Vince has been recognised by Adobe as one of the top 50 marketers in the world, is a best-selling author and also has a great podcast called “Chasing the Insights”.
And today, he takes us back to 1996.
He was sitting on a bench with a friend having a pity party — his business had just failed.
This was his first business, or at least his first serious one.
He’d made a lot of mistakes because the truth was, he didn’t really know what he was doing when it came to dealing with a major telecommunications client.
And the result was that they pulled out, when his business depended on it.
Because of Vince’s upbringing, he didn’t really have role models or people to show him how to do things like run a business. He only knew poverty, and because of this, he only saw his failure.
But his friend didn’t see things that way.
He told Vince that everything he does counts for something. And that everything that has happened makes him who he is today — and he thought that guy was a good person.
Vince realised he was looking at things with a victim mindset.
And after that conversation, he understood that he could either choose to be defined by his past, or he could choose to learn all that he didn’t when he was younger.
Working on Changing the Victim Mindset
Vince wanted to find mentors that could help him to learn more and offer advice on the businesses that he had.
In the past, he knew that he had chosen to embody all that had happened to him. This was part of the victim mindset — instead of seeing the business as a failure, he was a failure.
What Vince’s friend helped him to realise, was that while they sound subtly different, the difference in the experience of these mindsets is quite extreme.
But when you separate what’s happened to you from your identity and truly understand it. You can learn much more from your mistakes. And with this approach, find more space to take risks.
If you attach your business to your identity — you don’t want to take a risk, because you’re gambling with who you are.
For Vince, the process of this learning wasn’t overnight. But slow, and experimental.
Finding the Next Step and Exploring a New Mindset
While Vince was exploring this new mindset, he tried new things. As a creative, he played around with being an artist but quickly realised that it wasn’t the most profitable career.
It was at this point that he sat down with that same friend, and looked at the mistakes he made and what he could have changed.
He got a mentor, but that didn’t really help. So, he started reading and learning all that he could. And eventually found people that could offer advice on his life.
This is what Vince recalls as the turning point — when things really started to accelerate in his career.
In what is a very in-depth and honest conversation. Vince looks back on his personal transformation of the victim mentality with a very clear perspective. He breaks it down into two parts.
We compare ourselves to
- Others — even though it’s our perspective of the person, not necessarily what they have achieved
- Where we want to be — which initiates a vicious cycle of never feeling successful, even when we are
Tune in, as Vince shares some simple tools that helped him to keep a broad perspective on the impact he’s making on others, rather than what he hasn’t done yet!