It takes time to get to your goal!

Hello amazing people,

something I always have and still to this day struggle with is that I want something really bad, but I cannot get through the tough phase to get there.

To put this into a bit of context, I often learn about something and I get real excited.

I then go ahead and go from Zero to Hero and then stop!

The biggest challenge for me has always been to follow things through and get better at it until I get to the stage where I champion my discipline.

It takes twenty one years to be 21 years old, you cannot get excited and rush to 21.

The same is true for anything else you may pursue! You have, heck, we all have to go through the initial phase of putting yourself out there and make it happen.

Humble beginnings, right?

Here is how I know this is true.....!

In this screenshot you can see that at the time of writing I do not have a single follower!

Fine!

It's fine because I am aware that it takes time to establish a presence.

When it comes to anything substantial, there is one skill that makes all the difference (hint: it's not intelligence or smarts).

The number one thing is PERSISTENCE.

If you just keep going, you can't help but getting better at it.
If you then understand that the thing you are trying to accomplish is actually worth it, then you do the next thing:

WORK AT YOUR WORK

That means that you refine the things you do to get more results out of less effort. You streamline the way you so things and look at people that are succeeding in the very thing you are trying to do. YOu steal there ideas and adjust them to suit your cause.

This is how you accelerate your progress!

At the end of the day I believe the following is true:

SUCCESS IS THE SUM TOTAL OF THE DECISIONS YOU MAKE EVERY DAY - FOR A LONG TIME GOING...


I hope you find value in my words!

Leave me your comment or questions below!

Until then - be awesome!

What's your excuse???

Hello amazing people,

before I came to Australia I was the dude that went out on Saturday nights to get drunk and fight.

In a lot of ways I was a bit of a "loose unit"

I think a lot of fights were more or less for the right reasons (to help or protect those that can't protect themselves against bullies) but clearly, to bash someones face is hardly a very smart thing to do.

When I decided to leave my home country Germany to come to Australia via a few stopovers in Asia a lot of my friends and family doubted me to say the least, in fact, my mom was convinced that I would find myself in a prison cell in Bangkok, because I couldn't control my temper and get into massive trouble.

Truth of the matter is that ever since I have left Germany and traveled through this world I have not had a single fight although there would've been plenty opportunity there for past Mario...

Against the doubt of friends and family who have also said that I would not last overseas I am still in Australia six years later.

Not only am I still here, but things are working very well for us and we make slow but steady progress in building the life we desire!

We are in the progress of becoming Australians and perhaps migrate Australia for good, but we leave that open for now.

How we got here...

How we got here is a long story, but the most important of all things is that we ate shit for a good three to four years!!!
The first few years in Australia were very humbling! Below are some of the things that I think stand out the most to me.

1. There is no government support for non Australians!  Simply put - If I don't work, I don't eat!
2. I can't just work for anyone: With the sponsorship visa I had I couldn't work for anyone but my sponsoring employer
3. Help from my family is 18000km away
4. My friends and family are all 18000km away.....
5. No Australian business prefers Germans they'd have to sponsor first.
6. You get treated like shit, you are not a special snowflake and if you cannot quit your job without loosing your visa, some bosses make sure you feel it too.

With that being said, we have worked our way through all that, which has almost cost my relationship with my partner but also the relationship with myself because my self esteem was somewhere near the bottom of the garbage bin.

I have to thank Alex for being the person she is and an absolute inspiration too, she has helped me to climb out of the hole I have been in and create a better life for both of us!

The lessons I have learned here are something I would've never learned if I would've stayed in my safe bubble, my comfort zone back home in Germany, but I would've never found out how much I can endure and achieve either.

There are no excuses! In order to grow, you need to get out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself!

It's so worth it!

Even the best excuse is in the end only that - an excuse!

Let me  know what you think in the comments!! 

Until next time - be awesome!

I'm not good enough to do that....

Hi all,

we all have our difficulties and our shortcomings no matter who we think we are!

I do, you do, we all do.

Here's one thing I have learnt during my time in Australia:

You have to have a little bit of faith in yourself! If you fail, and you will at some point, you need to embrace your failure!

You need to use it, look at it and learn from it.

Let me tell you this! To do something amazing has absolutely nothing to do with how smart you are, but it has everything to do with how persistent you are and how you use your failures to get you to the next level.

To fail does not mean you are a failure, it means there is still more to learn and things to get better at!

You must not let failure defeat you!

The most famous and incredible business people in the world were failing their way to success.

