Welcome back to Tom engineering. Hey, it's great to be with you as always, and wherever you may be in this wonderful world. I hope everything is absolutely superb. Today we're going to be covering three of my golden principles in short, sharp and succinct fashion. These are principles that drive my actions in the background and support the way I behave and the choices I make which all go to underpin my productivity and profitability. And they can do exactly the same for you.

Okay, so the first one is your your parking lot now Talking about where you park your car, your motorcycle, your truck. If you're a true entrepreneur, you're pretty you probably have five new ideas every week, if not every day. And if you're really rocking in business, you will find that there are constantly opportunities and ideas that will be thrown your way. So what you have to learn to do is to be vigilant and be aware of what I call bright shiny objects disease, that is new business ventures or opportunities that take your focus, your energy and your productive capacity away from your core business. My other my other nickname for these that I got from a friend of mine is blow fly opportunities. Statistics prove that the rich get rich by staying in one field of expertise because focus is power.

Now, there are exceptions to the rule. I'm not saying the reason people often ask me Well, what about Richard Branson? Well Branson's core business really is self promotion. That's it. And he's a genius at it. What do you think he spends his days running around in chicken suits in hot air balloons.

But he doesn't go home at the end of the day and say, Hey, I think I might do a spot of apps options trading this evening. Yeah, does he? Of course not. And often when people find out about all the companies that I've built in the different various industries that I mean, they say to me, Well, what about you? Well, my principal skill is in building companies. But I only build companies where there's massive leverage, and where I can step out of them once they're up and running and allow someone else to focus their energy on running them.

So yes, I may be spread across multiple industries with my organization's but my focus is the same. Flow flow opportunities are incredibly dangerous. And I'm not saying that I don't get distracted occasionally. Of course I do. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. So it happens.

But most of these ideas you should very quickly hit with a can fly straight or fly spray, because they can sink you by dispersing your available focus, energy and productivity, all of which are limited. And be aware, the more successful you become, the more they blow fly opportunities will appeal because people want to jump on your success train or never heard it more eloquently stated than by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great and if you haven't read it, you should. It's a brilliant book, Jim said this. indeed a great companies more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity, then starvation from too little. The challenge then becomes not opportunity creation, but opportunity selection. So the way I handle these opportunities is I have what I call my parking lot.

When in when an opportunity or an idea comes my way I immediately placed Sit on my parking lot. Now, it can either be a big piece of paper on the wall or an a4 binder with one idea on each page, you can record the ideas in whatever way works for you. I just use a big piece of paper like this that I have stuck to my wall and all the ideas go on it and they get crossed out as required. What matters is having a place you can quickly and easily record them to get them out of the way. Now, I might give the ID or the opportunity a little bit of thought when I first hear it, if it's directly related to my company's direction at that point in time, however in most cases, it will simply go straight on to the parking lot. Once a week I allocate an hour or so to look at the ideas on the parking lot and give them some deeper thought once I've had time to allow the initial excitement, and the idea about the idea or opportunity to receive if the ICT if the idea opportunity is still on the parking lot after For a month or so, then you can dedicate or you can decide I should say what to do with it.

But what you will find is that most of the opportunities or ideas will end up with a line straight through them. Keep in mind, as Jim Collins said, the challenge is not opportunity creation, there's plenty of opportunity, but rather opportunity selection. Now, I've actually covered two principles so far in this module, your parking lot, and the principle also of focus. So if you didn't get them both, just rewind and just watch the first couple of minutes of this video again. Now, I know I said that I wanted to share three principles with you in this module, but I've just thought of another one. So I'm going to cover that also, if you don't mind, it's gold.

So I hope you don't mind I think you'll enjoy it. But before that, I'd like to introduce you to the principle of non engagement. I call it Ctrl Alt Delete mechanism, control, alt, delete mechanism. In module six, I spoke to you about the fact that I don't watch the news. I don't read newspapers, and I'm incredibly aware of what I what is allowed to enter the space between my ears. Because I'm acutely aware of what a negative impact it can have on my mental capacity and my mental well being.

Let me give you a great example of a powerful subconscious things can affect you. This story was shared with me by a very good friend. A study was completed where they got individuals to walk down a long corridor, and at the end of the corridor, there was a number of questions statements, were all the words all jumbled up and they had to be put back into order to make a sentence. However, within all the jumbled words words were a specific group of words like old, or they elderly, senior, even the word Florida. Now the conscious minds of the participants were focused on rearranging the words to make sentences so their minds were absolutely ripe for the picking. But the examiners wanted to see if the words had any effect on their subconscious minds.

Now, what they did, what the examiners did was they timed how long it took everyone to walk down the corridor, to where the exercise was to be held, and then timed how long it took to come back up the corridor. Once they had been in the room and completed the exercise. What they found was that in every single case, it didn't matter how old or young the individual was, that it took. The time it took to come back up the corridor was longer than the time it took to go down the corridor to do the exercise. They'd actually been affected by the words in each sentence around old age. That's how powerful you and your subconscious is.

