Confidence is an Asset That Overcomes Most Any Liability.

Business is not just about numbers.  Numbers are a big part of any business and they are the most common way to keep score, but they don’t tell the whole story.   Every day companies go out of business with a P/L sheet that look attractive on the surface.   Businesses break out and become iconic and successful with weak P/L sheets that most investors wouldn’t touch.   

Confidence by the leaders and key personnel is the first step to finding creative solutions to any challenge in your business.    

People sense fear and fear creates visions of failure, and a focus on the downside of any situation.  Anyone who has a business knows the challenge of assuring that they take care of their employees, the families of those employees, and themselves.   Failure is defined by the person who fails, not the onlookers.   One person “fails” and another “succeeds” when they are in the exact same set of circumstances.   

I will use my personal situation for reference, to see decision making moments and how the ideas below can be translated into action.

Here are a couple of keys that I have used to assuring that I never fail.  By my definition, I have never failed.  I have set many goals that haven’t come to fruition yet, as well as many which have.  My personal and business machine has never come to a stop and has never looked back.  We are always pushing forwards, with some clear goals, big dreams, and excitement, regardless of the challenges at the moment.  

1. Don’t quit.  So simple, but yet overlooked every time somebody does fail.  Most people see their situation as so dire at the moment that they feel to hang on and find a solution would allow them to drop too low, below their level of comfort.   If you require a high level of income, an emergency fund, and vacation time in order to continue on your quest, then you won’t likely achieve much that can’t be achieved by the person standing next to you.   
2. Proceed with confidence- Knowing that you haven’t failed until you have quit should inspire you and in order to develop a team to back you up, you’ll need to have a sense of confidence that they can commit to.  If you are not confident, you’ll fail… alone.  Nobody joins a team lead by somebody who isn’t sure they are going to make it work, and proves they’ll stick with it when things get difficult.  

Some tips for learning the habit of being confident, and inspiring confidence in others. 

1. Focus on the positive, Always!  Mitigating risk is one of the biggest killers of any good idea.  It takes the focus off of the end zone, puts you on defense, and doesn’t change the risk factors.   That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know what the risks are, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t look twice before crossing the road, but if the other side of the road is where you want to go, you commit to the crossing, look twice and go.   Once you begin focusing on the risks, it is impossible to find a way forward without the risks looming, and the way forward becomes a 1/2 commitment with one eye on the exit door at all times.   
2. Learn to use positive self talk and positive talk with others.  Use words like “I can” “I will” “I see opportunity” and “Let’s do this”.   Eliminate verbiage from your vocabulary that instills fear, and reduces motivation, and focuses on the negative like “I see risk”. “I have to” and “Yea, but…”.    

Finally- a way to look at your life that eliminates most fear and installs confidence and peace of mind.  Over time, it gets easier to do…

Decide what your priorities are for your life.  Make sure your goals fit within those priorities.  Remember that being a millionaire so you can enjoy your life with your family, isn’t a good goal if you will be ignoring your family to become a millionaire and likely not have them around when you get there.    With a clear priority list of the things most important to you, it is possible to structure your daily activities to take care of those priorities, in the order the fall, and create mutually beneficial situations for most or all of them.  

Example, my priority list is 4 deep (that is all I can manage, personally at the moment)-  

1. My wife, Kristine
2. My Kids, Emily, Dane, and KC (and now my grandkids and son-in-law fall in there)
3. My athletics (whitewater kayaking and fishing- they are on par with each other)
4. My business- Jackson Kayak and the main way I make a living and prepare for the future.

Certainly my business is very important to me, but for me to be confident and have no fear, it helps to know that I am taking care of the things that are even more important first, everyday.  I am doing my best to be a good husband and father and have structured my life to assure we spend quality time together.  I work only from home and we homeschooled the kids.  I have been able to spend 24/7 with my family most of the time.   This allows me to relax a little regarding my athletics and business.  I don’t feel like I am sacrificing my family in order to achieve my business goals.   

Athletics: I have been a professional kayaker for my entire adult life.  This was an endeavor that everyone considered to be very selfish when I was in my 20’s and also irresponsible.  It was considered a losing proposition and a waste of time beyond being fun by family, friends, teachers, etc..  That was because they were looking at the risk, not looking at the positives.  The risk was that nobody in the world ever made any money as a professional kayaker, and no athlete can expect to be at the top for very long, so “what will you do when you can’t kayak anymore?”   34 years later I am still on the USA Kayak team and expect to make it again in 2019.   

But that isn’t really the message I am trying to relay here… it is that I included my family in my athletics.  I taught my kids, I took my wife with me (starting in 1989 to the World Cup in Europe) and then in an RV full time in 1997 to all events, training, etc..  I turned my kayaking into a family affair.   Today my kids are both world champions, and my 10 year old has been around the world with us.     

I have added professional tournament bass fishing to my athletic roster.   If you look at my results for the first three seasons on the FLW Tour it goes: 143rd, 139th, 176th….  (out of 200).  I am winning at a professional fisherman in my mind and will win in other’s minds in the future.   That is the exact way you have to think about it for it to be true.   

There is no reality, only your perception of reality.   Now, you say, “Well this article is officially a waste of my time.”  Hold on, read to the end….   I AM getting my ass kicked on tour right now.  I am WELL Aware of that.  I am spending about $60,000/year between entry fees, equipment, and travel to fish the tour.  I have won ZERO prize money so far.  This is the EXACT moment that winners win and losers lose.   Confidence and having already decided that fishing the tour is what I WANT to do is how you win.   

