Ep. 135 – Climbing mountains and entrepreneurial success – The 2nd part – Listen to a few more of the most amazing mountains’ stories you heard
Episode 135 Show Notes
This is the second part of the Reach Or Miss mountains project;
Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast
From the incredible story about the film Manjhi – The Mountain Man,
To climbing day after day for a week the beautiful mountains of Montana in Yellowstone,
To climb the mountain of going from a hobby to leaving your solid nine-to-five job and start trading full time for a living,
to climb the huge mountain of losing the love of your life, and then, 4 years later, to be diagnosed with cancer,
Or making a promise to climb the Kilimanjaro: “I’ve made a decision in my life that I’m not going to be afraid of the things I’ve never done before.”
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 brand.
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.
Smita Nair Jain “one should never give up no matter how impossible to climb-on their mountain seems to be.”
Smita Nair Jain is currently the Senior Divisional Vice President at Sears Holdings India and prior to that she was Chief Operating Officer at Barclays in India.
She is passionate today about four topics: social media; Inclusion and Diversity, Mentoring and having a greater engagement with the youth of today.
Smita’s Mountain
- I don’t climb mountains and not going to climb any. However, I would like to use it metaphorically and tell a story. It’s about a movie called Manjhi – The Mountain Man. My husband is a filmographer who was awarded for filming this movie.
- The story is about Dashrath Manjhi, who was a poor man from the lowest of the low castes, living in a remote village cut off from the world by a rocky mountain range. Life for him was a daily struggle for survival. He loved his wife Phaguniya, beyond belief and together they had a son. One day, while climbing the mountain to bring him food, his wife, who was pregnant slipped, fell, and died. Overwhelmed by grief, Dashrath decided to carve out a path through the mountain, so that no one else would suffer his fate. For 22 years, all by himself, with just a hammer and a chisel, he hammered away at the rocks, till the path was carved out from the mountain.
- Every time I watch the movie, I just think that one should never give up no matter how impossible their mountain seems to be.
Dwayne J. Clark – From growing up poor to employs more than 3k staff members that served over 60k residents. Dwayne believes that good always trumps evil.
- I’m not a mountain climber. I did set my treadmill to a 12% grade this morning, if that counts. But I do have a mountain climber story. I have a good friend, named Fred, and he’s a CEO of one of the largest latex glove companies in the world, very successful company. 10 years ago, he said to me, “I’m going to become a mountain climber.” When your friends say things like that, you often shrug them off, right? The following week, I see him walking 10 miles with a 100 pound pack on his back, and he told me he was practicing to climb a mountain; one of the highest peaks in the world. Over the course of the last 10 years, he’s climbed 6 of the 7 peaks, and been to Everest base-camp. And he took his 12 year old son with him to the Everest base-camp. He also climbed Kilimanjaro with his son. He’s trying to install this stellar attitude about pushing through pain.
Vladimer Botsvadze: We need to climb mountains, not so the world can see us, but so we can see the world. The best view always comes after the hardest climb, so we have to put in the work.
- We need to climb mountains, not so the world can see us, but so we can see the world. We need to conquer ourselves. We have desire – this is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness was ever accomplished without desire. And the best view always comes after the hardest climb, so we have to put in the work. If we don’t have desire, we will never achieve anything, and when we have desire, nothing can stop us. Nobody can stop winners from winning. … All I ever wanted is to build my dream.
- I see many successful entrepreneurs, and influencers and thought leaders in social media who work every single day, no matter what, who keep moving forward and inspiring their audiences, their communities, and that is fantastic and I’m proud to be part as such community!
Angela Maiers founded the global movement, Choose2Matter in 2014. The non-profit organization grew out of the impassioned response to a TEDTalk she gave on the power of two simple words, that went viral. YOU MATTER
Angela has been listed as one of IBM’s Top 20 Global Influencers, named by Forbes as one of the Top 5 Education Leaders to Watch, in 2017 and 2018, and is among Huffington Post’s Top 100 Social Media Influencers!
- I just spent a week in Yellowstone, in the beautiful mountains of Montana, and went hiking every day. Each day we took a different path and each day we pushed ourselves differently than we did on the previous day.
- There was a group of about 100 people. Every day, I asked, “Who wants to go hiking with me?” Now, nobody wants to do it because they see it’s a mountain and then it’s just too hard.
- A lot of the population doesn’t have the endurance, doesn’t have the vision, doesn’t have the adaptability or even the confidence to try.
