Mark Thompson Paykickstart Founder’s Favorite Book: THINK AND GROW RICH by Napoleon Hill

“A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich:
The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

As a general rule, it's more profitable to leverage your strengths than it is to fix your weaknesses. However, there is one exception to this rule, destructive mindsets. A destructive mindset is not an ordinary weakness; it is a critical weakness that will hamstring effectiveness if not addressed. One example of unhealthy thinking is the scarcity mindset.

The scarcity mindset views wealth, success, and fame as something like a pie. There’s only so much to go around, and if one person takes too big of a slice, everyone else gets less. To what extent, some people resent the wealthy and successful people because they took too big of a bite. They find it difficult to be genuinely happy for others’ success because they have a scarcity mindset. The opposite of a scarcity mindset is an abundance mindset. The abundance mindset creates more value for everyone. Instead of viewing wealth and success as a zero-sum game, it creates win-win situations where everyone comes out better than they were before.

An example of an abundance mindset is that rich people believe “I create my life,” while poor people believe “Life happens to me.” If one does think they can control the direction of their life, they will take action to get where they want to go.

Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century” examines the psychological power of thought and the brain in the process of furthering your career for both monetary and personal satisfaction. It is one of the universally recognized personal development masterpieces.

According to recent estimates, more than one hundred million copies sold worldwide. The book’s philosophy centers around the idea that success, in any endeavor, can be reached through mental visualization and imagination. This book is about self-improvement and personal development in entering the million-dollar mindset. Napoleon states that anyone can become anything that their mind deems possible. The mind can either stop a person or propel them towards becoming the best version of themselves—initially written in 1937, right after the great depression. It is from the secret recipe for success by Andrew Carnegie. Then Napoleon Hill studied and interviewed the 500 richest men of his time: Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and more; to determine if there were any commonalities between these men who knew how to get wealthy.

After 25 years of research, Hill divided it into 13 steps. These steps talk about the power of thought, desire, faith, autosuggestion, knowledge, planning, organization, and persistence to obtain the desire. The entire book tackles mastering feelings to ensure the road to riches will pave the way to success.

Some of the most appealing steps to shift the abundance mindset are:

Desire:

The most crucial measure to reach success is to have a burning desire to achieve goals. One must be precise about what they want to set a clear purpose.

Mastermind Alliance:

It is pivotal that one must surround themselves with like-minded people. People whom they know and can trust from an intellectual perspective. Find a person that can provide meaningful insights and draw inspiration from them.

Thoughts are powerful:

Hill translates thinking as a mixture of initiative, faith, willingness to win, and resilience. Failure is considered an essential part of the learning process. It gets closer to the end goal only if taken the right way and decide to persist nonetheless, no matter what might show up on the journey.

― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Napoleon Hill is an American self-help author. He is known best for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937) which is among the ten best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill’s works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one’s life. Napoleon promoted most of his books as expounding principles to achieve “success.”

Hill was born in a one-room cabin in Southwest Virginia in 1883 and rose to become a prominent American author and advisor to presidents. Hill began writing as a reporter when he was just thirteen and later used his earnings to go to law school. However, he withdrew from law school due to financial reasons. He met Andrew Carnegie from one of his reporting assignments that became a pivotal moment. Carnegie commissioned Hill to interview 500 wealthy men and women and publish a book discovering and explaining their recipe for success. The results of their research bore The Law of Success. Hill, later on, published his most famous book in 1937. Think and Grow Rich is one of the best-selling books of all time.

He became an advisor to Andrew Carnegie and Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. After many years of writing, teaching, and lecturing about his Philosophy of Achievement, Hill passed in 1970.

A Founder's Favorite

Mark Thompson is the co-founder of PayKickstart, a shopping cart and affiliate management platform for online businesses. Mark started as an entrepreneur in 2009 by selling online training and coaching products. A couple of years later, he started building and selling software products. Over the next few years, he made a dozen different software products (most of which failed).

However, a couple of them did well and generated decent revenue. He noticed how there wasn’t a perfect shopping cart solution when selling these products. They decided to build their shopping cart solution, and PayKickstart was born. Once they started using their new internal shopping cart, their revenue skyrocketed.

PayKickstart is an online shopping cart and affiliate management platform. With built-in conversion enhancing features such as one-click upsells for credit card/PayPal, order bumps, custom checkout pages/widgets/embed forms, coupon management, auto-complete shipping fields, subscription saver sequences, and more.

― Mark Thompson, Paykickstart Founder

Today, the company exceeded $1 million in annual recurring revenue. For a startup to reach $1MM in revenue is almost impossible, yet, Thompson and his team conquered the odds. Mark couldn’t have done any of his achievements without having a million-dollar mindset.

Casey is passionate about helping others. He initially created the software for his other company that developed great potential. Later on, he went full-time with Bookafy and now focuses on helping people. In an interview with Medium, Sullivan advised aspiring entrepreneurs not to pursue what they don't love because it's easy to quit if they dislike their job. Instead, do what they love to get through tough times and build success based on passion.

As they developed PayKickstart, they gained colleagues and partners who want to get the same checkout experience. The company grew with trusted affiliates that believe in Mark's intuition.

Although Thompson had the willingness and desire to attain his goals, obstacles are inevitable. As he developed their solution, Mark discovered that it is difficult for customers to transition from one shopping cart to another. Many customers grew overwhelmed and confused about how to use the product. Thus, it increased their customer churn. This hurdle didn't change Mark's momentum; in fact, it encouraged him to do better. Their team simplified PayKickstart and improved transition; hence, their churn decreased by 13%.

The beauty of Think and Grow Rich is that it’s applicable for anyone who aspires to be rich, and it doesn’t require any fancy education or complicated strategies. All it needs is a burning desire and a focused mindset. It is an excellent read for anyone who lacks the psychic push to establish a business.

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