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This is a story I use in some of my programs, where I had a student that was going to open a Mediterranean restaurant. He needed about $130,000 to do that. He was all excited about it and was confident in its ability to be a huge success.

When you get an idea that you’re passionate about, you better feel that way. If you don’t, how can you expect anybody else to? The thing is…while that’s good, you gotta use your head, too, or else you can end up losing your ass!

So this student says to me, “I have the best shawarma,” a kind of a pita filled with roasted lamb or chicken. He says, “I have the best recipe. It comes handed down from generations.” I asked him if he had ever done this before.

“No, but I’ve got the recipe. I make this at home all the time, so now I’m going to open up my restaurant.”

The obvious question is: how would he know the restaurant’s going to work?

“Well of course it’s going to work. It’s the best shawarma.”

This guy didn’t have any money, so I advised him that instead of taking a huge risk by taking out this huge loan, why not try it out first and then see if people really do like it? I encouraged him to try this recipe out on the public in a smaller way, say, catering a picnic? Or maybe get a stand at a fair or something like that.

He actually took my advice and went to a county fair, a small one. It only cost him $30 for a table and the whole bit. He brought his rotisserie thing from his house, the one that he actually uses, brought his pitas and all that. He sets up a booth, and you know what happens? Not too many people liked it.

He’d give them little tasters and few people were turning around and saying, “Okay, I’ll take the whole thing.”

“I don’t know what happened, ” he says. “I mean, I made it exactly the same.” When I asked where the fair was where he was selling his shawarma, sure enough, his audience were Protestant or Catholic-types, not the audience he really needed: people who know and like shawarma or people who are perhaps a little more culturally curious. Different strokes for different folks.

I advised him to try again in a neighborhood that’s more similar to where he lives. When he went to the multicultural areas of town, he couldn’t keep the stuff on the shelves, so to speak.

When he was explaining this newfound success to me, tears were coming down from his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” I asked, “Well what for?”

He told me that the location of the restaurant he was going to open–by borrowing $130,000–was going to be in the heart of what he thought would be the biggest traffic area in the city: the Protestant, Catholic part. He would have lost everything.

He had been telling himself that people who are multicultural and/or Middle Eastern would already know how to make this stuff themselves, so why would they need him? Clearly, his assumption was mistaken.

Another amazing thing he noticed? For the people that did take his samples and liked it, they’d congregate around his stand and actually engage each other in conversation. They were networking and talking about their homelands, whereas those in his first trial run took a sample and just walked away.

He realized that the restaurant he needed to build and create couldn’t just be like a normal restaurant, where tables tend to be set up so that people have their “privacy”: in other words, separate and further apart.

The place he needed to create would have to be a bar-type of thing where people can congregate and talk, schmooze, with a substantial outside patio, tables closer together, etc.

Guess what? He’s opened his sixth restaurant as you read this. Nice, yes?

Start small and start smart. Know whose problem you’re solving, what they’re like, what they seem to enjoy and respond to, and don’t lose your ass doing it. The smaller you start, the more important things you can learn about your audience and your product, the more you give yourself a chance to grow fast!

Any experience with this yourself? Tell us your story…we want to hear from you!

Circumstances never make you happy or unhappy. Circumstances are neutral. They’re always neutral until you step into the picture.

You don’t need to focus on happy. You’re already happy. It’s a given.

Do you focus on having skin? Do you focus on having a hand? Eyes? For those of us who are fortunate to have them, we don’t.

Happiness is no different. It’s a birthright. It’s what the universe intends for us. Look at the beauty of nature in its various shapes and forms and textures, or the awe-inspiring abundance of a universe that we will never literally ever understand. How can beauty and happiness not be at least a part of our birthright (along with the challenges of being human that come with that also)?

It’s natural. It’s God-given. It’s already there within us. What an amazing gift. What would we possibly need to focus on?

Yet, that’s exactly how we make ourselves unhappy.

These are simple, simple things, but most people don’t understand the simple things because they were never taught them. This is a hard thing to do for most people. The biggest obstacle you have to frickin’ overcome is the one that is looking right at you in the mirror. You overcome that, you have no more obstacles.

I have talks with my students. They are reminded of this lesson in real life, we get it, and then we’re good to go, right? Yeah, no, it doesn’t work that way.

I could say the same thing in a different way every month and they’d go, “Oh, yes. Right. Of course!” Even for me, these things are not so easy to implement in every unfolding moment, but I’m here to remind us anyway.

