I conducted this interviewed in 2008 but didn't transcribe the interview. I had a short post and included the audio. I decided to transcribe the interview for you because I promised to do so, but also because I wanted to give you the option of either written or audio. As you will notice, the interview is different because at the time I interviewed Leslie Householder, the focus of the interview was more on the challenge and resolution. I have grown since then. As usual, I will present Leslie's interview in two parts.
Leslie Householder – Your Invisible Mentor
Leslie Householder is the best-selling author of the Jackrabbit Factor. Listen to her talk about a challenge she faced and how she resolved it. How did she transform a failure into a greater success? To find out the answers to these questions and much more, listen to, or read the transcript of her audio interview. Click here now to listen to Leslie's interview. After you have listened to her interview, what are five takeaways? What are five things that you will now do differently? What ideas can you implement? What do you have in common with Leslie? When you have some time, answer the questions and then compare your answers to Leslie's . How do they differ?
Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.
My biggest challenge besides the typical restraints on time and capital of course was exposure. I was empowered by the principles that I learned from Bob Proctor, so much so that we were able to triple our income in just a few months after going through one of his weekend programs. I was compelled to teach what I learned, and although I was a stay at home mom, with four children at the time and one on the way, I trained to teach his program and have done so ever since 2001. But the challenge I face however was that he didn’t supply me with an audience. It was my job to generate my own leads. So getting enough exposure to be profitable was probably the biggest challenge I faced. Without a marketing budget of any kind, I learned to round up exposure on the internet through websites that allowed you to post articles (IdeaMarketers.com and EzineArticles.com) and create a name for yourself on the web.
What lessons did you learn in the process?
- I learned to be patient, everything I did seemed to me that it should take only a couple of weeks, or a few months tops, but in reality, the exposure I was after took a few years to develop, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was in this for the long haul. I was creating a future for me and my family. I was driven to put in the long hours for many months just for the hope that I would create something that would supply passive income.
- I was easily overwhelmed by all that needed doing, so I learned to put all my thoughts, all the things that were swimming around in my mind on to paper and just handle them one at a time. I learned to trust that time wouldn’t run out for me. If all I did was keep moving my feet everything would come together in the right time, and it has.
Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s hard for me to call anything I’ve done a failure even though I’ve make plenty of mistakes because I have always done the best I could with what I had to work with, my mindset, my resources, my stresses my understanding of things. So what may look like a failure to someone may in reality be a great lesson for me. Every mistake I made has shaped me and made me wiser so I’m grateful for all of it.
But if you want to know something about them, the toughest one we faced happened after my husband and I became actively engaged in helping others achieve prosperity, and so for us to have a major setback in non-prosperity was very difficult. We found a couple of investment properties that promised to yield us more than $200,000 in a couple of months, and at the very end of the process of obtaining them it looked as if we weren’t going to be able to pull it off at all.
We needed to float the properties until they were sold. The investors who provided us with funds, wanted us to prove more solidly our ability to pay them back in case the properties didn’t flip as soon as we expected. Seeing this obstacle, we had learned over the years how to overcome obstacles. So we saw this as an obstacle and decided to apply the principles of success to make sure that these things happened. We used visualization to get the deals to close, which ended up happening in a pretty miraculous way, but in the end however, we would have been better off had they not closed because these investment properties turned into the biggest money pit we have ever seen, and we ended up losing a lot of money at that time.
What lessons did you learn in the process?
What did we learn from that? We learned on a whole new level that you get what you ask for. We wanted it very badly and we got it. We have learned to be more careful, to consult God who we believe in to guide us in choosing worldly desires. Sometimes when we have a desire we’ll check to see if it’s the right thing to do before we move forward to make it happen because we know that we can get what we ask for and have learned to be more careful.
It left us with the feeling that if we have a goal or desire for our family, and we check our conscience, or pray, or however people consult God in their own way, when we do that and feel the peace of confirmation that this is a worthy and right desire then there is a feeling of being unstoppable because you know that God’s on your side then the obstacles are just obstacles and we know that we can get through this because it is a good and worthy desire. It’s really hard to go for a goal when you have this underlying question about whether this is the right thing to be asking for. Once you get that settled it makes future successes sweeter.
What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Every time we’ve set a major goal, instead of having the goal fall into our laps, the success or whatever, instead we’ve always been faced with an opportunity that took us out of our comfort zone. Every time it has been to the point the hardest thing we’ve had to do to take advantage of the opportunity that was presented to us in response to setting a goal. When you say which one was the biggest one, each one was the biggest one until the next one came along. I’m starting to see a pattern, that’s just the way it works. They all felt big, and we recognized them for what they were and saw them as the opportunities that are brought to us as a result of our asking.
These challenges have stretched us, and honestly, nothing feels better in hindsight, it feels really good, it’s scary but it’s an illusion.
How did mentors influence your life?
Mentors have always given me a model of life to aspire toward, a standard to strive for. They keep me reaching higher and stretching farther. They have given me an example. I feel very differently when I spend too much time watching television shows with people living lives that I don’t aspire to. I feel differently, and it drains me a little bit, so I’m inspired when I read about, watch programs about, hear audios about people who have achieved great things, and have become great people through overcoming obstacles and what-not, and so it keeps me motivated to look to them as mentors.
What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
That the law of attraction brings opportunities, and that doesn’t always show up in the form of something blissful. And it goes back to if a person is going to ask for courage, they are not going to be given courage, they are going to be given an opportunity to be courageous. Now I’ve noticed that when we set a goal, sometimes instead of attracting piles of money, or great wonderful things, or whatever people expect to attract when they start to live by these principles, instead a challenge shows up, and what that challenge is, is the very experience needed to groom us to prepare us for the blessing that we are asking for on the other side. The problem is that by the time we see the obstacles, the natural thing to do is turnaround and say, “This isn’t what I asked for, the law of attraction doesn’t work,” and that’s not the case, it absolutely works, it brings you opportunities to grow you to eventually achieve and receive the thing that you are asking for.
How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let's keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don't you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.
About Leslie Householder: Leslie is an international best selling, award winning author of Hidden Treasures and The Jackrabbit Factor. Wife to Trevan and mother of seven, she is also the president and co-founder of Thoughts Alive International and School of Life Mastery – helping people everywhere reach their highest potential. She is a contributing author to multiple Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and her articles online and in print publications have reached hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. She will help you enjoy peace of mind in ANY economy and discover how to tap into a hidden source of genius, for overcoming obstacles and thriving in spite of life's most difficult challenges.