I can’t wait to fish the first tournament of 2019, on January 10th in Texas.  Just the idea of being in that arena, against some of the best in the world, with a chance to prove myself and to put myself to the test again and see what I have learned this year is so exciting and motivating to me.  Winning is the GOAL, but fishing the tournaments is what I want to do.   You say… yea, but you have $60k, I don’t.   Ha, how do you know what I have, or don’t have?  That is a losing way to think.  I didn’t have it, I borrowed it my first year!  My second year I broke even with sponsors and my third year I made money fishing the tour with zero prize money earned, through sponsorships.   Failure? I have already seen multiple Pro’s who qualified for the tour the same year I started (2016) quit because they didn’t have enough success to consider continuing on.    I am just as motivated and excited as I was in my first season.  I love fishing the tour.  I am winning!!  Now, what about Angler of the Year, winning $125,000 checks, and the FLW Forest Wood Cup and $300,000, etc..?  That is another element of winning that I intend to have as well.  It will only happen with enough confidence that I stay charging ahead, learning, putting myself in position to win (on tour, trying hard with the best equipment and training I can find).   This is not unlike my kayak career which took 5 years of full time training to make the USA Kayak team for the first time… It took 3 years more to make the Olympics and 4 more years (9 total) before I won my first world championships.    

Business:  The good news with business is that most people recognize that they need to work hard for it to succeed.   The bad news is that the role models we have in society, starting with your parents, teachers, friends, and guidance counselors (for the most part) is that they will tell you you’ll need to truly sacrifice to succeed.   This, in my opinion, is one of the most damaging things the USA society and even more so in many other developed or developing countries has been taught.    I believe that everyone eventually recognizes that if they are sacrificing the things that are truly important to them everyday, for the long term goal of a “successful” business, they will make daily decisions that put them in a corner and it will be a decision of “business, or the rest of your life.”    Every step along the way is a step forward, you hope, for acheiving business success, but it is also a reminder that you are leveraging your family, health, and other important parts of your life for that success.  Since success in business is rarely defined, exactly, most people chase it for as long as they can and for every success, there is a new goal and no visible end zone.    If you have taken care of your priorities and are striving everyday to find mutually beneficial situations for all of your priorities, you can chase business goals for your entire life with little fear of failure.  You can be confident moving forward on any deal if you know that you are, at the same time, taking care of the other important things in your life.   You start creating win, win, win, win situations.  If something doesn’t work out like you hoped in the first year, or first decade, you have staying power.  You are not setting a time limit on chasing your dream because you are doing what you want to do WHILE chasing your dream.   Why stop chasing a dream if your daily activities are what you imagine you want to do even though you haven’t reached the end zone yet?   I am writing this article in Uganda, while kayaking with my kids, Emily and Dane, and my Jackson Kayak Team members, Jessie and Clay.   I am creating marketing for my business, preparing myself for the 2019 kayaking season, and spending quality time with my world champion kids.   My business as 150 employees and each one of them approach their work at Jackson Kayak differently.  I can only lead by example, and hope to inspire as many as possible to find a way to get their job done better than ever before, and be working daily in a way that is good for them.

 My End Game and Confidence:   I enjoy what I am doing.   It is extremely challenging to my mental intellect, my physical conditioning (staying competitive with 20 somethings in a very physical sport- kayaking that is.. no as much with fishing), and I get to do what I do with my family.    I still imagine and work daily to having a very high value business that is self sustaining and assures that my family, and my key people are taken care of.  I want to see my fishing career blossom on the results side and am willing to work hard for that.  I am signed up for my 2019 FLW Tour Season already, with deposit in.. I haven’t closed my sponsors for next year yet.  If I were to mitigate my financial risk, I would drop out of the tour for the year, as there is no evidence that my main sponsors will resign for 2019 yet.  If I want to succeed and I will succeed, then I will sign up and not give it a second thought.   Meanwhile- I am in the process of refinancing my house and getting some cash back.  I am hoping that will be an “emergency fund” but it could be used for my entry fees if I don’t secure my sponsorships soon.  Is that a good idea or bad?  Yes it is good or bad.  What is the difference?  Proceeding with CONFIDENCE.    Regardless of how this season goes, of what sponsors I get, or don’t get, I have a happy wife, and kids, and they are confident in me, because I am confident.  If the worst happens and I were to lose my house and my business, we would all still be happy.   We would proceed, with what we have and build something new, and enjoy the camaraderie of it all.   But, that isn’t going to happen, because, when you do “All you can do” it is enough.   Who doesn’t do all they can do?   Those who are focused on the risk, on the downside, and therefore can’t proceed without reservations, get paralysis by analysis and drag the entire team into a pace too slow to get off the ground.  

Eliminating your mental roadblocks:

1. Make a priority list, write it down.  What is really important to you, and in what order. (Mine are wife, kids, kayaking, fishing, business)
2. Make a To Do List:  Think of something you can do that would benefit Priorities #1 and #2… Find something that would benefit #3/#4… If you can find something that would benefit 1-4, then you have a real winner.   Some will be long term and some short term.   
3. Commit to everything on your to-do list.  Start working on it immediately.   If your list was truly based on your priorities, then there shouldn’t be anything more important to be doing at that moment.  

If you were honest with yourself on your list, and came up with some action items that would move you in the direction of your priorities, it should be almost instantaneous to go from the idea to committing, to the action items on your list.   If you are hesitating, you either don’t believe in your list, or don’t feel you can let go of the things you don’t have on your list.  You are right, you can’t have it all, but you can focus on the most important things in your life if you eliminate the things that are not as important. 

See you on the water!

:)

EJ