilience. Whenever you announce a project or initiative, or state your claim in the industry, you put yourself at the forefront of these initiatives. If it goes well, you gain credibility, but the downside is you risk failure and humiliation under your own name. Thankfully as Naval Ravikant put: “the people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power.”
We all know that persistence is a virtue, but the greatest test of resilience is when you can persist in the face of adversity. When everyone around you feels like quitting and when you’re tired and disappointed. The key to persistence is a strong belief in the work you do, fortunately, as Brian Tracy once said, “wonderfully enough the more you persist the more you believe in your work”.
As an entrepreneur you must accept that you’re going to have to work and typically do more than others. When others are on holiday, the business owner works. When others are idle in chit chat with coworkers, surfing the internet, whatever, the business owner works. This is because business owners understand the secret of business is that it’s by hook or by crook. Success in business isn’t pretty, you just gotta do what you gotta do to make the business work.
You Probably Forgot How To Think
Over half a century ago there was a medical missionary called Albert Schweitzer. In 1952 when asked the question “What’s wrong with men today?” he replied “Men simply don’t think”. We live in a world full of constant distraction and stimulation. Everything is seemingly fighting for our attention. Ask yourself: how often do we allow ourselves a set amount of time in the day just to think constructively on a specific subject, without distraction? The mind is an amazing piece of hardware. When you give the mind an aim, it will immediately produce ideas to meet it. Not only that, but it almost reconfigures the world in line with that aim.
Dr Maxwell Maltz described the brain as an automatic goal-striving machine. Once given a goal, like a self-aiming missile, it will automatically start moving towards its target, course correcting along the way in response to the environment. The mind is impersonal, it’ll work automatically to achieve goals of success and happiness, just as faithfully as it’ll strive for failure and unhappiness. It just needs clear-cut goals, objectives and problems.
According to Maltz the goals our mind seeks to achieve are mental images, with the key goal-image being the self-image. It defines the limits of accomplishing a goal, i.e. “the area of possible”. In the mind's eye, an aim is neither too ambitious nor modest. Instead, it tirelessly orchestrates our actions, rearranging the world around us to align with the image we've formed.
Author and Marketing Strategist Seth Godin once said, “If you know how to solve interesting problems you’ll always be able to find a job and you’ll always be able to create value” The act of providing solutions to a problem stimulates creativity.
A powerful technique that I practice is to put pen to paper and define the problem or objective in the form of a question. This triggers the creative mind to suggest answers. Earl Nightingale called this technique Gold-mining, Brian Tracy named it mind storming but the formula is the same. Write your objective at the top of a page as a clear and specific question and let solutions arise from wherever that mysterious place is where thoughts seem to arise.
You can do it each day for as little as 10 minutes in the morning but try for at least 5 ideas. Some of those ideas may suck, most of them will, but it takes one good idea to change your life. I try to do this every working day. 5 ideas each day for 5 days a week, that’s 25 ideas a week. and give or take 100 ideas a month. All together roughly 1,200 ideas a year, and we just need one good idea!
You’re Going To Be Taken Advantage Of (less mentally positive - more mentally tough)
It’s important that you get strict on your time, resources and assets. Unfortunately, in business, people will unintentionally and sometimes purposely take advantage of you.
So, we need to set up measures to protect our time and assets. In my experience, you’ll find that almost everything wants to take your money: unmonitored subscriptions, missed tax filings, bad investments, unrendered services, and so on. So it’s vital we become vigilant. Preparation is your shield.
In my opinion, a lot of business development resources and coaches fail to confront certain realities you’ll face in business, and I think I understand why - the reality is a hard sell.
What I do not want to do, is to appear as if I’m simply suggesting to have a positive attitude and that over a long enough period of time, it’ll bring you success. Instead, you must be prudent, realistic and well-prepared.
The somewhat controversial American entrepreneur, Robert Ringer, wisely noted “A true positive mental attitude is developed by understanding the realities of what it takes to succeed and by having the self-discipline to base your actions on those realities. The more prepared a person is the more confident he becomes, which translates into a natural positive mental attitude”.
In most cases, the only way you’re going to know about these realities is through experience. It’s a continuous game of reiterating your process so that you come back more and more fortified. If someone doesn’t deliver on a service you paid for; you learn to always test services through deposits. Your time is repeatedly wasted by a no-show in a business meeting; you learn to spot unreliable associates, confirm meetings and become a lot more reserved with whom you engage with in business. You don’t receive what you verbally agreed to; so, you learn to always draft clear written contracts. Yet still, you feel taken advantage of through a loophole you didn’t notice. That's when you learn to amend the contract to protect yourself in that specific area; and, you keep amending the contract, and you keep amending the contract. Each negative result is a learning experience, and that’s it.
