Edition 33 - Can success be tamed into becoming a habit.

Hey folks. ????

Thanks for coming back to my weekly newsletter, last week’s got rather existential with Deputy CEO Jason Bates and I talking about the meaning of life, so bringing it back to current affairs today. ??

Right now I’m in Singapore at the Fintech Festival delivering this very blog today as part of the SFF Voices. How’s that for a turnaround?! The speaking slot is 10 minutes, which for some people would be easy, but as my team can attest, keeping to that short amount of time for me is a huge challenge! I always have stuff to say.?

The premise of the event as you can probably guess by the title is leadership career stories, so this landed me on talking about the two things that have by far made me the most successful to date in what I’m doing: attitude and effort.?

How can both these seemingly simple things be made into a habit and not just a one and done??

Caveat: You’ll have to close your eyes and imagine me gesturing, giving intense eye contact and walking around a stage while reading this one.?

Let’s double click. ????

My journey so far.?

I will be, by quite a long margin I suspect, the least intelligent person you’ll hear from on this stage today. There are some truly amazing people with some truly amazing stories that you’re going to hear.

Now this isn’t to say that I’m dumb, but if you read every school report I ever got growing up it would say how well-dressed and polite I was but mostly that I just didn’t try hard enough. This was true in all subjects but one - sports.?

From the earliest days when I could run I was winning races. I remember vividly first school, junior school and high school competing in 11 county sports against much bigger boys than me. If I wanted to master a new shot or move then I would practise it for hours on my own until I was done. As it was my passion it never really felt like work, something that has helped us set the tone for building the culture at our company, 11:FS, today.?

Sadly though, when I was 19, one bad move and a bad landing, I tore all the ligaments in my left knee. I went from having a routine training session to a knee the size of a watermelon in about 90 seconds. Dream over.

At this point, I learnt that coasting through schooling was probably not the best of ideas. I knew right there and then the sad reality; I had to get a proper job, and fundamentally change career overnight. I was distraught. How was I going to get away with coasting in the real world??

Spoiler alert: I didn't.?

My dad took me to one side with a stack of papers and said “son, pick a career in an industry that will still be broken by the time you come out of schooling”. My dad was in oil and gas so naturally that industry made the list - I mean nepotism seemed like a good strategy to get ahead to me. The two other industries that I could see having potential were computing, as this thing called the internet looked like it might have some legs, and then banking which was going through a continued cycle of transformation after transformation after transformation after transformation… you get the idea.?

Thankfully when I was 5, the same year I picked up my first basketball, I also picked up my first computer - a beautiful Amstrad 1512 - and I developed a flair for programming and networking. With these foundations, I got a little greedy in my industry decision-making and went into how computing and technology could be applied to financial services.

At this point, I embarked on a computing degree. It went okay. I brought my sportsman showmanship to some very quiet computing professors and students who I think wanted a quieter life also. On results day, I learned that I'd messed up though, getting a grade that 100,000s of other people had.?

I've always had a sense of being an individual and would do amazing things to be considered one. Knowing that I was as good as everyone else was a huge trigger to me. I'd presumed natural ability would get me through but as we all know today that means absolutely nothing in the business world. Right there, holding onto those yellow railings that still haunt my dreams, I vowed to work harder and apply myself more than anyone else in the room, just like I had for my passion in my sporting days.?

So what's the secret to success??

This is all I have done ever since from that moment moving forwards to standing in front of you today.?

The not-so-secret-sauce.?

If we do the right things that focus us in the right direction, then we will be more likely to succeed. For me that goes for anything in life. This led me to a life altering realisation that I remind myself and those around me of on a daily basis; we all are, just fundamentally, what we do every day.??

The key here is what you do, not what you say you do.?

Success is therefore not an act but a habit, and a habit that anyone can unlock as a superpower given the right conditions. So while many attribute external factors to their lack of traction, blaming an issue or failure on someone else, then in my experience there really are only two main behaviours that create the right conditions for success. These are the behaviours that have allowed me to make up for average intelligence and succeed where others have not.?

These two behaviours are Attitude and Effort.?

It seems too obvious to be true doesn't it, given all the management books and gurus telling you that some secret diet or productivity hack will get you to the top or into that little black dress. Sadly there is no 60 second abs for being successful, just the right attitude and the right effort applied consistently that is needed.

• Your attitude is how you react to the world. When you’re faced with success or faced with failure - How do you choose to respond? Is your mindset fixed or are you open and able to be positive when faced with the challenges the world presents to you?
• Your effort is simply put how hard you work and how long you can sustain it. Through your effort and your learnings also how smart you are able to work to increase your efficiency and free yourself from repeating the same tasks and the time it takes to do so.

?With the right level of both of these things in place and over a sustained period of time, then amazing things will result and opportunities will present themselves to you.?

So with these two things understood:?

Who determines your attitude??

THAT'S YOU ISN'T IT.

Who determines your effort??

That's YOU again ISN'T IT.

Not your friends, your family, your manager, your parents or anybody else but YOU control your attitude and your effort are controlled by you. How you show up with your attitude and how much effort you put into everything in your life will determine how successful you are and more fundamentally how happy you will be more broadly. Whether it's you folks today, or my son and daughter that I talk about this to all the time, then we are all masters of our own destiny if we choose to do so. We are not passengers, but the drivers of our own lives and we should take comfort and motivation from this.

Whether your goal is to smash a test, get that promotion, master a new football skill or whatever it is you want to achieve in life. It will be determined by your attitude and your effort, whether you come close to achieving it or not..?

So when times are tough take these learnings and use them to motivate yourself into actions. Actions that move you from hopes and wishes to behaviours that drive you forwards towards your own personal or professional goals on a daily basis.

You fundamentally are just what you choose to do every day. And building the right habits to consistently do the right things with the right attitude and with the right level of effort will make anything possible.

I am proof of this standing in front of you today.

For me, it’s like the basic theory around jumping that I bring to you from my basketball days - if you look up you will always go further and if you look down you will always fall short.

So my advice… look up everybody and make being successful a habit you embrace; today… and every day.

Thank you.?

And scene.?

Until next week folks. ????

Dx?