The Formula for Success Read online

  I promised myself, on that day when Kurt accepted me back on my college course, that I would answer my true call to duty for the rest of my life.

  ‘Anyone can change and make themselves into a better version of themselves.’

  Chapter 6

  TRUST TRAVELS

  Becoming known around the world as a successful trader, running a business with over 60 staff, and setting up your own cryptocurrency can put you under intense pressure sometimes. I'm not suggesting for a moment that it is akin to lying awake at night trembling over how you are going to pay your family's heating bill in your one-bedroom flat, nor would I want to patronise those in situations like that by suggesting the comparison. But it can generate a similar kind of overwhelming, out-of-your-depth, fear. I know this to be true because when I talk to my Dad about some of the decisions and imaginings in my head, he can relate from the other side of the coin.

  Understanding how to be responsible for my own well-being, and that of others, is one of the biggest lessons I had to learn as my story unfolded. At the end of the day, I have put myself in this position and it is down to me to deal with the consequences, good and bad. No one else is responsible for what I do each day – nor can I make them be. I say this because, whatever your situation in life as you read this book, the very same expectation should apply to you. Whether it is the pressures of success or struggle, you must take responsibility – and I also want you to know that you are completely able to do so. In fact, I promise you that you are.

  The choices that you make, the actions that you take (these are two separate things by the way), and how you follow through on those self-made promises is your choice and no one else's. Circumstances may happen that are beyond your control, but you cannot blame anyone else for the way that you choose to act. That would be nothing more than making excuses. And there is one other thing that you must consider before you decide how you are going to react to your circumstances or pursue a whole new direction out of nothing more than your will and imagination. You need to realise that whatever you do (and that includes giving in or doing nothing) will have an effect on the people around you. Not maybe, and not hopefully no one will care or notice; your choices touch everyone around you. Your choices speak volumes about who you are. Your choices travel.

  Actions speak louder than words

  Picture your oldest, closest friend for a moment – the person who you love the most or perhaps trust the most. It might be your partner, perhaps a parent or sibling, or maybe just someone that you have known and shared experiences with for a very long time. Now imagine you've just witnessed a car crash together, they've happened across you crying at your desk, or you've just watched the latest blockbuster movie in each other's company. Now, tell me: could you predict ‘exactly’ what they would say next or how they would react in those situations? Of course, you could!

  You see, people are predictable and will only ever do things out of character if there are seriously extenuating circumstances. And in those rare scenarios, chances are that they are acting in character anyway, it's just that the rules of the game have changed so much that all reasonable predictions go out of the window. We are often told things like you can tell a person's character within the first seven seconds of meeting them – and that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Well, that is not quite true. Yes, you might form an opinion fairly quickly after meeting a new person, but that is not necessarily a lasting impression. There are many times in my life, and I'm sure in yours too, that I've taken an instant like or dislike to someone and on further acquaintance found that they were a completely different person. No matter how hard a person tries, the person who they truly are will not stay hidden for long.

  My point here and the purpose of this chapter is to help you understand that other people will always judge you by the things that you do consistently. Whatever you think of yourself, and whatever other people think about you, your actions (over any given period of time) are an accurate description of who you are. If you always get up and fight on (like Jack Dempsey), then you are clearly a winner and will (provided you fight with clear purpose and direction) eventually reach your goals. If you give in and look for someone or something else to blame as soon as a problem comes against you, I would humbly suggest that you need to evaluate your mindset. (And that observation is without even knowing you).

  People's actions leave clues as to who they truly are, and this is important for two reasons. First, you can take a good, hard, honest look at ‘you’ and the way you deal with life's circumstances and lay your strengths and weaknesses on the line before yourself. The good news is that if the person you see is stopping you from succeeding – you can change! And the rest of this book will show you how.

  Second, you can start to evaluate the people around you (not for gossip's sake) and decide if they are people who are a good influence on your success or not. I'm not suggesting that you never speak to your perpetually despondent next-door neighbour again or that you take grumpy Uncle Charlie off your Christmas list – just that you are careful how much you let them influence your attitude.

  Get into the habit of examining people's behaviours in pressure situations or when opportunities are presented to them. Include yourself in this experiment too, as objectively as you can, and start to evaluate which type of approach gets the better result: taking responsibility and acting; or complaining and looking for excuses. I can already tell you the answer – and I expect that you'll have guessed it too – but I want you to go and try it for yourself.