Observe yourself. It’s usually either circumstances or certain people that we allow to agitate us. Then we get into a whole inner discussion about how this person says this, they didn’t do this … how could we not be agitated at that point?

So I guess we’re going to have to do what?

Practice! Practice not allowing things to agitate you. “But Harv, you know what this person just said to me? That is just out of line. They lied to me.”

That’s fine, but do you want to be happy or unhappy? “I want to be happy.” Then let it frickin’ go!

“I have to do business with this person.” No, it’s a choice. You do or you don’t. “They’re my boss, Harv. I have to.”

Really? Show me the gun that they’re holding to your head. Where is it? “There’s no gun, but I need the money.” Okay, so you’re making a choice.

Always remember that. You have the power, not them.

It’s our lives, folks, so let’s all stop the nonsense! I’m not a victim, you’re not a victim. There are no victims here. You choose, literally, every moment of your life. I’m choosing to be sitting at my desk right now. You are choosing to read this wherever you’re reading it. You create your life by the choices that you make.

What are the choices that you’re making?

You are at a certain point in your life, a certain point in your money, a certain point in your business, a certain point in your job, a certain point in your relationship with different people. You have a certain weight. You have a certain health situation.

For better or for worse, you created all that, and if it’s still going on a month from now, you continue to create that. You have created your current life, and you will create your future life.

If you would prefer to have a different life than you have right now, create a different life. You know what that means? It means making new choices.

Choose right now to have a different life, a better life. Ironically, as soon as you figure out that you’ve been focusing on the wrong thing all along–the belief that happiness is out there somewhere, away from whatever inconvenience we’re experiencing in the moment–and that all you really have to do is change some self-defeating habits, happiness all of a sudden starts to find you! In fact, it’s coming out of where it was all along…from within you!!

Tell us what you think. What are some different choices you’re making in your life right now? What don’t you have to “put up with” that you have been putting up with? How did you overcome your worries and fears? Share your stories…we want to hear from you!

We want money, which is an important part of our success, but on a spiritual and embodied level, it’s really not about the money if we really want to be successful and happy.

So how can this be?

If you stop and think about it, most people lean toward money as being VERY important, even though they may say to themselves, “It’s not everything.”

We may say we believe that it’s not everything, but for most people, they focus only towards having it.

People’s perceptions, thoughts, habits and actions can’t help but reflect that. Their path then becomes too much about looking for money. And then looking for money now becomes your job, including when you’re thinking about starting a new business.

It’s not part of the conversation, it’s the only part of the conversation. It’s your highest priority to making your decision and what you base your decision on.

Looking for money is not a job. Looking for money is not your business.

No, your business needs to focus on solving problems for other people, creating a profit for yourself, and taking that profit as a reward. That’s business.

I’m gonna give a two-fold lesson on this one.

The first lesson is on how to solve people’s problems.

As many of you know, my first big success was with the fitness business I created and sold, but before that I would just hustle things like watches, perfume, etc.

For example, when I was back in Florida I set up a stall in a flea market. It cost me $7 (but in those days I was so broke the price I paid for that was not eating the night before).

I went to the guy who had the perfumes and begged and pleaded for him to take my nice watch as collateral.

I said, “You keep this watch until I bring you back the money to pay for this inventory, or I give you back the inventory, and it’ll be today. I’m only going out for two hours.” So I got about six or seven samples, around $300 worth, which he spotted me for a $1,000 watch.

I got back to my table and started barking it up. I was saying, “Discounted perfume! Go to Nordstroms, go to Saks and pay full price or you can get it right now. Do you have your Mother’s Day gift yet? You know Mother’s Day is coming up soon!”

As soon as I said the words, “Mother’s Day is coming up,” I saw people stop dead in their tracks, come to my booth, and go, “What is this?”

“I have discounted perfumes.”

“Okay, I’ll take two for my mother and my sister.”

“I don’t have two right now because I’m already sold out, but come back in two hours. Are you going to be around here?”

“Yes, I’ve got a lot of shopping.”

I started to sell product that I didn’t have just from those samples. The number one lesson is that I started in a way that I could start with the money that I had. It wasn’t about the money, it was about working with what resources I had in a way that opened possibilities of making more money with that money.

Number two, I was solving a problem. “I’ve got to get my mom something for Mother’s Day. What a hassle it’s going to be later in a department store when I could solve that problem right now for half price.” I started with seven bucks and ended up with $115 for just a few of hours of work.

Of course, there was nothing passionate or important to me about selling perfume, watches and stuff like that, hence no way I was ever going to find lasting success doing that. But the lesson I took from that experience was that I didn’t let lack of money stop me from gaining access to more money and I didn’t let a lack of money dictate my success and happiness.

