80 | MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 3very short time... But you know through his
books and his other programmes, I was
able to meet him in that way.
And so, I talked about that ripple effect a
moment ago. And so, he is my role model
for wanting to have that ripple effect, that
transformational effect really on as many
people as I can before I am dead and be-
fore I leave this earth. And
so that’s the legacy that I
try to live up to every day.
Neil: Absolutely awesome
Stephen Covey, isn't he?
Noah: yeh
Neil: Noah, what I would
like to do is talk about the
time before you were an entrepreneur.
What difficulties did you have to over-
come when you started your business?
Noah: The main difficulty I had to over-
come was not knowing a damn thing about
how to build a business. I mean nothing. I
was... when I started successclinic.com in
1997... I was a Religious Studies major in
college. So, I literally started my company
from my college dorm room, you know just
like Michael Dell. Although Michael Dell
was a lot smarter than me. And I had abso-
lutely no idea what I was doing but I just
had a mission, I had a vision, a dream really
just to touch people's lives, to transform
lives around the world, you know with
‘afformations’ , with power habits, which
at that time was called permission to suc-
ceed.
I knew that the number one thing that
people needed was to actually to give
themselves permission to succeed. In fact, I
trademarked that phrase. Nobody was talk-
ing about that back then, now you hear
some people talking about it. But I actually
am the first person to actually break that
down of how you actually give yourself
permission to succeed
which I have discovered is
in fact the number one
thing holding people back.So, the difficulty for me
was just now what do I do?
I mean what am I supposed
to do? It was starting from
absolute nothing in terms
of knowledge, experience
and money. I had no money, being a col-
lege student, a typical broke starving col-
lege student. So, I guess if there is any les-
son to be learned from me from my story
it’s that if you have a dream, if you have a
'why to' that is strong enough you will find
a way. Now there were a lot of mistakes
and bumps on the road certainly along the
way, but I just always kept that strong vi-
sion in my head and that's what kept me
going through the long lean years.Neil: So how did you get from there, from
the point of knowing not an awful lot, to
where you are now? I mean obviously
there has been quite a steep learning
curve hasn't there?Noah: Ha ha ha yeh. Honestly it was just
keep doggedly asking questions, and try to“it was just keep
doggedly asking
questions, and try to
find the right
mentors, try to find
the right teachers.”