Micro loans are increasingly affecting the economy in a comparatively small but still massively important way – creating new jobs and economic growth, as well as challenging the traditional methodologies of economics. This new category of banking, pioneered by Bengali economist Muhammad Yunus, grants very small credit to people who do not qualify for traditional bank loans and have no collateral.

MicroSuccess: A little can go a LONG way!

He’s been at it since the 1970s, and Muhammad Yunus’ determination to help Bangladesh’s poor to achieve financial stability has since inspired similar programs all over the developing world. The implications and potential here are exponential: the recipients of these micro loans are typically women (over 95%!)* and doling out these tiny amounts of start-up capital (the loans average around $200 U.S. each)* to these women improves not only their lives incredibly, but the lives of the children, elderly, and community that rely on them greatly to provide food, clothing, shelter, medical attention, and schooling.

Initiatives of this type are allowing the poor women across the world to rise out of dependence and despondence, provide for their families, and become independent, respected, and successful entrepreneurs. The difference between living above or below the poverty line can sometimes be as simple and cheap as a single cow or cell phone, raw materials and commodities that are necessary for a business start up, but generally unavailable to the world’s marginalized.

Redefining Success

As the world undergoes massive change and development, so too must our definition of success. Yunus’ case proves that we can merge the interests of socially progressive policies and the bottom-line success of all trade and commerce – profit. The explanation of this phenomenon is threefold: firstly, Yunus’ philanthropy has granted him great financial success. Since the launch of his program at Grameen Bank (which he also founded as a grassroots institution in 1976), the institution has made 5.7 billion dollars giving market-interest (as opposed to subsidized) loans to 6 million Bengali people.

In order to ensure a high pay-back rate, loan recipients are placed in groups of 5 and cannot apply for future funding until they have caught up on some of its outstanding debts as a group. This social pressure works like magic: micro loans have a 98% payback rate! So financially, Yunus has become a huge success – and rocketed his national bank to international status – by helping his country’s marginalized.

Secondly, in 2006 he won the Nobel Peace Prize (and the subsequent international acclaim) for his micro loan program – recognition by the Nobel Peace Prize committee that “Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty”.

The third fold of this success story lies in the fact that the initiative helped the local economy, which was hungry for capital, to grow by opening up the market to a whole new clientele base that was previously considered unprofitable. According to the World Bank, women reinvest 90% of their income in their families and communities, while men reinvest only 30% to 40%, so granting the micro loans to women makes sound sense in terms of maximizing the earning potential of entire communities.

Success for the Future

Everyone wins with micro loans – Yunus profited, his bank profited, the local economy profited, and women and their families profited. How can a solution to multiple problems be so simple, so profitable…yet seem so far-fetched to policy makers? Mainstream financial institutions continue to turn a blind eye to both corporate responsibility and the untapped profit therein.

In the last 15 years, however, this type of project has already started to flourish, with the number of families served by micro-credit projects worldwide skyrocketing from 8 million in 1997 to 92 million by the end of 2004.*

And people are taking notice: Canadian Living Magazine recommends Kiva.org’s program (wherein anyone can provide the capital and will be completed repaid, it’s not a donation-based program). Oprah endorses MercyCorps.org or BRACUSA.org publicly, having a whole section of her website dedicated to microcredit programs. And once Oprah extends her golden touch to something, you know it’s a big deal! These programs are tipping the balance (or lack thereof) of power in communities all over the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and I deeply hope this trend continues. The loans might be micro, but their implications are gigantic!

* These statistics are from the 2005 State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report.