  What other people think does matter

  I have just explained why observing other people's actions and attitudes is a good source of mindset education. But let me take you back to the beginning of this chapter, where I talked about my own reactions to pressure and success and how that affects the people around me. This matters a lot because I want to be one of those people who is a positive influence on everyone I meet. The more I have walked the paths of business success (and I hold my hands up to admit that I still have loads to learn – in fact, I'm excited by the prospect), the more the pressure to deal with what others think has grown.

  As children, we were taught that ‘sticks and stones could break our bones, but names would never hurt us’. There is an element of truth in this because you do need to become thick-skinned if you want to get through all the criticism and accusation that success will throw in your path. But you need to realise that sometimes what people say has some foundation. You also need to be honest enough to admit that criticism can hurt – especially when it is not true.

  You might be thinking that you don't care what anyone else thinks about you – and sometimes I would agree that it doesn't really matter. But if you want to be successful in business, it matters a lot. (Don't get me wrong here, there have always been people in the world who amass great wealth through ill-gotten gains and rob innocent people to fund their own life of luxury. The fact is that the laws of decency and the warriors of justice don't always catch up with these rogues – some do manage to slip through the net forever). But if you want to be a genuine success – in human, financial, and life-affirming terms – then you need to manage your profile. And that starts with being honest with yourself about who you are, who you want to be, and what you want to achieve.

  People will assume, if you are successful in business, that life is always rosy and you never have to deal with pressure. Likewise, they will assume that people who are struggling today will never be able to escape their circumstances. These assumptions and any that you, I, or anybody else make about a particular person are simply not true. Anyone can change and make themselves into a better version of themselves. It starts with self-assessment and self-honesty, then you start behaving in a way befitting of who you want to be, then others around will see (and won't be able to help but notice) the real you, and before you know it ‘you’ will be changing your situation.

  You see, when you believe in you, others will begin to believe i
n you, and then that belief will become a reality. I'm not saying that positive thinking alone will change anyone's life. But the combination of belief (yours and those around you) and learning to adopt the common traits, behaviours, actions, and attitudes of successful people will (because those characteristics have been observable in winners for thousands of years). Do everything to the best of your ability, do everything as honestly as you possibly can, have faith in yourself, engender trust from others and build trust – because trust travels.

  The young entrepreneur

  I learned that trust travels when I was very young, even before I started school – I think that every child does. In those early, highly formative years, the home environment teaches you all about trust (positively or negatively) and starts to model the person that you will become. Of course, each person is genetically unique, and there will be elements of character, natural physique, and ability that you are born with – but the circumstances you are born into will start to shape you early on. As I've mentioned already in this chapter, and throughout the book, I still believe that regardless of nature and nurture every single person on the planet can still choose to better themselves and fight for their fortune or lie down and accept the hand fate has dealt them. I know this is true because of all the amazing people I've studied over the years, my own experiences, and the lives of those who I've personally been involved in changing.

  One of the first major things that every child unknowingly learns in life is trust. Depending on their environment and the circumstances they are born into they will quickly learn who they can depend on, who loves them (even before they know what love is), and who they feel safe around. It is why a crying child will often stop the moment they are placed in a parent's arms, or their face lights up when Mum or Dad smiles at them.

  As life goes on and other people are introduced into young lives, they soon find that not everyone or everything in the world is as safe as home. Sadly, for some, even home can become an unsafe, untrustworthy haven.

  For me and James, our early life at home, in the village of Bricket Wood, was a place full of love and happy memories; a place where trust blossomed. Looking back, I suspect that those days were also the birthplace of my entrepreneurial spirit. With both parents working, Mum came up with a scheme to get us helping with some of the chores around the house. She designed a kind of jobs board, with a range of tasks and rewards: from polishing the taps (20p) or putting out the rubbish (10p), to doing the washing up (30p) or hoovering the living room floor (50p). James would do his bit, but I saw this as an industry. Mum often reminds me of how she eventually had to limit the number of times I could do each task – which I think was a result of my first £30 month. I can still hear her exasperated plea, “the taps don't need polishing every day, Sam”.

  Together with my best friend, Elliot, we used to make pom-poms (probably something I'd seen on Blue Peter) and walk around the village knocking on doors to try and sell them to our neighbours as cat toys. Then, when we had sold out of pom-poms, we would go back down the same streets offering to wash cars or take on any other odd jobs that people needed doing. Maybe it was the nature of the village community, or perhaps the fact that we always made sure we did a good job, but ventures like those kept Elliot and me in pocket money for years. It was as though people got to know us, got to like us, and got to trust us. Trust travels, and we certainly did well from it back then.

  Never judge a person by their tracksuit

  To sum up this chapter on the critical importance of recognising and building trust, let me tell you about my first Audi R8. It was one of the dreams that I'd imprinted in my mind and one of the pictures on my wall that kept me focused on achieving success: to own an Audi R8 – I loved the idea of that car.