That’s how this money thing works, folks. Your happiness and success is not going to be based on money, and neither will money limit you from making more money now or with whatever resources you have to work with at this very moment!

Tell us what you think, we want to hear from you!

Okay so I have to admit…I made a tiny mistake!

If you’ve been part of our ‘community’ for any amount of time, you’ve most likely realized that you’re getting emails signed off from me, Jesse Eker.

And recently we’ve been getting loads of emails from students asking who the heck I am.

Which made me think…

Shoot, I forgot to introduce myself!

So for your weekly Million Dollar Life Lesson this week, T. Harv Eker (my dad) and I made a quick video for you.

In this video, you’re going to…

1) Discover the vision and mission of Harv Eker International and how it benefits you.

2) Learn the story of Harv Eker International, why Harv resisted starting the company, and how I was able to convince him to move forward.

3) Meet me (finally) and put a face to this “Jesse Eker, Managing Director” guy. 🙂

It’s only 5 minutes long and I’d be honored if you took a few minutes out of your day to watch it. I’m SUPER excited to meet you.

Make sure you leave a comment below and say hi!

If there’s one question starting entrepreneurs ask themselves the most–the one question that is guaranteed to make you your own worst enemy–it’s this: “What if this doesn’t work?”

My predominant thought before I became what most people would call very, very successful–my big mental enemy, was a lack of confidence. Even though outwardly I showed that I was confident, inside I was constantly asking myself, “What if this doesn’t work?”

But you see, why would I have confidence when I had not proven that anything I was doing worked yet? Everything I touched turned to sh*t.

However, I didn’t understand confidence at the time. One thing about confidence is that confidence comes from trust, and trust comes from experience. Since the word itself comes from the Latin word Confidero, which means to trust, who do you have to trust? Yourself.

In order to trust yourself, you have to gain experience, and in order to gain experience you have to do things over and over and over until you’re not even thinking about it anymore.

But even more so, confidence comes from a positive experience…validation that the repetition is worth it. My problem was I had a lot of negative experiences, which is why I went into everything without a lot of confidence.

Here was the problem, and this is true of anything in life: I was just focusing on the outcome. The long view. Where I wanted to be. Where wasn’t I looking?

Right ahead, right in front of me. Confidence comes in little steps, little improvements. A little progress creates a lot of confidence. You don’t create confidence by winning the Super Bowl on day one. You create confidence by having a good practice. You create confidence by winning the next game.

You create confidence by having a small success in your life. Then another, and another, and being prepared to weather the inevitable setback.

For me, because I was only looking at the Super Bowl, it’s either I’m a millionaire or I’m not successful. Well, what about the way to the millionaire? What about the one, two, three, five, ten years it may take to get to be a millionaire?

If you’re only happy and successful when you become a millionaire you’ll have trained yourself that you’re unsuccessful all during that time.

Here’s the rub, folks: When you become a millionaire, you’ll be one who has trained him or herself that, for most of that time, they were unsuccessful, so they’ll still feel unsuccessful. By that point it became a habit.

Success is an accomplishment of a specific intention or goal.

Keep it to a minimum. I used to think that only if I was rich, that means the business was a success. Well what a crappy way to live that was. The reason it sucked is because it doesn’t all come at once. Just as you can get rich quickly, you can get poor quickly, too. I never thought to count my little progress as success.

When you do, here’s what happens. You start to engrain and teach your brain, “Hey, I’m a success.” The monkey-mind is going to try and prevent that from sinking in by saying, “Well, that wasn’t a big thing.”

You, from your higher self, respond saying, “Thanks for sharing. That was big enough because that’s the exercise.”

The exercise is not to do big things. The exercise is to be successful at little things.

In fact, an easy exercise I invite you to try is to start keeping a journal of daily small intentions you intend to manifest…remember, small. So for example, “Today I’m going to walk/run/jog X amount of meters, yards or whatever.”

You write it down and do it–knowing that it was something that you can manage–come back to your journal and write, “Success.” Something’s going to click in and try and tear that down by saying, “Why are you all excited by that? That was nothing. ” Don’t buy it. That’s our programmed brains telling us to play it safe. If you buy into that, it’s almost guaranteed that you won’t be successful at anything.

Keep on looking at the journal. All you see is successes. Now how can you say, “I’m not successful,” when all you see are successes? You’re training your brain that you are successful, which means you’re increasing your confidence.

Tell us what you think…we want to hear from you!