Much has been written on the intangible yet proven connection between visualization and success in your visualized pursuit. In a nutshell, the act of picturing yourself achieving a goal actually does help to bring you closer to that goal: by focusing on the positive, you encourage and hone the mental processes which are necessary preliminaries to the success you desire. Now, one could go off on a tangent into the possible implications of this link (to what extent does thought/consciousness effect the reality that creates it?), but this could get rather tied up in debatable quantum physics and in the interest of space, here’s a quote from SuccessConsciousness.com (a rather spiritual but still highly relevant blog) to clarify the topic a little:

“How does it work and why? Thoughts, if powerful enough, are accepted by our subconscious mind, which then changes our mindset accordingly, as well as our habits and actions, and this brings us into contact with new people, situations and circumstances. Thought is a creative stuff that molds our life and attracts similar stuff into our life. Thoughts also travel from one mind to another, and if they are strong enough, they can be unconsciously picked up by people, who are in a position to help us materialize our desires and goals. There are people who use this technique naturally in their everyday affairs, not being aware that they are using some sort of power. All successful people use it consciously or unconsciously, attracting the success they want into their life, by visualizing their goals as already accomplished.”

I learned this lesson early on in life: around age 12 I started playing golf with my father, who needed a partner on the course. An impatient teenager, I wasn’t too keen on this tedious afternoon occupation to begin with – being dragged around in the hot sun for 4 – 5 hours, hitting a tiny ball into a tiny hole, was hardly my idea of an enjoyable past time. Couple this with my complete lack of success in (what I then considered to be) a futile game, and you have my initial reaction toward golf: utter frustration and annoyance. My father’s suggestions on the course – “Keep your head down, don’t bring your backswing farther than parallel with the ground, rotate your hips when you follow through, etc.” – only furthered my infuriation and desire to quit.

After about a year of this, something began to change. Due to my father’s diligent coaching (despite my vehement objections and constant rudeness), I experienced some mild improvement and subsequently started to enjoy the sport more: I could finally reach the green in less than 5 shots, and the long hours spent walking down fairways started to seem less tedious. I began to relish the good shots – drinking in the “shhhhhwing” of hitting that sweet spot at tee off, or the satisfaction of a good straight putt going directly into the middle of the hole. Even though I was getting better, my competitive nature ensured that golf still remained very frustrating: I couldn’t stand to lose (and in non-competitive golf you can lose only to the course!), and one bad shot could send me into a gloomy state (or occasionally a violent one…there was an isolated incident involving a pitching wedge being thrown into a moat surrounding the green).

This tendency was overcome only through my dad’s mental counseling: by focusing on the bad shot, he explained, I was sending myself into a “downward mental spiral of negative thought”, and this would in turn negatively affect the next shot, and the next, and potentially ruin the entire round of 18 holes for both of us. To counterbalance this, he suggested that I needed to focus on the positive to stay mentally balanced through the bad shots. A great deal of the success of this technique is due to visualization, and the great power to drive your success therein. Beyond mere positive thinking (including truisms such as “I will succeed in this”), visualization is where you put aside all that has come before whether good or bad, and visualize – with consistency and intentionality – yourself performing an action/goal to the “T”. In this case, my dad urged me to analyze why a shot was lacking briefly, storing this info mentally to learn from the experience, then to immediately let go of the anger it produced by picturing myself hitting the next shot perfectly. Here the key is all about the details: I would picture backswing, downswing, contact, follow through, the ball’s path through the air, and final landing destination all being executed with perfection yet in a realistic, achievable manner, the whole time I was walking to the ball.

I put visualization in action, and the effects were immediately visible: I had better scores, a better mood, and was thus better company for my dad! I went from swearing like a sailor and throwing clubs to winning the Junior Ladies Championship for the next three years running at our club, as well as competing regularly at outside tournaments. It gave me the confidence to first break 100, and to shoot from the men’s tees with the same score as from the women’s. Visualization was absolutely the key to my success, and the catch is that it is actually very simple psychology! A motivating force of incredible power, it can make or break your success. Make it if you use it, and break it if you chose not to and instead get trapped in self-defeating cycles of negative thought that don’t help anyone, especially not you.