That's what don't watch the news or read newspapers. Try this for a challenge. Go and buy a newspaper and cut out all the things that will make you money. And to increase your happiness, you will struggle to find more than a couple of pieces. You can do the same exercise with the news on TV. But the truth is, you can't actually blame the news channels and new media companies, because they're in the business of selling papers and ads on TV, right?

And the fact is that people don't buy newspapers, or watch news channels that have good stories in them. So the media just says, hey, let's pack it full of murder, suppression, Carnage and mayhem. Because that's what sells. Bad news sells. It's just that simple. Now, there's the fact that watch the news mean, I'm not informed.

No, not at all. I'm just focused on being informed on the things that can affect my profit and my happiness. You see, if you want to watch a story about a baby who was murdered, if you want to put that in your head, that's okay. It's just not okay for me. And I'm not saying for a moment that that isn't terrible, because it is, of course it is. But how is knowing about it going to help you be happier, expansive, or be more profitable?

I know that things like that are going on in the world, but I don't want them in my head. Because does that raise or does it lower? My emotional well being my emotional tone? In 2008, we had a little thing called the GFC. You might have heard of it. If you watch the news, during that period, you would have been bombarded and heard absolutely nothing but doom and gloom.

Business was bad and everything is falling apart. Right. That was every news story. Every second news story at work at best. But if that was the case, then how is it possible that I made more money in 2009 10 and 11 than I had made in the previous 10 years combined? We had customers orders and business coming out about Thailand's because I simply refuse to allow that crap into my head.

You see, successful people are incredibly optimistic and are critically aware of what they will allow into their minds that can impact their emotional state, because at the end of the day, perception really is reality. So, if you perceive that things are crap, they will be if you perceive that things are tough, they will be and if you perceive the opposite, they will be and your perception is heavily skewed and heavily influenced by what you consume consciously and subconsciously. And be aware. This principle of non engagement is not for the masses. It's not the politically correct thing I should be saying the masses are happy to engage with everything in our our wonderful information age. But what most are suffering with is information indigestion, complete overload and overload with crap that is not serving their abundance and their prosperity and their affluence.

So, what you need to learn is to Control Alt Delete. Because this thing RP has to be crystal clear. There is a saying I learned from a dear friend and mentor of mine Marshall further clarity leads to power and you cannot be clean. You cannot have clarity be focused, optimistic and passionate when you are allowing your head to be filled with crap. So right now, please pause this video, take a couple of minutes and write down all the things that you You are engaging in that you can stop all those things that are suppressing that are not supporting your focus your profitability, your abundance as a human being and your prosperity. Do you watch the news?

Do you listen to ridiculous, talkback radio? Do you have negative nancies in your space, whatever, just work it out, and cut it off and experience incredible, positively positive impact and a positive change it can have on you. Okay, I'm assuming you stop the video and did that small exercise. You want to work on exactly how to manage those things later. But for now, the last principle I want to cover very quickly for you before we move on to our final module is the principle of constant education. In my travels in teaching, I'm often confronted by business owners who are struggling and asked me for a solution.

And I often start by asking this, how much business education Have you consumed? In the last 36 months, how much of your time have you dedicated to growing your most valuable asset? Your knowledge? And how much of that learning if any, have you applied? And generally, the answers I get are far from inspiring. I'm not going to get onto a soapbox and preach about this.

But I can tell you this without question. Your journey of discovery and learning as a business owner is a lifetime journey. If you think your cup is full, then I can assure you that is only a matter of time until you are struggling or dead in the water. If you're feeling flat or uninspired, if you're feeling stuck in a rut, you know, or stacking outdated strategies, I can almost guarantee you have not expanded your learning far enough or being committed to the endeavor of Lifetime Learning in your business or enterprise. Constant education is your way out. I guarantee it.

One thing I can tell you about really successful, really rich people is they consume copious amounts of knowledge. They read, they watch and they listen. And you'd be surprised what they read. It's not just about business. You know, they read philosophy, theory ideology, history's great leaders. They read about Plato, Benjamin Franklin Buckminster Fuller, Alexander the Great things that helped them understand better how people and how the world works.

And most really successful business owners. They weren't talked about this openly. But if you get them one on one, they will open up and on how they trust their intuition. Their Sixth Sense. It's one of the greatest gifts. It's one of your greatest gifts.

But your sixth sense isn't powerful when you are not clear. And clarity comes from knowledge and knowledge comes from learning and applying what you learn. So commit to constant learning, commit to curiosity. Because the difference between the old and the young is curiosity and curiosity. The desire to learn is the fountain of youth. The next module is our last and I'm going to cover my battle plan.

This is how I personally plan and structure every single day of my working life in it drives my clarity and my focus, and it's my compass every day that allows my mind to be as free and productive as physically possible. So, until we meet again in the next module, please be superb. think clearly and have an absolutely incredible day.