Its quite scary when you take time out to think back at how many people you have met, how many places you have been and how many things you have seen during your life – im only 27 and it feels like i have a million years worth of memories in my head already!
Its during these moments of reflection when we remember the people, places and things that have positively (and negatively) influenced our lives, and feel grateful for meeting them and experiencing all the things life throws at you.
I cant speak for everyone, but i seemed to get myself involved in lots of things when i was growing up, whether it was starting a mobile disco business with a loan from my aunty when i was 13, or being a founding member of what is one of the most well known modified car clubs in the UK – right through to being the founder of the greatest forum, and worlds only adidas superstar forum – the SSDB. And along the way i have met some awesome people who have helped me grow and have had an amazing positive influence on my life.
One thing i find myself doing is taking little snippets of advice from the people i meet while im living my life, sometimes its something they say, sometimes its a physical action, but whatever it is it stays with me for life.
For example, an amazing influence on my business life was a man called John Leaver, he worked for LEO and was probably the best business advisor i have ever encountered. He sat me and Dave down one day in an meeting he rented just for this occasion at the ICentre in mansfield – all at his own expense – as we were struggling to run make our business profitable enough. He spent a good few hours going over every detail, and gave us advice in many areas of our business, but the main thing that stuck with me was this single quote;
“Guys, you are spending too much time doing what you want to do – and not enough time on the stuff you need to do. “
Now that may not hit home with you like it did with me, but at the time we were working on a few projects that were consuming our time entirely, and not making anywhere near enough return for the amount of work we were putting in – and, we were neglecting things we could have been doing that would have brought in more money.
Its so easy to miss something that is right in front of your face.
Needless to say, we walked out that room and the next day was the first day of our new, successful business.
That quote has stuck with me, and is never far from my thoughts when we start thinking of new projects, ideas, and discuss things that could quite easily distract us from our main core business.
I keep these memories with me at all times, and the people i have met and created these memories with are never far from my thoughts even if i dont see them from one year to the next.
Live your life with your eyes and ears wide open 🙂
We’re been mucking about with various motorcycle related web shops, but to be honest despite getting great results with our single product sites – we had a nightmare managing things, so we decided to put all our eggs in one basket and attack things properly.