In relationships, the equivalent would be to stop carrying around the emotional baggage from previous relationships so as to not ruin current/future ones, instead looking forward to a future untainted by past failures in which one is likely to fall in love again. In the fashion world, this is summed up by a single sentence: Don’t dress for the job you want/have, dress for the job above it. In the professional world, the implications of this are myriad: whether implementing a new business development plan, closing a deal, or going for a promotion, the act of visualizing it in a concentrated, well-defined, and often-repeated way will not only make this desired result more possible by lifting the mental boundaries of doubt or low expectations, thus allowing your full potential to be unleashed, but will furthermore attract the result you desire by the positive attitude you will exude as a side effect!

Through being mindful of our mental cycles, we can greatly alter our futures – collectively and individually – through the simple combination of the dedicated intention to succeed, and the continued visualization of your specific success (as well as taking actual steps toward being successful, of course). That being said, I will leave you all with a simple question: How do you visualize your success? And keep in mind that even contemplating this question is a step toward your achieving your goals. The only limitations are the ones we place on ourselves. Brilliant? I think so!

Hello,

This is just a quick update to explain what is going on!

As you may have noticed, we are currently running a default WordPress installation. Why? Because the old version of Success Circuit had so many errors in the backend that I decided to start from scratch. Or at least, almost scratch. All posts ever published on Success Circuit are still available.

I do not know how long this will take, but I am keeping the current (default) theme up until I remake the design. I was originally going to use Thesis but have decided to stop halfway through it and am creating my own from scratch.

I hope you had a good easter!

Shane

PS. If you are interested in writing for Success Circuit, please contact me at Shane [at] ShaneHudson [dot] net.

UPDATE 19/04/2010: This video is no longer available so I have removed it from the post to improve loading speeds of the website.

I am inspired and you will be too if you follow this one simple step. Watch the video below. I am not going to say anything else, because there is no need.

Video from Josh Haragarne of World’s Strongest Librarian.

The follow up post to this video, written by Amy Harrison, is a very good read too: Do you have the strength to be still?

If you are not already following Josh then do so, if you do not have him in your RSS reader… you must.

Today I recieved my results for my first Maths AS exam. I have been struggling a lot with the Maths and therefore revised a lot before the exam. I got the worse you can possibly get, a U.

Now, in answer to my question… most people would say YES. Yes, I did terrible, but did I fail?

When I started Maths, our teacher asked the class how we learn. When it got to me, I said “By making as many mistakes as possible”. I did not let him down, I make a lot of mistakes EVERY lesson! But each time I make the mistake, if I am able to work out where I went wrong… well, next time I am unlikely to repeat the mistake.

I have the option to resit this exam. Next time hopefully I will do better. But the only reason I will do better is because I will see where I went wrong this time and try to correct myself next time.

So is it really a fail? Surely, in theory, by getting so low this time I will learn where I went wrong and do better next time than if I had passed this time?

No… I made mistakes, but mistakes can be avoided next time. So no, I did not fail, I just took longer to get the result than it should have taken. But just because something takes longer than it should does not mean it is a bad thing. Remember the hare and the tortoise?

Have you made many mistakes in the past? I am sure you did, if not… well, the time will come! Hopefully you learned from your mistakes and avoided any repetition.

As Paul Sabaj said in yesterday’s post, journals/notebooks are REALLY important! Make a record of your mistakes, review them often and avoid them in the future.

Now I am going to take a look at people who have openly admitted their mistakes and have shared what their mistakes have taught them!

1. Sir Richard Branson
   

   If you have ever read any of Sir Richard’s books (which I highly recommend) then you will know what I am talking about. In 1971 (when he was a mere 19 years old) Sir Richard made the biggest mistake of his life. In fact, it was brought up by Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable in the House of Commons during Virgin’s bid for Northern Rock (a British bank).

   This extract from Virgin.com will explain Sir Richard’s mistake and the lessons it taught him.

   When I was 19 and running our record mail order service I stumbled on the fact that records bought in Great Britain intended for export were not subject to purchase tax. I bought the records I needed, pretended they were for export, and then sold them to British customers. I was caught red-handed by HM Customs & Excise and put in a cell overnight. Naturally I agreed to pay back everything and the fines imposed and avoided a criminal record. It nearly killed off my entrepreneurial dreams; thankfully it didn’t. But it did teach me a hard lesson about never doing anything illegal or unethical again.

2. Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan
   
   These are a couple of entrepreneurs that I did not learn about until researching today for this post but plan to research more about… they seem to be doing very well!

   Rather than just rewriting what I have read already, here is what USA Today wrote about them.

   In 2000, two roommates had a brainstorm: eco-friendly cleaning products. They whipped up some samples in their bathtub and handed them out to friends. Method was born. The company in 2008 reached $100 million in sales and is sold in retail outlets such as Target.

   Money mistake. “As an entrepreneur, you just feel a desire to just grow, grow, grow and show top-line (increases),” Ryan says. “Sometimes it leads you astray.”

   After the founders expanded their brand into the car-cleaning marketplace with a product called Vroom, they realized they moved a bit too fast.

   “We ultimately ended up selling the line (to another company), but it was a big distraction from our business at the time,” Ryan says. “There are times that you need to preserve fuel and be careful about how many growth opportunities you pursue, because you burn capital.”

   Savvy move. “Hiring a CEO as our first employee was one of the best money moves we made,” Lowry says.

   The more-experienced Alastair Dorward helped the founders make better management and financial decisions. Dorward had the acumen “to grow smart rather than just grow fast,” Lowry says.

3. Shane Hudson
   
   Now it is time for a couple of my own mistakes. My problem is that I trust far too easily! An example of this would be the sale behind Lonely Designs. If you have not read it already then it may be a post that will interest you. Here is an extract from it:

   Now I need to let you know an important fact. I had been using NamePros since august of the year before and I had got a “friend” to join it. He was loving it there and making a lot of money but did not have paypal, so he asked me if I could transfer some money he had earned from paypal to namepros (NP dollars). Of course I thought nothing wrong with this. The amount of money that I transferred was $150. Remember that!
   [...]
   As you probably guessed, the end was not far away. I needed money and the site was going nowhere, I needed to sell. I decided to sell it on NamePros Live Auction, and it sold for $155. This was no where near what I was hoping for, but I sold anyway. They sent me the $155 and paypal took $150 of it!! After investigating I found out that the “friend” I helped had actually scammed the money! I was not happy at all with them taking the money and I tried to find him, but he had disappeared . So I let them take the money as there was nothing I could do, and I felt sorry for them as I do not like scammers. But this left me with $5, not even enough to cover the logo! I lost a lot of money from this but it was worth it, as I learned so many things from it. Including how to blog properly!

As you can see, failure can often lead to success. So, you never know, by needing to resit my maths exam I may learn a lot more about maths which will help in the future (I plan to do a Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence degree, so maths is rather useful)!

If you would like to submit your own story or that of somebody else, please comment here or email Shane [at] Shane Hudson [dot] net with the title of “Story for Did I Fail Post”.

This is a guest post by Paul Sabaj, a loyal reader of Success Circuit. He has previously written Fortune Favors The Bold.

I often see people who have no idea of what success means to them, when they might have achieved it and what their role and set of values can bring to the world. As we get older we often think of what of a legacy we will leave behind.

Again without having goals and the idea of what you want to achieve to keep you grounded you can lose sight and direction. I often wonder if this was the problem of some of the stars that died too soon like John Belushi, River Phoenix and the list can go on.

When you look at those that give back to the world, they stay a little more humble. The likes of George Clooney and U2 whom while fame has given them riches they also manage to give back to the world in a big way.

Keeping you eye on the prize and knowing what you want along with a game plan to get there is a must have in my book. Without direction how will you know when you have gotten to where you want to be?

If you have no idea where you want to go, anywhere will do. Ok, that may have come from Alice In Wonderland.

When I read all the multiple books on people and success they have all found a way to give back to society. One of the true greats is Sir Richard Branson who has more money than he could ever hope to spend in three life times and yet he still finds the time to take on great causes and is a leader not just manager who has a big picture view of life. I have never read a unkind word that was in print from the likes of the man.

