Success: How I Broke Through My Glass Ceiling

One of the biggest revelations of my life happened to me at a seminar in 2006.

I was attending a 3 day financial success seminar in Sydney, Australia, organized by Mal Emery.

This was my first seminar but it was what I thought it would be: a room full of self-confessed seminar junkies. Experts would preach on stage for about an hour or two on all manner of products from copywriting to real estate investing. At the end of their  speech they pitch their high priced products - I’m talking thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars for a single product. Crazy huh?

I can’t remember most of the speakers but I do recall seeing Stephen Pierce and Ted Nicholas. Ted was very lively and entertaining, especially for someone so ‘mature’ in his years.

All those speakers on stage were supposedly very successful at what they do and making a lot of money. Yet they had nothing in common, at least not from what I could see. They came in all different sizes. Some were tall, short, thin, ‘plump’, young, old, male, female. Some were more attractive than others. Some even came across as a bit ’shady’, although I’m sure they weren’t.

I thought I was doing okay but these people seemed to be so much more successful than I was. By the end of the seminar I didn’t learn anything worth noting from the speakers. But something occurred to me. It was something so profound that it changed my life forever.

It occurred to me that if all of these people with nothing in common from what I could see, or had any special abilities to speak of, could all be incredibly successful and make lots of money, then why couldn’t I? There was no good reason that I could think of that I couldn’t achieve the same level of success and make as much money as those people on stage.

In that moment the invisible success and income ceiling that had always subconsciously hovered above my head disappeared. I’m not sure why it was there - it just was. Maybe it was due to my upbringing. We were always quite poor, so the concept of making a lot of money just wasn’t something that belonged in my head.

Anyway, I no longer felt like I wasn’t worth it. I felt like I was free and able to be as successful and make as money as I wanted. From that moment on I felt like I could, and decided that I was going to achieve a far greater level of success than I had experienced up to that point in my life.

The result? I increased my income by 207% in just over 18 months. Sorry but I’m not going to reveal how much I make - that’s not me. Let’s just say I feel incredibly lucky for the success that I have achieved. I will never take it for granted though because I’ve seen first hand how success can come back to bite you if you do.

It sounds corny but I never imagined when I discovered the internet back in 1997 that I would one day make the kind of money I am making now. It’s probably not a lot of money by some people’s standards. But for someone from a dirt poor background, left nothing but a burden of debt when his dad passed away (mum left dad when I was 8), who never made it to college and was scraping a living as a waiter for 10 years, it’s a dream come true. And that is an understatement.

I read somewhere that when sales people start a new job, they tend to make only as much money as they did at their old job. For some unknown reason when they reach the previous income level they would stop and not make any more even though they may have plenty of time left. Isn’t that odd? Maybe these people also have the invisible success ceiling that held me back for so many years.

Psychologists tell us that we set these ‘glass ceilings’ based on our beliefs. When we hit our success ceiling, it triggers limiting beliefs that reinforces the ceiling. The result is that we subconsciously do things that stops us from going above the glass ceiling. In short, limiting beliefs are mental blocks that stand in the way of success for most people. I never knew I had this limiting belief. I’m happy I’ve been able to burst my invisible glass ceiling. I hope my story helps you to do the same.

My goals are much bigger nowadays. I now dream about building a website that would one day be acquired by the likes of Google or Yahoo! for $20 million. Yeah I’m dreaming. Maybe it will never happen, but that’s okay. So long as I have fun trying, I am happy.

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