Ep. 135 – Climbing mountains and entrepreneurial success – The 2nd part – Listen to a few more of the most amazing mountains’ stories you heard

Episode 135 Show Notes

This is the second part of the Reach Or Miss mountains project;

Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast

From the incredible story about the film Manjhi – The Mountain Man,

To climbing day after day for a week the beautiful mountains of Montana in Yellowstone,

To climb the mountain of going from a hobby to leaving your solid nine-to-five job and start trading full time for a living,

to climb the huge mountain of losing the love of your life, and then, 4 years later, to be diagnosed with cancer,

Or making a promise to climb the Kilimanjaro: “I’ve made a decision in my life that I’m not going to be afraid of the things I’ve never done before.”

 

What should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary step to reach your peak?

Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.)

For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains.

You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.

The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.

“In military warfare, mountains and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the mountains in the consumer's mind.”

 

So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.

Listen to these inspiring stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.

Episode 135 Show Notes

This is the second part of the Reach Or Miss mountains project;

Listen to these incredible mountain stories I heard from successful entrepreneurs I interviewed on my podcast

From the incredible story about the film Manjhi – The Mountain Man,

To climbing day after day for a week the beautiful mountains of Montana in Yellowstone,

To climb the mountain of going from a hobby to leaving your solid nine-to-five job and start trading full time for a living,

to climb the huge mountain of losing the love of your life, and then, 4 years later, to be diagnosed with cancer,

Or making a promise to climb the Kilimanjaro: “I’ve made a decision in my life that I’m not going to be afraid of the things I’ve never done before.”

 

What should you – as an entrepreneur looking for your breakthrough to success – take from their stories to help find the necessary step to reach your peak?

Many successful entrepreneurs climb mountains, while others use mountains as a metaphor to describe what is necessary to conquer the peak – including the fatiguing yet rewarding journey to the top. Still other entrepreneurs use mountains as an analogy for a significant goal they wish to achieve – such as becoming a billion-dollar-market-cap company. (See Mellissah Smith’s mountain story.)

For many years, I’ve compared the act of taking possession of your potential customers’ minds and of building awareness, likeability, and trust of a leading brand to the act of climbing the highest mountains.

You climb step by step to the peak, reach your position as a market leader and a leading brand, and then start climbing a new mountain with a new product line or another brand.

The idea of mountains as representations of a strong position in the market is mentioned by Al Ries and Jack Trout in the excellent book, Marketing Warfare.

“In military warfare, mountains and higher altitude areas represent strong positions and often are used to present a strong defense. In marketing warfare, the question is one of who holds the mountains in the consumer's mind.”

 

So, at some point after the launch of my podcast for entrepreneurs, I started to ask the successful entrepreneurs I interviewed about their habits or dreams of climbing one of the highest mountains in the world.

Listen to these inspiring stories, find which entrepreneurs and stories you identify with most, and review your entrepreneurial objectives, market overview, and plan. By making your business as strong as possible, you will be able to quickly and easily achieve entrepreneurial success.

Smita Nair Jain “one should never give up no matter how impossible to climb-on their mountain seems to be.”

Smita Nair Jain is currently the Senior Divisional Vice President at Sears Holdings India and prior to that she was Chief Operating Officer at Barclays in India.

She is passionate today about four topics: social media; Inclusion and Diversity, Mentoring and having a greater engagement with the youth of today.

Smita’s Mountain

I don’t climb mountains and not going to climb any. However, I would like to use it metaphorically and tell a story. It’s about a movie called Manjhi – The Mountain Man. My husband is a filmographer who was awarded for filming this movie.
The story is about Dashrath Manjhi, who was a poor man from the lowest of the low castes, living in a remote village cut off from the world by a rocky mountain range. Life for him was a daily struggle for survival. He loved his wife Phaguniya, beyond belief and together they had a son. One day, while climbing the mountain to bring him food, his wife, who was pregnant slipped, fell, and died. Overwhelmed by grief, Dashrath decided to carve out a path through the mountain, so that no one else would suffer his fate. For 22 years, all by himself, with just a hammer and a chisel, he hammered away at the rocks, till the path was carved out from the mountain.
Every time I watch the movie, I just think that one should never give up no matter how impossible their mountain seems to be.