I love the story of Steven Spielberg where at a young age he went and worked his way onto the movie lot and found an empty office where he set up shop. He would go there and dress like he belonged and found his way to meet the people who would later hire him. He knew what he wanted and had the end in sight and worked it backwards to get to where he wanted to be. I get the feeling that the dreams we have in our youth get diminished by the failure of others to achieve what they would have like and they tell us all the negative things that take the spirit out of us and leave you with the feeling that you can’t do it.

When I see the likes of Collin Powel who came from the poor side of town and set a standard for himself that helped drive him to the top of the ladder in the military and on to Secretary of State of United States of America, I wonder what it is in a person that drives them to the point that they finally make the decision to go for the gold and keep trying. I also read about the trials and hard road that helped Sir Winston Churchill get to where he made the top of the ladder of success and is now a part of history.

The things that I see that all the people mentioned had in common were great self esteem, desire, and action to get to where they wanted to be. The old saying of when you find your reason to get to where you want to be the rest will come to you. While I don’t like all of Madonna’s music she still is a inspiration as a success model in that she never let failure get in her way. In her youth she lived on other people’s couches and in her car whiles she made her way to the top. Her determination to get to where she wanted to be drove her to stardom.

In one of the books I read there was a part that talked about taking a weekend to decide just what it is you want out of life. Create a journal and review it often and keep a small list of what it is you want to accomplish. Just the act of defining what it is you want will allow you mind to keep it at the forefront and help you towards your goals.

Read the books by Napllolian Hill and others to inspire you along the way. Just as a spiritual person needs to go to church once a week to keep spiritual direction, you need to keep reminding yourself of why you want to achieve what ever it is you want and keep your batteries charged up. The wonder of books, DVDs and seminars allows us to do just that. Get the journal. Take the weekend and define your success path, be bold. Get around like minded people. Ask the people you hang around with what their goals are. If they have none consider who you’re out with and if they might hold you back from growing. I’m often told of how lucky I am to have gotten to where I wanted to be. They never saw the hard work and the volumes of books read, seminars and tapes I listened to. Define your success so you can be THE LUCKY ONE.

Get inspired and find your why! I look forward to the posts from Success Circuit and love the inspiration I find here. Fortune Favors the Bold. Be Bold!

Note from Shane:
What a great post by Paul Sabaj! It really is true, you need to know what you are trying to achieve and the direction you wish to head. Even if you have decided this in the past, go back and check again. Things may have changed. I know I plan to really have a look at the direction I am going to be taking Success Circuit, and indeed the rest of my life, as I believe there is always more I can achieve! I recommend reading an article written in the first week of Success Circuit which was called What Is Success?

If you have been in blogosphere during the last the you will know this man. He needs no preamble… some refer to him as Britain’s answer to Gary Vaynerchuk, some call in The Infopreneur but he just calls himself… James Richmond!

The questions to this interview were thought of after reading and watching ‘A Blogger’s Success Case Study’ by Maren Kate, so I suggest you go there first so that you can understand why I asked some of the questions I did. The first question especially was because I could see how family orientated James is, I think he is pure inspiration!

Being the great person he is, James agreed to this VIDEO interview! Not only did he do an interview, he did two parts! Though I do not think you deserve to have to wait for the second part, it has such good answers… so here are the two parts of James Richmond!

More Information about James Richmond:

• The Infopreneur About Page
• A Blogger’s Success Case Study

Please comment with questions for James, questions help everybody (including himself) learn… so they are important! Also, what do you think of this comparison with the great Gary Vaynerchuk? Even if you perhaps have even something bad to say about him, I am sure he would really like to know your comments!

Today I have an exciting interview for you to listen to! I will soon (hopefully) be updating this post with a transcript and more information, but I really want to publish it for you all to listen to. This is the first audio interview to ever be published on Success Circuit, so I did have quite a few technical problems… hopefully you will be able to hear it all.