Take for instance Thomas Edison who was labeled mentally retarded by his primary school teacher, yet his mother told him that his teacher had advised her that he'd be too smart to be taught at school and that she (his mother) now had to teach him at home.

Thomas Edison became probably the most influential inventor in the world and was the founder of the company General Electric which is still to date one of the largest companies in the world.

Thomas Edison lit up the world!

It took Thomas 1000 attempts to come up with a functioning light bulb, yet Thomas did not fail a 999 times - he'd found 999 ways not to make a light bulb!


We must not surrender to failure, because that would be the ultimate failure and the entire world would miss out on the lost potential!


My own experience is that you'd be amazed how far you can get by just giving things an honest try and learn as you go, improve and adjust!

Go for it! It's worth it!

A little weekend motivation!


'Til next time - be awesome!

Never take "NO" for an answer!

Hi all,

What if you applied for a job and you go through the interview phase and out of a few thousand people you make it into the last four people?

You'd feel pretty good about yourself and almost reached your goal.

Then, the phone rings and they tell you that they have decided against you!

You wouldn't understand what happened I guess. You'd be pissed off!

This is what happened to Marc Randolph when he applied for a high paying advertising executive job.

When he was told he wouldn't get the gig, he could've easily given up and moved on, it's no big deal after all, I mean if there are a few thousand people applying for the job, chances are high that there are a lot of guys and gals that are smarter than he was.

But Randolph decided he wouldn't give up there!

He wrote letters to the interviewers and asked them why he didn't get
the job. He asked them what he would need to learn in order to make it through, in order to get that job.

He later learned that none of the four finalists had gotten the job. In fact they wanted to see who would not take "NO" for an answer!

After all, if you make it under the last four people,  your pretty damn close to getting the job, right?

Turns out that they had offered him the job!

They not only wanted to find the most skilled person for the job, they wanted to know how bad the applicants wanted it!

Randolph wanted it bad enough to not be embarrassed to go back and asked what they wanted him to be able to do - which was just that!

The lessons to take from that are that you make yourself a hell more attractive if you show your teeth and make sure that people have no doubt about how bad you want the cake and that you make it happen - no matter what!

To see the full interview with the amazing Gary Vaynerchuck and Marc Randolph klick here!

Please make sure to check it out!


Until next time - be awesome!


P.S. I have hijacked the Gary Vee titlepage and I hope he won't sue me for it!

If you want more money this is what you need to do....

Hi all,

I hear people say all the time "I want more money..."

Yeah I know, but don't we all...?

So here's the deal!

Many of us (and I have been doing this plenty) just spent way more than they should be.

I think it's sensible to save at least 10% of what you earn in order to build financial muscle over time.

So a lot of us are spending almost every cent they earn for various reasons, which will never result in any sort of wealth of course, so in order to change that we all need to make it a natural habit to spend less that what we earn ( yes, that includes afterpay and your credit card too ).

Once this habit has been successfully established you probably still want more money.

What's the easiest way to have more money? 

SPEND LESS OF IT, AND KEEP THE REST!!!

Sounds cheesy right - but it's true!

I remember going for lunch to that Thai place up the road with workmates relatively regularly, until I tallied up what I'd spent the last month (no wonder the shop owner was excited to see us nearly every day)

I'd spent about $300 on lunches that month!!!

That over the course of a year would mean that I would've spent $3600 on lunches with my mates.

A fair chunk of dough, right!?

Put that money aside for a rainy day or invest it in whatever, a stock portfolio, ETF, or maybe to pay for your well deserved holiday! 

Now I'm not against going out for lunch and other pleasantries, but you might want to think about what you spend your money on, because after all every dollar you spend equates to an amount of time you spend working for those dollars - it's up to you to decide weather that lunch every day is worth that time.

This is merely one example among many others, but you get my drift.

If you think about what you spend your money on and ask yourself weather it's really worth it, you may find yourself a lot better off after some time.

And home made sandwiches have their own charm too...

Please leave your ideas, questions and comments below.

Until next time - be awesome!

Baby steps to cash in your pocket!

Hi all,

when it comes to money we all have different ways of dealing with it.

A lot of people save really hard for a while and get some money to their name and then go on a massive spending spree which gets them back to start without getting the $4000 bucks.

Truth be told, to be diligent and save money and then actually keeping is hard and requires willpower and persistence. If it was that easy everybody would have plenty cash in the bank and not a money worry in the world.

Unfortunately social media and the advertising industry both do an amazing job when it comes to making your money someone else's and so the detriment starts...