Dwayne J. Clark – From growing up poor to employs more than 3k staff members that served over 60k residents. Dwayne believes that good always trumps evil.

I’m not a mountain climber. I did set my treadmill to a 12% grade this morning, if that counts. But I do have a mountain climber story. I have a good friend, named Fred, and he’s a CEO of one of the largest latex glove companies in the world, very successful company. 10 years ago, he said to me, “I’m going to become a mountain climber.” When your friends say things like that, you often shrug them off, right? The following week, I see him walking 10 miles with a 100 pound pack on his back, and he told me he was practicing to climb a mountain; one of the highest peaks in the world. Over the course of the last 10 years, he’s climbed 6 of the 7 peaks, and been to Everest base-camp. And he took his 12 year old son with him to the Everest base-camp. He also climbed Kilimanjaro with his son. He’s trying to install this stellar attitude about pushing through pain.

Vladimer Botsvadze: We need to climb mountains, not so the world can see us, but so we can see the world. The best view always comes after the hardest climb, so we have to put in the work.

We need to climb mountains, not so the world can see us, but so we can see the world. We need to conquer ourselves. We have desire – this is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness was ever accomplished without desire. And the best view always comes after the hardest climb, so we have to put in the work. If we don’t have desire, we will never achieve anything, and when we have desire, nothing can stop us. Nobody can stop winners from winning. ... All I ever wanted is to build my dream.
I see many successful entrepreneurs, and influencers and thought leaders in social media who work every single day, no matter what, who keep moving forward and inspiring their audiences, their communities, and that is fantastic and I’m proud to be part as such community!

Angela Maiers founded the global movement, Choose2Matter in 2014. The non-profit organization grew out of the impassioned response to a TEDTalk she gave on the power of two simple words, that went viral. YOU MATTER

Angela has been listed as one of IBM’s Top 20 Global Influencers, named by Forbes as one of the Top 5 Education Leaders to Watch, in 2017 and 2018,  and is among Huffington Post’s Top 100 Social Media Influencers!

I just spent a week in Yellowstone, in the beautiful mountains of Montana, and went hiking every day. Each day we took a different path and each day we pushed ourselves differently than we did on the previous day.
There was a group of about 100 people. Every day, I asked, “Who wants to go hiking with me?” Now, nobody wants to do it because they see it’s a mountain and then it’s just too hard.
A lot of the population doesn’t have the endurance, doesn’t have the vision, doesn’t have the adaptability or even the confidence to try.
When you’re in the mountains, the actual mountains, it’s the most beautiful time to reflect on your journey.

Cloud Wrapped Mountains in Yellowstone National Park

Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe is a strategic digital marketing executive who is fluent in 4 languages and specializes in developing business through digital, influencer and social media marketing.

I grew up around mountains in Italy in an area called Abruzzo, which, if you are familiar with the books of Ernest Hemmingway, it’s mentioned in the book, For Whom The Bell Tolls.
So, my relationship with mountains is somewhat romantic, but also when you think in a literal sense, I’ve had my fair share of them in my personal live. First, the first mountain was losing George. And that was the Mt. Kilimanjaro.
And then, 4 years ago, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. That was a big mountain as well because as an entrepreneur, it was very difficult for me to take that kind of time away from my business. I couldn’t square that; really understand that I had to do this because if I didn’t, I may not survive. In each instance, I think the thing that got me through was the thing that I love the most and that is work. My work is the stick I use to climb my mountains.
Something I want to say to all entrepreneurs when it comes to mountains or obstacles, don’t give up. Never give up. Anything is possible. I’m the perfect example of somebody who came from a completely different industry and had this idea, had this someone beside me that was willing to give me the courage to...