I am sure you can see why I think Dale is so inspirational. He is 18 and is working on starting up a transatlantic airline… that’s big aspirations and he is going after them very quickly!

You can find even more about Dale at dalejstephens.com.

[audio:http://successcircuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Interview%20with%20Dale%20Stephens.mp3]

This is a guest post by Paul Sabaj, a loyal reader of Success Circuit. He has previously written success at any age is great.

I found the title for this post in a fortune cookie the other day. I thought what a profound statement to who ever the author was. I know it’s been around for a while and the more I read of other people’s success I can’t help but think that this played a major role in their development. The meek shall inherit the earth but only what’s left behind by those who were bold and went after the prize. So many people loose site of their goals and dreams that they accept the status quo as the norm and fail to do anything to help their selves. It’s easy to fall into a routine and not be motivated.

Being bold is what drove you to that first date where you finally asked the girl out. I remember a friend who was with me in a bar and wanted to ask a beautiful girl to dance. I told him to get out of his chair and ask the girl before I did. He would refuse to go so I did. Well she shot me down and my friend was beaming with delight. He said how does it feel to get shot down mister get up and ask. My reply was I felt great. I had closure and he would never know if she could have been the right one. It was one of many long nights to find the future Mrs. Right. My point being I never gave up on the chase and I did find her.

When you read the biography of those who have made it they all had some common traits that need to be part of your make up. Like Tony Robbins say “success leaves a trail” and all we have to do is follow it. Kind of like a recipe, you model what some successful person has done and you should be able to do the same. It also saves going to that school of hard knocks we have heard so much about by our parents and friends.

Being bold is about doing the work, the follow up, networking and the research for what ever you so desire. But the main thing is to start. I had written that success can come at any age. It is that first step that’s the hardest and overcoming the fear of failure. Fortune favors the bold. It has quite a ring to it. When you also look at the list of success stories they all also had some failures in their past but learned from the experience and moved on to great things. Moving beyond failure require you to be bold and of a strong self worth and spirit.

When you look at some of the people who are on shows like American Idol or Britton Has Talent you have to admire the spirit of the competitor and they are going for the brass ring. Maybe that’s why the shows are such a hit because we envy and wish deep down that we all had the courage to chase the dream and go for the gold like they have. Let this be your year to dust the dreams off and start you race for the gold. Be bold and passionate about what ever your hearts desire is. Stay away from the dream stealers and those who would offer up advice even though they are not where they want to be. Misery loves company and will do a lot to keep you with it. Surround yourself with the positive people who can share in your dream and you in theirs.

Were all in the run for the prize so give all the help you can along the way and it will return ten fold. Like Tony Robbins says at the end of his tapes” live with passion” and have a great year. P.S. Be BOLD

Hello everybody! How has your day been?

As you may know, I was recently interviewed by the wonderful Sarah Cook of RaisingCEOKids.com. So today I was pleased to see my face (okay, a terrible picture… but it’s me!) on her website.

Although at the beginning I was extremely nevous as it was actually the first audio interview I have done, there is a lot of answers (and of course questions) that you will enjoy reading and take a lot away from.

You can read the whole interview at Raising CEO Kids. Be warned though, being an audio interview there it is a bit “all over the place”, there may be a couple of errors in what I said, as I do mumble a bit, but I believe we have corrected them all!

Below is a small extract of the interview, I hope you like it!

Shane

“Sarah – And so what about for parents? I know you’re parents have probably really supported you so what about for parents? What would you recommend to other, because you’re not a parent. But if you could say, “This is what I love that my parents do or this is what I wish that my parents would do to support me.” What were some ways that you feel like parents can best support their kids in being in business and in archiving their life goals?

SH – Well, I think that parents that give their children money to start up, although that will help them, I think that you’d learn much more if you start with little money. I know some people, not many of us. Some people get given large amount of money from their parents just like that and they do successful. But they’re not as successful as they would be if they started with nothing.”