  I went to the local Audi showroom (and I am so tempted to put in print which one – but I won't) to buy the car. Yes, I was actually going to buy it on that day. I had been working 18-hour days for this moment, I had imagined it, I had researched every aspect of the car, I knew exactly what I wanted, the money was in my account, and today was the day I was going to place my order.

  Of course, I had also planned to relish the moment for as long as possible, just to make the final transaction that little more special. So, there I was sitting in the car on the forecourt (a 20-something in a tracksuit), very well aware that the salesman had clocked my presence. As a few more ‘potential’ customers arrived, all of them in more formal attire than my own, the salesman came over and told me to ‘get out’, saying that it was not a toy and was for people who were serious about buying one.

  Not only did this chap not realise that I was a serious buyer, but he also had no idea that he was already my second choice of showroom. The previous one I'd visited, during the research stage of my purchase, had asked me for a £1000 deposit before letting me test drive the car – even though they were coming with me. I was astonished. Needless to say, neither of these businesses sold me a car that day. My tracksuit and the various hoodies that I feel most comfortable wearing have born witness to dozens of similar stories over the years, but perhaps I'll share more of those in my next book.

  Redline Specialist Cars

  Eventually, I discovered Redline Specialist Cars, in Harrogate, and these guys have proven themselves to be the epitome of service and respect. My relationship with them started when they agreed to buy my car off me – without even seeing it: now that is the way to engender trust. Since then, every car I have purchased has been through Redline Specialist Cars, and they have never let me down. What's more, I now tell everyone I know about their trustworthiness, their service, their commitment to their customers, and their expertise in supercars. Notice that product knowledge comes last on that list of fine qualities.

  The fact is that I would rather deal with a company based a 4-hour drive from me, in Yorkshire, than drive 20 minutes into London – based purely on trust. When people trust you, they will travel to do business with you. They will put themselves out to do business with you. They will go out of their way to encourage others to do business with you. Because good news travels; and trust travels with it.

  ‘Don’t worry about the journey, think about how great the story will be.’

  Chapter 7

  MY WORD IS MY BOND

  The London Stock Exchange is one of the world's original exchange organisations, tracing its origins to the late sixteenth century with traders doing business in coffee shops. Over the decades and centuries, it has changed shape, modernised, and reacted to the activities and dealings of the world's markets. From its early stock and commodities listing entitled ‘The Course of the Exchange and Other Things’, first published in 1698, to its original rule book in 1812, its role, purpose, and methodologies have continued to evolve.

  After a tumultuous and uncertain period during the First World War, the London Stock Exchange was awarded its own coat of arms in 1923, propped up by its centuries-old motto ‘My Word Is My Bond’ in the traditional Latin form ‘Dictum Meum Pactum’. While the motto remains to this day, the practice of taking a trader's verbal promise as a final deal maker seems condemned forever to the history books. In its place, modern technologies (originally developed to shore up and create safety within the markets) have been subject to all kinds of misuse, manipulation, and even foul play.

  Interestingly, the practice of open outcry trading remained until the ‘big bang’ of the 1980s, which saw the formalisation of electronic dealing rather than brokers calling out across the trading floor. This was perhaps the last bastion of traders being taken at their word, rather than the irreversible record of a digital keystroke. I love the (perhaps idealistic and over-romanticise) idea that once upon a time a promise, a look in the eye, and a handshake were all that was needed to secure a transaction.

  (The world has, of course, changed. But in my world, and my business, I insist on the principle of ‘my word is my bond’ still being maintained. Experience has taught me that an honest trader is a good trader and that hone
sty – outwardly and inwardly – is very good for business).

  In general, I am proud of the honour which continues to be displayed throughout 95% of the marketplace. I've had a few run-ins with scammers myself, however, and have even had to fend off those who wanted to pin the label on me and my business over the years. Fortunately, the truth always rises to the surface, and the following story shows you how even an encounter with a despicable man can still lead you to a successful outcome – if you apply the right mindset.

  From angry to focused and finding my feet

  After my search for high-paid jobs and my efforts to get onboard an oil rig had fallen dead in the water, I stumbled across an advert for a seminar on trading. Elliot my best friend (and now the Chief Operating Officer of Samuel & Co), was busy so I dragged my Dad along for company, and we set off for a London hotel to see if trading was the thing I'd been trying to find.

  As I detailed previously, the pictures of yachts, flash cars, a millionaire lifestyle, and an exotic Scottish fishing trip caught me – hook, line, and sinker. I was there for the taking and turned out to be an easy catch.