- Accelerator number 2 now, here is another one.
See I am a little it of a contrarian
not from a...
melodramatic point of view.
Not to make a big scene
but simply because I don't take things that
are given to me at face value.
I look at them and say, is that true?
Does that really make sense?
Something like time management,
everybody goes, oh yeah time management!
No, it's not time management.
So, this is another one, that's along the same lines.
Think of all the success books you've read,
the videos you've watched, the seminars you've attended,
the gurus, the coaches, all that kind of stuff.
One of the things that you almost always hear them say
is that it's really, really important
that you have a clear vision of where you are going.
Yes?
So, you know, over and over again you hear it.
You gotta set goals,
you gotta be crystal clear about where you are going.
There's sayings like,
the reason people don't get what they want is,
they don't know what they want.
That's right!
Here's another one,
if you don't know where you're goin,
you won't know when you get there,
or any road will take you there is another one.
So, people who don't know what they want,
(audience answers)
get no where, yeah.
People who don't know what they want,
don't get what they want,
but the biggest one I've heard.
People who don't know what they want
end up working for people who do know what they want.
Right?
So, you hear all this stuff,
but here's the challenge
I want you to be really honest with me on this.
Raise your hand
if the truth is
that you're not 100% crystal clear of your vision.
Can I see your hands?
It'll probably be about 80% of the room.
So, basically what all these people are saying
is that you're doomed if you don't have a clear vision.
And if you don't have a clear vision
what do spend your time doing?
Two things, number one, you spend your time
beating yourself up for not having a clear vision.
You know what I mean?
Now, what do you think is more important to be successful,
have confidence or have a clear vision?
Confidence!
Beating yourself up, what's that do to your confidence?
You believe you have to have
a clear vision to be successful.
You don't have a clear vision so you can't be successful.
How's that gonna work out?
The other thing that happens,
when you don't have a clear vision
is you spend your time trying to get clear of what's up.
Sitting down and writing and journaling and all that stuff.
So, I've got great news for you.
I'm here to tell you,
You don't need to have a clear vision
to be massively successful, is that good news?
(crowd chimes in)
And I'm not kidding about that, I'm absolutely not kidding.
They say you have a bright future,
even if you're in the fog.
You can absolutely get to the top.
Let me explain,
I think even when you're standing in the fog
you have a sense of direction.
An innate sense of direction.
Just with your finger would you please point
what direction you're headed in your life.
This way right?
So, if you're standing on a mountain
at the bottom of a mountain
and it's going up like this
and it's like foggy all the way up
and the whole thing is in cloud.
Do you go that way?
You know which way to go.
Now will it take you straight to the top like a tram?
No!
But every time you just take a step you say,
what's up from here?
Oh I can go here.
Then from here what's up?
You go one step at a time, does that make sense?
I'll tell you a story that will illustrate this.
Back in 1975 when I was very young.
I totally fell in love with he sport of hang gliding
and I got completely
oh there we go.
Got completely obsessed with it
and spent seven years hang gliding full time.
I became the top ranked
competition hang glider pilot in Canada.
I was captain of the Canadian hang gliding team.
You didn't even know they had one did you?
I've been to over 19,000 feet on a hang glider,
which is high.
I had a jet fighter fly underneath of me
just to make it interesting.
That was good for the heart rate.
I moved to Invermere British Columbia
which is in the East.
Has anybody been to Invermere?
I moved there because that's where
the best hang gliding was
and all the best pilots lived there
and I flew full time.
So, there's a picture of me coming in for landing
at Welsh Mountain.
So in order for you to understand this little story
I'm going to tell you, you have to understand
how a hang glider flies basically.
So, a hang glider is like a paper airplane,
if you throw it it just goes down all the time.
Unless what,
unless it goes over an updraft,
like if it goes over a heat vent in the house,
you know a little paper airplane then it pops up right?
Well that's what a hang glider pilot's looking for
is where the air is moving up.
And you'll see the hawks and eagles circling up
and that's what we're look for on the hang glider as well.
The skill is learning to do that.
Then when you can do that,
you find lift, you can circle up in it
and then you can dive down,
and then you can climb up again,
and then you can dive down.
So the world record is about 150 miles
somebody's flown in a hang glider
just from climbing up and flying down again, right?
So when I lived in Invermere,
we used to fly up and down the valley,
oh there's a picture of me,
flying in Invermere.
The slide's out of order that's why I am a little lost here.
So this is a picture of the valley
and we used to fly up and down the mountain.
So we'd go down and there'd be lift coming off the mountian,
climb up to the clouds, go diving down,
climb up go to the clouds dive down,
and we'd go up and down the valley.
I was the first person ever to fly from
Invermere to Golden which was 75 miles in 1978.
Awesome, Awesome, flight.
You know hang glider pilots are a bit like surfers,
Now when surfers aren't surfing, what do they talk about?
Surfing, and in particular they talk about one thing.
The big wave, right?
Hang gliders do the same, we talk about the big flight,
the big thermal.