- When you’re in the mountains, the actual mountains, it’s the most beautiful time to reflect on your journey.
Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe is a strategic digital marketing executive who is fluent in 4 languages and specializes in developing business through digital, influencer and social media marketing.
I grew up around mountains in Italy in an area called Abruzzo, which, if you are familiar with the books of Ernest Hemmingway, it’s mentioned in the book, For Whom The Bell Tolls.- So, my relationship with mountains is somewhat romantic, but also when you think in a literal sense, I’ve had my fair share of them in my personal live. First, the first mountain was losing George. And that was the Mt. Kilimanjaro.
- And then, 4 years ago, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. That was a big mountain as well because as an entrepreneur, it was very difficult for me to take that kind of time away from my business. I couldn’t square that; really understand that I had to do this because if I didn’t, I may not survive. In each instance, I think the thing that got me through was the thing that I love the most and that is work. My work is the stick I use to climb my mountains.
- Something I want to say to all entrepreneurs when it comes to mountains or obstacles, don’t give up. Never give up. Anything is possible. I’m the perfect example of somebody who came from a completely different industry and had this idea, had this someone beside me that was willing to give me the courage to do it. Don’t give up; that’s the most important thing.
Paul Bratby: “one in 10000 tech startups are in profit in the first year. We are profitable in our first year.”
Paul is the founder of Trade The Fifth, an Elliott Wave program designed to educate traders and investors on the financial markets so they can take responsibility for their own portfolios and trading accounts by learning how to ride the profitable Fifth Wave setup.
- I used to climb a lot of mountains in the UK really to a thing called the Three Peaks. I was in the army. We used to go to three of the biggest peaks in the UK, and it was a competition. Oh, so I did that from an early age. I probably wouldn’t be able to do that right now because, you know, they’re quite tough. So, you know, as a young person, I liked those challenges. So we used to say in the army, look down, and it’s not uphill. Just keep looking at your feet, putting one foot in front of the other, and you’ll get to the top.
- Now, from a metaphorical point of view, what I really love right now is to watch our customers turn from part-time trainers that work a full-time job, but get up early in the morning, two or three hours before they go to work and they train.
- So, going from a hobby to trading full time for a living that’s one of the biggest mountains that I’d like to watch our customers climbing. And that’s massive for me because I’ve climbed the mountain. I live a great life now, but I’m actually helping other people do it. And for me, that is amazing because I felt that pain and I climbed to the top, and now I help others to get it.
- Success stories. Almost every week we help our customers climb the mountains. And it is so much more rewarding.
- I try as much as I can to interact with our customers because I want them all to achieve their dream.
Melinda Emerson “SmallBizLady” is America’s #1 Small Business Expert, She has published over 5000 articles on small business on her blog. Her advice is widely read, reaching more than 3 million entrepreneurs each week online. She is the bestselling author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, 2nd Edition, and her latest book is Fix Your Business.
- “I’ve done a few rock climbing but I’ve never climbed a real mountain. My brother did; he climbed mount Kilimanjaro with some friends, and when he told me about that I said ‘you know what?’ One day I’m going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
- All I’ve got to do is to be invited to Tanzania or Kenia to speak and I’ll go there.
- I’ve made a decision in my life that I’m not going to be afraid of the things I’ve never done before.”
- And that’s my dear friends, probably the most important sentence any true entrepreneur would tell you.
- Take it with you to your entrepreneurial journey. You will use it often.
- The combination of that sentence with the consistency Melinda chose as the One Key Success Factor, will help you reach your entrepreneurial success much faster.
Mount Kilimanjaro
“Epilog..”
I hope you enjoined this 2nd part of my ‘Mountains’ episodes .
Now you can choose whether and what you would like to do next as a reaction to this episode.
As I see it you have 4 options.
First, you can of course o nothing that has to do with this show, go to do what ever you want or planned or just switch to the next podcast.
Second, you can enjoy the stories, be inspired and take the courage and massive strength needed 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, their stories you love best, or choose me, to connect, ask questions, find what else you can learn from them (they all have plenty of free very professional content on their sites) or even find out if they can be your mentor if they give that service.
And last, but not least, you can download my free guide for the 7 elements of Entrepreneurial Business Success that will help you make the best plan for the coming months that can help you reach your wishes and goals in the 1st half of 2020.
Until next week’s episode, by-by.
Hayut.
