Climbing mountains and entrepreneurial success – A few of the most amazing mountains’ stories you heard
Climbing mountains and entrepreneurial success –
A few of the most amazing mountains’ stories you heard
And what should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary step to reach your peak?
Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.)
For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains.
You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another company.
The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.
“In military warfare, mountains and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the mountains in the consumer's mind.”
So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.
Listen to these inspiring stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.
We collected 30 of the most exciting, inspiring and educating mountain stories I heard from my interviewees on the REACH OR MISS successful podcast (Among iTunes top 100 podcasts for management & marketing).
The mountain story of Jeremy Liddle
Jeremy Liddle: Entrepreneur for 16 years. Co-founder & Exec Director of CapitalPitch. President, G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (YEA) Aus-tralia for 5 years. Represents Australia in youth employment and entre-preneurship at the United Nations. Published author on startups and TEDx speaker
- Ever since I was little, I watched this cartoon named City of Gold about the Aztec, Incan, and Mayan civilizations; it was about this kid searching for temples. I’ve been obsessed ever since with Machu Picchu in Peru, and I recently got to go there! Finally, after 20+ years, I got to go a month ago. I’d heard stories that the mountains would be completely clouded over and sometimes you don’t get to see anything. In thinking about this question, it’s kinda similar to the entrepreneurial journey.
- I finally got there, it was cloudy and imperfect, and I was potentially going to be very disappointed. But there’s this old mountain that’s the most old Machu Pichu mountain, anyway, hundreds people up there each day and it’s 600 meters almost straight up, it’s super hard, it takes about an hour to hike up there. After I barely got a glimpse of the Machu Picchu temples, I hiked up this mountain and hiked it in 45 minutes, absolutely killed myself getting up there; you could see Machu Picchu peek through the clouds that looked like they were starting to clear, and then when I went back down, it was like the heavens opened, and it was just absolutely beautiful and couldn’t have been more perfect.
- Sometimes, the heavens just open with entrepreneurship, and after a lot of hard work, things align and it all becomes easier for a while and that’s exactly what happened to me on my mountain climbing journey.
Jeremy on Machu Picchu Mountain
Mellissah Smith
Mellissah Smith is a marketing expert, author, writer, public speaker, and technology innovator who worked with more than 300 companies, and then founded Robotic Marketer an AI based technology that develops marketing strategies.
- I haven’t climbed any significant mountains. I do go up to the mountains to ski but I always do so on a lift, so that doesn’t really count, I guess. But I suppose that I have a business mountain that I’m looking to conquer. I never thought it would be possible and it was never my dream but when it became a reality, it made me think differently: to have a business with a one-billion-dollar market cap. It’s really something that I’d never thought about but, with this technology company, things have suddenly changed.
Mark W. Schaefer
Mark W. Schaefer is a globally recognized author, speaker, podcaster, and business consultant who blogs at {grow} — one of the top five marketing blogs of the world.
His many global clients include Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the US Air Force.
- I grew up in West Virginia, which is called the mountain state. A few years ago I had an opportunity to climb the highest mountain in America outside Alaska. Mount Whitney in California in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 16000 feet, which is very difficult. When you stand on the top of the mountain, you can look down on planes! I did OK until the last 1000 feet. At that point, I felt I couldn’t continue, but I couldn’t stop either because I was with my friends. So, I just watched the feet of the person in front of me and kept going. I had to find a mental framework to keep going, even when my body was ready to quit.
- It was one of the most profound lessons I have learned; consistency is more important than genius. I never would of made it if I had quit.
- You have to find a way to keep going.
Mount Whitney, California
Lance Scoular
Lance Scoular, AKA The Savvy Navigator, an International expert who has been involved in International Trade, export, import and Transport for 50 years;
Over the last nine years, he has developed and expanded his social media networks exponentially (especially LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and beBee) with more than 300K followers.
- Sandie and I went a five weeks vacation in Europe, and Sandie loved the 1959 film, “Third man on a mountain”, which was filmed on the Matterhorn. So one night we arrived at the mountain resort Zermatt near the Matterhorn. We went out to the small balcony of our room and we could see the glistening summit of the mountain, the snow was glistening in the moonlight, Sandie was overwhelmed, and this was the other hand of the spectrum of the valley we fell to when we had to sell our house. It was this magical moment for us.
Christopher S. Penn
Christopher S. Penn is a recognized thought leader, best-selling author, and keynote speaker. He has shaped four key fields in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing, modern email marketing, and artificial intelligence/machine learning in marketing.
- In the martial arts tradition I practice, there’s a spiritual component as well. One of the things I will be doing in the next 10-20 years of my lifetime is going to Japan and doing the marathon monk course at least once on a mountain called Mt. Hiei in Japan. There’s a course that is approximately 26 miles, or about 42 kilometers, and that, as part of the ordination, you have to walk that circuit every day for 7 days for the basic ordination, which is a heck of a lot of walking! But the reason for it is that it helps take you on a journey. Here’s the funny part: climbing the mountain is not the big deal; yes, it’s a long path but because it’s a circuit, it is the journey that is the important part, not getting to the top. There isn’t a destination.
Mount Hiei | Japan
about how they achieved their remarkable success.
Now, after having heard this episode, you can choose what you would like to do next.
As I see it, you have 4 options.
First, you can, of course, do nothing in regards to this show. Simply do whatever you had previously planned, or just switch to the next podcast.
Second, you can enjoy the stories, be inspired by them, and gain the courage and strength necessary to take your entrepreneurship to a much higher level than you did in the last few months.
Third, you can choose one or more of the inspiring, successful interviewees and their stories – or choose me – to connect with and ask questions about so that you can learn from them. (They all have plenty of free professional content on their sites.) You can even enquire about whether they would be your mentor, if they offer that service.
And last but not least, you can download my free guide to the 7 Elements of Entrepreneurial Business Success. This will help you create the best plan for the coming months – one that will help you achieve your goals during the first half of 2020.