When we lived in Invermere the big flight would be
instead of flying up and down the Rockies here,
you'd want to fly,
see it inverts down the valley here
we would fly up and down the lift,
it was great but it got a little boring after a while.
Over here there's another range of mountains
called the Kortni Mountain range
behind that there's another range,
and behind that there's big range of mountains
called the Rocky Mountains.
On the other side of that, is Banff and Lake Louise.
So, the big flight that we talked about,
wouldn't it be cool to fly,
instead of going up and down,
going through the mountains
and coming out the other side in Invermere.
Or in Radian More or in Lake Louise or Banff.
So, we talked about it in the bar,
it was never gonna happen.
I'll show you why, that's pretty much what it looks like.
That's taken from a higher height than we would ever be at,
but you have to wind your way through them
you have to climb up and go down.
Guess what, there's no roads in there
so it's a little on the risky side.
So it's never gonna happen.
Until one day, let's say hypothetically
August 5th 1983,
for example.
I was out flying with my friends
who were the best pilots in the world,
and I just got really, really, really high.
Like they were down at about 10,000 feet
picture that valley,
and I got up to about 14,000
and I could see all the way in
and I went if that flight is ever gonna happen,
today's the day.
I gotta tell ya something,
and this is an entrepreneurial moment
for those of you who just started your business,
you'll know what I'm talking about.
I don't even know what came over me,
I just turned my hang glider
and I flew straight into the mountains.
When I got in there, what I discovered,
is the lift inside these areas.
There was a road
but I couldn't get near it in lots of places.
So if I went down nobody would know where I was.
I mean nobody would have ever thought to look for me...
My friends had no idea where I'd gone,
they would have though I was gone
up and down the valley like normal.
There's no road anyway I'd almost certainly break a leg
when I went down and there was no where to land.
So, I'd hit a tree or a log or something
and I probably would have died
if I wouldn't be able to find enough lift.
What happened was I got in the back
I discovered the lift wasn't nearly as good as in the front.
I got really really low,
so like,
down around 300 feet off the ground.
As low as the towers in town here.
That's not very high when you are trying to go
another 30 or 40 miles across the mountains.
I was really low and I was looking around,
there's no where I can land,
there's just nothing but trees
and big piles of rocks that I'm gonna pile into.
This is serious and suddenly,
I smelled something,
I smelled pine trees,
and what does that tell you.
The air is rising!
And this little wifty thermal came up
and I grabbed onto it.
Now here's my question, as I was circling in that thermal
do you think I was putting any thought
into what I would do when I got to Lake Louise
and what I would tell my friends?
What was I putting my attention into?
I was putting 100% of my band with
into maximizing that wispy little bit of lift
that forced and I went around and circled and circled
for like five or 10 minutes before I climbed at all.
Then it started to lift up and lift up
and I climbed up and climbed up
and I got above the next mountain range
and I could dive over the next mountian.
Thought that's where the road would be, it wasn't there.
Had to do the whole same thing over again.
It was a complete life and death situation.
My every, every cell of my body
was 100% focused on that lift.
At the same time, I knew where I was going right?
I had a sense of what direction I was going,
in that case east.
That's what you need to be like in your business.
you want to be so focused on the next step
and that's all.
I'm working with a coach
and of course I'm a coach, I have a coach
and we just got approached by a fella
who is very senior in the financial industry in Edmonton.
He said Andrew, we think that the system you've created
would be excellent in the Philippines.
In the financial system there,
and I've got really big connections
right up to the president
and I can make some stuff happen.
Let's talk.
So I started talking and I got my coach involved
and I said to my coach well, I did some research
what I learned is that almost all of the financial advisors
in the Philippines are part time.
So, they have jobs and then
they do their financial stuff on the side,
our program is not designed for that.
What do you think he said?
Don't worry about that we're are not there yet.
Lets get a meeting, if they want to make it work,
We'll fnd a way to make it work.
So, we spend so much time thinking about what's next,
Then what do we do?
We take ourselves out of the moment
and we never get to the next level,
or else we think it can't be done.
Take one step at a time.
Does this make sense?
When you go one step at a
time you can do damn near anything
if you put 100% of your effort to do it.
Three and a half hours later, I landed in Lake Louise.
First person ever to cross the Rocky Mountains
on the hang glider.
Is that cool or what?
(crowd applauds)
And I survived to talk about it.
I phoned my friends
who are the best hang glider pilots in the world.
They said where the hell did you go?
That's as bad as my language gets unlike Dan by the way.
They said, where the hell did you go
and I went, I'm in Lake Louise
They wouldn't believe me,
they wouldn't come and get me,
I had to hitchhike back with my hang glider,
no kidding, threw it in the back of a pickup truck
and stood there holding it like this
into the back of a pickup truck all the way to Invermere
because they wouldn't believe me
they didn't believe it was even possible.
For you the same thing,
you have to be focusing
100% of your attention on what's there now
while keeping in mind your sense of direction
and when you get to the nest step then you re-evaluate
and you can find your way to anywhere without a vision.
now that's good news yes?
So, you can put that into practice.
Isn't that a relief?
I think so, so please,
give somebody a high five.
Say, I focus on the next step!