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Rule Number 3: Do More
It was Albert Einstein who observed, ‘Nothing happens until something moves.’ He may have been talking about quantum physics and the movement of energy, but that’s the essence of our next rule, Do More!
If there’s one rule all the achievers in this book share, it’s this one: they’re all doers. They do more than the average person. And because this rule is so darned obvious, it’s often overlooked in our quest to discover some hidden recipe for success in life and the secret of other’s success.
Here’s the blinding truth that I came face to face with in the making of this book: successful people do more than their less successful counterparts.
I know there may be spiritual Masters down the ages who only have to think of their desires and hey presto, they materialise out of the ether for them. For the rest of us, we have to put the work in to get the same results. Look at every single person who impresses you with their accomplishments and you’ll see a man or woman of action. Less talk, far more action.
Courage vs. Confidence
At the risk of sounding controversial, one of the biggest problems with self-improvers is that they don’t grasp this basic rule, they just don’t do more. They read, they talk and do too many courses, when all that time and energy, and probably money too, could be better spent in doing the things they know they should be getting on with. My intention with The 7 Rules of Success is that you can pick up valuable information and tips on these pages, crack on and apply what you find useful to your life immediately.
Another pitfall to watch out for is that of waiting to feel more confident before making a move, ‘working’ on your self-belief before you feel up to making a call, offering a service, writing your novel, setting up a business or whatever you feel pulled to do. Don’t make this mistake. Forget about confidence for a while and substitute courage instead. Assume with me – because it’s probably true- that everyone feels inadequate and unsure at the outset of a new venture.
To use that uncertainty as a reason to hesitate or even abandon your plan would be most unwise. The trick is to accept this state as entirely par for the course and carry on regardless. Attempting to ‘work’ on your confidence before taking action can often be a waste of time, because the confidence you crave can only come from doing the very thing you are terrified of. Shakespeare put it well when he said, ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.’ Slay your doubts and demons with good old-fashioned action.
Oftentimes necessity is the mother of inspired action. This was certainly the case with Trisha Mason. Widowed at 29 with two small children, no savings, no earnings and bills to pay, she turned herself into a powerhouse of activity in order to keep a roof over her head and give her kids a good life.
Her story is no fairy tale, just an example of one woman making full use of every talent and ability she could find within herself to make life work. It wasn’t even about something as lofty as fulfilling her potential. That would have been a luxury she could ill afford.
It was just about doing what had to be done, under the circumstances.
Trisha Mason is the founder of one of the most successful estate agencies in France. With a £5-7 million turnover and 10,000 French properties sold to English buyers to date, the company now has around 30 offices across France run by specially trained English staff.
Her success, by her own admission, is born partly from tragedy. Back in spring 1975, Trisha was a 29-year old widow, living in a dilapidated East London home with two young children, Kate and Jake, and worried about how she was going to cope as a single mother.
Just five months earlier, she and her husband Julian had been preparing for Christmas and making plans for renovating the Victorian terrace house in Leytonstone they had bought for £12,000.
But when Julian, a 32-year old university electronics engineer, began to suffer from back pains, medical tests diagnosed a cancer so virulent that he died the next April. Her loss forced her to develop an entrepreneurial spirit that has led to her present success and a company that has been voted Best French Estate Agents three times in the International Property Awards.
Trisha Mason
"When my husband died suddenly of cancer, leaving me with two small children at the age of 29, Gingerbread (single parent action group) sent someone I considered ancient round to talk to me. She said, “I guess you find yourself drinking an awful lot of tea, too many cups of tea isn’t good for you dear.” I thought, I don’t want to be labelled as drinking too much tea. Too much gin, fine but too much tea! And strangely enough, that had an awful lot to do with my desire to achieve. Her comment made me face what my two options were. I could either accept tea and sympathy or aim for the highlife and drink the gin and tonic in the evenings.
I was left with my grief, a rotten old house and no income. I’ve always loved challenges and it was a case of needs must that I had to earn money – but I also relished the fight.
My husband and I had hippie idealism ingrained within us from the ‘60s and that dream certainly didn’t mean existing on the state. We were never materialistic but we did have a common dream about how we wanted our children’s lives to be. It meant having adequate money to take them travelling and continue those dreams. I guess I owed it to him. I was always driven to do more. When my husband died, I was working in a mental hospital trying to establish a toy library for their adult patients. I used to take my children along with me. We always did everything very much as a family, which was why I felt my only option was to set up my own business so they could be with me.
My husband had been working in a low salaried job and we had no savings, no pension, nothing except a big four-bedroom house in East London that was falling down around our ears. So, I had to do something. What I did have was plenty of friends around me. We used to sit around my kitchen table drinking wine, rather than tea I might add, and they actually came up with the first business idea for me. I’d always liked making my children clothes that were different from everyone else’s. They suggested I make similar clothing and they’d go and sell them at the markets for me. So I started making clothes and ended up setting up a company called ‘Country Bumpkins’. I spent my time with the kids during the day and then at 8pm, once I’d put them to bed, a rota of friends would come over and we’d work until about 2am. Very quickly we realised we weren’t going to maximise our potential at the markets so we took samples to various retail outlets.