I do not own a television, nor do I waste my most precious recourse on (anti)social media to see what new gadgets there are and what the Jones's are doing (couldn't care less) and how I do not need money to "own" it now , when I can just afterpay it.  How convenient!

I often listen in disbelief when some of my mates say: 

"I want this and that and the other thing..." 

to which I often say 

"Yeah but how can you afford this when you haven't got any money to your name at all or are in debt??" 

the answers often leave me baffled...

"Don't worry Mario, I just afterpay it...!

WHAAAAATTTT?

Here's  my opinion on afterpay:   "Afterpay is for poor people!"

Intelligent people would've bought afterpay shares instead of using their at least questionable "service".  

By not having a telly and not really using social media a lot I managed to cut out a lot of the temptations from ads and the urge to having to keep up with what I "supposed" to have and what not.

I tend to keep my money in the bank and watch it grow (this is more satisfying then watching any tv-show I can assure you!

Bottom line is this: If you want to save more you first need to work on how you treat the money you make. 

It is not about how much money you make, but how much you keep!

I have multiple bank accounts (all fee free accounts) into which a fixed portion of my income get transferred every time I get paid. I do not have to do anything and every week my money stash grows and grows.

I also make sure that I don't overdo it. I leave a predetermined amount of money in my normal account for me to just spend on whatever. But once that "spending money is gone, that's it! 

I can recommend an ING bank account. To set one one up takes about five minutes and you can do it from you phone. Also you can setup I believe up to ten online saver accounts as well in which you can deposit money for what ever purpose (Emergency fund, Holiday fund, Fun fund, etc)

Note: there are no kickbacks or anything as I recommend this as a private and independent dude and nothing else.

If you have other recommendations or questions, please leave me a comment and I will do my best to answer your questions.

Until then - be awesome

What's Your Savings Rate?

Hi all,

most of us have to get up in the morning, do our little morning routing and then hurry off to work to earn a paycheck...

we have bills to pay after all. And then there is Christmas right around the corner too....

But how much of  money is left after we have paid all our bills and other obligations?


For a lot of us it is hardly anything since living expenses and rent are sky high.

A 2015 report by Suncorp found that the average savings by Australians was $427 per month ($5,124 per annum). Not too shabby. 

Those aged 25-34 were the best savers with an average saving of $533 per month ($6,396 per annum).

How about yourself??

How much are you stuffing into your pillowcase each month? Is it 10% of what you earn?

Is it 20%, 30%, 40% or even more?

In our case it is about 60% of all we earn! 

It is an amazing feeling to know that if something is ever going to hit the fan, you will have enough stashed away to get yourself out of trouble, at least for a while.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Until then - be awesome

Immigrant style

Hi all,

today I'd like to talk about the way us immigrants live and how we buy the things we need.

Myself and Gary Vee like to call it living life IMMIGRANT STYLE!


To put that into context, that means that for me and my wonderful partner in crime Alex there is no safety net and no soft mat to land on in case we screw up (i.e. Centrelink or wealthy parents)

For us it's very simple:  IF I DON'T WORK -- I DON'T EAT!!!

This has changed now since we are permanent residents in Australia now but the mindset that's behind that has not!

In daily life that means that we have to make sure that every single dollar we earn must travel as long as possible to get the maximum out of it!

It means that by shopping smart we have been able to reduce our food cost per week to about $100 per week for two people!

(and those of you who know me know that I am a rather hungry guy... :))

It means that we have canned our internet connection and use our prepaid phones as a hotspot which works us just fine.

It means that we make sure we have enough dough on the side that enables us to continue to pay the bills for minimum six months without having to get a loan of go to centrelink and ask the govenment for money.

It means that we are to proud of what we've achieved to even think about centrelink support even if we could...

Not too long ago we were literally at rock bottom financially - now were not - because of what I call our biggest asset, our Immigrant Style lifestyle.

P.S. Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below!


Until next time - be awesome!

Why you are broke!!!

Do you ever think you are not getting anywhere financially?

I certainly did and sometimes still do.

But the truth is this: More likely than not, you are the reason you are not getting ahead!

It's very simple: If you only earn a $1000 you must not spend more than that $1000!

Our principle is this: Out of every $1 we earn we can only ever spend $0.70 which means that you automatically save 30% of what you earn!

Do this and give it some time and you will find yourself with a not too shabby bank account in the not too distant future.

Becoming financially independent has a lot to do with your daily decisions!

Let me know what you think in the comments section!

Cheers
-- Mario