Success leaves traces!
When you look into the lives of successful people, you’ll always see poignant moments where they overcame challenge and adversity, which served as a springboard and propelled them towards their dreams. I didn’t get to where I am today because the path was easy, but because of how I handled the hardships on the way which proved to be defining moments even though it didn’t feel like it at the time. 

There’s a nugget of gold within every challenge if you look for it!

How I switched tracks from financial struggle to success in an instant
My quest for success started at the age of 13.  When I stepped into the grand entrance hall of my friend’s mansion of a home I just knew my life was about to change… the glossy Italian tiles, velvet fabrics and oversized sofas were a feast for the senses and I wondered how some people got so rich… but the best surprise was the waterfall plunging into the pool in a tropical garden.

It ignited a deep desire in me to have lots of money so I asked my friend….Candice was your Dad’s Dad rich? "Ah no Carmen he’s always telling me to appreciate everything because he had to build it from scratch, see Dad came from a very poor family." This changed everything for me, before this, I thought sharing a room with your siblings was the norm…. that life was tough, money was scarce….and you had to work really hard to just have the basics.

• That day I Just Decided to switch tracks from a path of struggle to a path of success. Financial struggle was not going to be my destiny! I knew what I wanted and was excited by the challenge of breaking through a family history of financial struggle…my huge WHY sparked a ferocious determination in me to succeed against all odds.

Challenges are signposts
After school I chose to study Clinical Psychology because I thought it would teach me how to be a success, help others be a success and of course make millions in the process but I was deeply disappointed with the methodologies that did not resonate with my desire for lasting rapid results. Starry eyed and ready to make my first million I started my own business and just a few months later, the wind was knocked out of my sails when a prospective client who I called ‘nasty cat’ said… “Carmen contact me when you’re no longer a Mickey Mouse company.”

Even though it really hurt, I was present enough to see the truth, I had no business experience, I didn’t know what I was doing, so ‘nasty cat’ did me the greatest favour and proved to be a valuable tutor by helping me realize I needed business skills and experience if I was going to make it big.

I went into corporate business to find my cheese…and it’s at this point I consciously quantified my financial goal. I decided I was going to be a net worth millionaire by the age of 30…I was 23 at the time. 

• Through this business failure I learnt an invaluable lesson that challenges are signposts because they force you to face the truth and point out what you need to change, where you need to grow and the actual path you need to be on.

To achieve the extraordinary you have to graduate from the ordinary
I’m 29 and so close to meeting my goal of being a net worth millionaire by the age of 30 but I knew that if I did not do something daringly different, I was going to miss my goal.

I wanted to be involved in work I loved, increase my earnings and gain access to successful and influential people who would support me on my growth journey… to get this right I had to ‘graduate from the norm / ordinary’ if I wanted to achieve the extraordinary I had to do the extraordinary, so I Just Decided to write my own job spec and presented it to the board. And guess what, they accepted… 1 week later, I was made International Head of Reward and Recognition for a company of over 5000 employees…I got a huge salary increase, was awarded a significant amount of company shares and through my role I met a financial advisor who gave me the final piece of the puzzle to meet my goal.

The bold decision to take charge and fashion a career by my design not only led to me sailing way past the million threshold, it propelled me into a lifestyle of exclusive travel. I got to learn from some of the world’s most respected high-performance companies and universities…like Disney, Ritz Carlton, Harvard & INSEAD.

• My decision to graduate from the ordinary and write my own job spec,  changed the trajectory of my life forever!  Again the power of Just Deciding!
  

Honor yourself first to honor others
By my early 30’s I was living the dream. My future seemed to be set until the call that shifted my reality… I hear: "Would you and your wife like to check in now or later." My husband’s cell phone had rung me by mistake! Who was he with?

Max Planck so aptly said… “Change the way you look at things and the thing you look at changes” - I could choose to see my life as over or the start of an exciting new journey. I chose the latter and completely re-invented myself. I learnt to honor myself and my own values and passion, had I listened to others I would’ve stayed with my husband even though every cell in my body screamed out that I should leave. I chose to see the magnificence of who I was (rather than see the gaps that may have caused the break up) but I also owned my weaknesses, and I decided to drop the facades and expectations of myself that made life so hard. I embraced my uniqueness which created a congruence with who I truly was. I realized I was an extrovert not an introvert… that I was fun not serious… I could see the world in colour not just in black and white or shades of grey. This developed my confidence and I chose to see the same magnificence in others which drew people to me. I became a force to be reckoned with.

I showed up with what I call a Magnetic Confidence and could finally say I was no longer Mickey Mouse. I was ready to return to my entrepreneurial dream. Beaming with Magnetic Confidence I attracted the most beautiful man into my life… not only was he my best friend and soul mate, his brilliance in business made him the perfect business mentor for me.

Devastating loss led to me finding my true quest
Two years later, our elation of just having moved into our dream home was replaced by absolute terror. Gary and I were confronted by 6 armed men who’d invaded our sanctuary! I went into a state of disbelief like I was part of a movie which actually saved my life because I was able to stay composed, they did not hurt us physically but it left a deep scar, a constant reminder of the physical dangers we faced in our country. And then just 2 years later, in spite of being in an estate that was like Fort Knox, the unthinkable happened. I sat in a stupor, a chilling feeling ran down my spine, thousands of hours of IP was gone, the office burglary literally wiped us out of business overnight. Why was this kind of devastating loss happening again? What was the universe so desperately trying to show me?

The second burglary felt even more devastating because it impacted our ability to earn an income. I’d made my life’s mission breaking through financial mediocrity and I’d been victorious yet twice I’d been subjected to devastating loss, why? This led to a soulful journey to find answers and finally the answers came.

Firstly, I had not lost anything of real value, because everything I needed to be a success lived within me. True riches live within. It was a reminder to tap into my Magnetic Confidence, to draw on my assets and draw whatever else I needed to me.

Secondly, I realized that all my life I’d been on a quest for my success. What I’d missed was that it wasn’t about me at all. I had a far greater purpose on this planet, all my challenges, successes and experiences had equipped me for a quest for OTHER’s success… to support others to show up with magnetic confidence and be simply unstoppable and wildly successful. I turned my focus away from myself and how much I was earning to adding value with the sole aim of changing lives and businesses in the most profound way. And in the process I learnt the most profound business equation, which is: If you want to create a high value business… create immense value first and the world will reciprocate with immense value.

Paradise found
My entire business model changed after that and so did my life. I poured even more love into my work and measured my success against my client’s successes and in return I was blessed with abundance in every area of my life.  Just 18 months after the burglary, Gary and I were living in a gorgeous safe estate, and then a few years after that, a lifelong dream came true. I’d always wanted to live on a tropical island and in Feb 2017, we moved to the idyllic island of Mauritius, and my plunging waterfall is now the majestic Indian Ocean in my back garden…a piece of paradise!

My greatest joy is now to help as many entrepreneurs as possible be simply unstoppable so they can find their piece of paradise!

My journey has revealed many success secrets that lead to Wilde Success and to me the most important is to… Just Decide! Because decision ignites action and to continuously succeed means you need to be in momentum. However in order to decide, you need to have crystal clear clarity of what you want.

Know what you want, decide to go for it and stay in momentum by seeing the signposts challenges highlight, then swiftly make changes to stay on track.