You Might Not Have The Right People Around You
Brian Tracy said that “every major change in your life is accompanied by a person or persons who either opens or closes doors for you.” So, a key success factor is to develop an ever-widening circle of contacts, you are sowing seeds of people who’ll be willing to help you down the line.
I learnt a valuable lesson one day when I visited my grandma who was in a hospital bed fighting cancer. The room was full of various people who were ready to offer their support and help in her time of need. Then, I remember my mum turned to me and she said “David, do you know why there are so many people here? In your grandma’s lifetime she was always kind and always offered her help and so all these people are here to repay that kindness in any way they can during this hard time”. At that moment, I thought to myself that’s the kind of person I want to be.
In addition to building strong connections, you, also,have to be around the right people. Dr. David McClellan said “more than 95% of your success will be determined by your reference group” - These are the people you habitually associate with day to day. We are like sponges; we absorb the average opinions, behaviours and attitudes of the people we spend the most time around.
The last point I want to add to this topic is to never dismiss or write anybody off. You never know who people will become. Someone who you think can offer you no value today may be the very person you need tomorrow, so always treat people with respect and kindness – regardless if they’re ‘serving’ you in that moment or not.
You’re Probably Wasting Your Time
Napoleon Hill said the master key to riches is the quality of self-discipline, the ability to force yourself to do the things you know you should do when you should do it. In my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve learned to consistently reflect to make sure I'm only working on the most important tasks, otherwise you’re wasting time. I always start my work with the Eisenhower method to determine in the order of: what’s most important, what could potentially be delegated and what needs to be abandoned. Especially, when starting a business, you won’t have many resources and your output won’t be high, so it’s crucial you’re only focusing on important tasks that genuinely move the needle.
This extends to other aspects of the business too. Focus on what will actually put tangible money in your pocket. With marketing for example, a lot of people will focus on vanity metrics like likes or views, but you want to focus on metrics tied to immediate revenue. As small businesses we want to focus on the cost of acquiring customers or click through rates for example, the things that drive results, rather than the longer term tasks of brand awareness or community building.
Focus on building assets not status. An instagram campaign may look appealing but maybe you're a B2B business and LinkedIn prospecting or email newsletters works better. The outward display is unimportant, even though you may have this ideal image of your business, it doesn’t matter right now, it just needs to work!
A wise man once said “The worst activity is doing something that need not be done” - can’t remember the source.
Early in my career, I tended to spend a great deal of time on projects that were side issues. As I became conscious of my error, I worked hard to develop the habit of qualifying every project by asking myself - does this bring me closer to achieving my goals? If the answer was no, I eliminated it. - Robert Ringer
You Should Probably Quit What You’re Doing
There was a dark period during my illness when I just didn’t have the strength to work on my business, so I decided to put the business on hold. The issue wasn’t that I decided to take the time to focus on my health but that in doing nothing my sense of self-worth diminished and I became deeply discouraged.
I happened to cross paths with a colleague who not only was working in the same field as me but had experienced a similar illness in the past. She started to get me involved in projects again, to which I was hesitant at first as I didn’t want to overwork myself. Yet, when doing the work, I discovered the strangest thing. I started to feel better, even if it was just a little bit. It was almost as if the work I was doing was food for my soul. I realised that this is the work I wanted to do. For me, this story serves as personal evidence in the power of passion-driven work.
There’s a Japanese concept called “Ikigai” which is a method for finding a true sense of purpose. Interpreted it’s finding work where; what you're good at and what you love doing intersect with what the world needs and will pay you for. Typically, successful people are excellent at what they do, and mastery is achieved through a lot of hours invested in it. For this reason, usually, the hours needed to achieve mastery are met in the activities you’re obsessed with.
If you don’t know yet what you should be working on, then that is the most important thing you need to figure out” - Naval Ravikant
We All Judge Books By Their Covers: A mini-science lesson on Magnets (Bonus)
We live in a world where people may judge you or your value based on your appearance. So it’s a good idea to develop a positive image and take the time to present yourself well. In understanding the way people perceive value, you’ll find that presenting an attractive image in your clothing, countenance, speaking and online presence etc. will seemingly cause opportunities to be drawn to you almost like magnetism.
Something seemingly strange that I do, is that I have these sets of tiny but powerful magnets that I fiddle with in my pockets most days. There are several of them and alongside their opposite facing poles they stack on top of one another, even if I place my thumb between them with strong force, they’ll find a way to magnetise. In the same way when I hold two of the same facing poles towards each other they repel. Even when I try as hard as I can to connect them, it’s impossible to do, the force generated is like a barrier. I keep these magnets in my pocket as a reminder and repeatedlyask myself: is the way I’m acting, thinking and speaking drawing me towards my goals or repelling?
OUTRO
If you enjoyed reading my article, want to chat business or life lessons feel free to drop me a note on Linkedin. I’m happy to make new connections and can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-kamara-5a4a801b3/