Almost immediately we got orders from Harrods, Selfridges, and Harvey Nichols and a business was created. It was a great business. The children were my models, we had a small factory opposite the tube station where we lived so after school they’d come in, sweep the floor, make covered buttons etc. They’ve always been part of everything I’ve ever done and both still work in my current company. That lasted about 10 years. The end of the ‘80s hit us badly when interest rates soared, shops stopped holding stock themselves and expected manufacturers to instead.
We simply didn’t have enough capital to do that so we sold off everything from a shop front, came out of it with nothing - but I did have ten years experience under my belt. By that time my daughter was about to do her ‘A’ Levels and my son, his GCSE’s. At the time my husband died, I was doing an Open University course in Law. I decided this was my last chance to go back to study so I started a degree plus carried on working. Through our local vicar, I was introduced to someone who needed help running his own businesses. I ended up running indoor market halls, car hire firms and industrial estates whilst studying for my degree!
In the year of my finals, the children and I went off as usual on our annual holiday to France. We’d get in our old banger and just go for a month. Whilst out there, I found a beautiful mill in the Limousin that I simply fell in love with. I tried to get a mortgage without really thinking about why I was doing it; I never stopped to think what I was doing. I just thought it would be lovely for my children to spend their summer holidays there and think of it as their second home. Almost immediately, friends and family came to visit and wanted me to find them something similar.
After six or seven requests, I realised there was a business to be created here and consequently, that became business number two. It was a risk but I started to take a small exhibition space when property oversees exhibitions were only just beginning in the UK. At that time, 17 years ago, estate agents in France didn’t really exist, so I was relying on our village solicitor who dealt with the local property to inform me of any vacancies that came up in the area. For the first three years, I would meet people at Dover, drive them to Central France, find them a house and then drive them back again. By then, I’d realised that this was going to be a good business so in 1987 I sold the family home and bought a small flat in the Docklands, which at that time was incredibly cheap because nobody wanted to live there. And the rest of the money went into making my business grow.
My French back then was very basic, but I thought I could offer my experiences of buying a property from scratch. I started out working from the kitchen table and it was all a bit ad hoc with business papers strewn all around and me answering the phone while cooking food. I put in a huge effort, cooking for clients and taking them around the area and to viewings. I’d often work late into the evening with a pen in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
I loved the challenge. It was very much a case of learn on the job, but I loved every minute of it so there was no hardship involved. I knew I was on to something when I received so many enquiries through word of mouth
People live on in the actions they inspire in you by their death. Within two years of losing my husband, I understood that his gift to me was the strength to take risks. I realised that even though I’d lost the one person that mattered most to me in the world, I had still survived.
I now have over 150 people working for my business. My team is growing up professionally and in terms of their knowledge of the business. I’ve committed myself to another 18 months of full time work. I know I’ve got another project in me though. I’d really like to give something back to the world. It’ll probably be something where I can use my skills to help really disadvantaged people who haven’t been blessed with my energy, if nothing else. I was born into a working class family. It’s a case of helping people to make a change in their lives and to understand how they can affect what happens to them. I feel I’ve been very lucky in life. I want like to give people the life skills to create the right environment for themselves in which they can flourish.
Keeping on and keeping going is vital. I’ve had a lot of setbacks, particularly in this current business because I was at the forefront of anybody trying to work within Europe. I often felt like giving up but my friends persuaded me to stick in there – I remember friends sending me a packet of perseverance seeds.
I received a card recently from a friend, which said; to my best friend - who is able to turn everything to her good fortune and then share it with everyone she loves.'"
Today, there is so much interest from Britain that Trisha has opened offices in Charente, Limousin’s neighbouring region, Brittany and Normandy, and is about to expand into Spain and Italy. You can’t help but admire the woman’s spirit!
From a truly awful situation she forced herself to face her choices and make the decision to make her life work, especially for her two young children. It would have been easy to be swallowed up by self-pity and sympathy, but as she says herself that just wasn’t a route she was prepared to take.
There are no secrets to Trisha’s success. Her strategy is blatantly simple and available to all of us – action and more action. Along the way, serendipity and good fortune played their part, but only when she was already out on the road, making things happen.
There was no great influx of cash or investment from a bank or benefactor. Like generations of women before her, Trisha launched a business from her kitchen table, making her money as she went along. Faced with the end of her first business, making children’s clothes, she just got on with doing what she had to do, making money in other ways.
It never occurred to Trisha to query whether she was ‘qualified’ to do any of the jobs she did or the two businesses she created: ‘learn as you go’, was her approach.
Additionally, there was no great soul searching as to what her next move should be and the French property company was born from her falling in love with a run down mill while on holiday in France. There’s probably some truth in the saying that life happens when you’re busy making other plans!
This is an extract from Chapter 3 of Fiona Harrold's new book, "The 7 Rules Of Success" out in the stores now and available from us here.
