The Story of Stuart and Frank: How You Can Achieve the Results You Really Want. Paul Browning
on a regular basis.
So here I am forty-six years later asking the question I introduced you to earlier,
“Why was I so inconsistent in producing successful results at grammar school?”
I gave the last year at school everything I had and succeeded in obtaining 6 GCE ‘0’ levels, a very proud moment and perhaps a surprising one for me and my teachers. For some reason that I’ll never be able to fully explain I left school in the summer of June 1964 not quite sure of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. I really think I wanted to stay on and do ‘A’ levels and then go to medical school, but I didn’t. Maybe my parents couldn’t afford the expense or maybe I was impetuous and simply wanted to go to work and see the world! One thing is for sure. Looking back, I see that young Paul had done rather well at school. I had passed in 6 GCE ‘0’ levels, the only pupil in a form of twenty-seven pupils to do so. I could run, play rugby, hockey and play the clarinet. I was clever, at least on paper. But something was missing in my life, and I was just about to find out what, as I searched for a career in the big wide world. Some great teachers at grammar school had coaxed the very best out of me and academically I had triumphed. I had failed my eleven plus exam, but managed to scrape a place at a top grammar school and I came out on top. I wanted the very best. But I was about to learn a great big lesson. A good, even a great education doesn’t guarantee a successful effective human being. I was about to discover that I couldn’t think!
I had absorbed a great deal of specialised knowledge at school. Specialised knowledge in physics, chemistry, geography, history, music, mathematics, English language, English literature and I excelled in sport. But in spite of all that, I couldn’t think. My parents and my teachers had taught me many valuable lessons over the years but none of them ever taught me how to think, how to be an effective human being, how to consistently produce successful results, how to contribute to the welfare of others.
It has been said that “2% of the population think, 3% think they think and 95% would rather die than think.” This is still very true today. It was true back then and unfortunately I found myself unconsciously in the 95%.
This inability to be an effective thinker was about to be demonstrated by what happened over the next ten years.
I set sail on the sea of mankind in 1964. I was like a ship without a rudder and was tossed about in the currents for the next ten years. I was at the mercy of current events, current circumstances, and current people. I did not have a clear vision of who I was or where I wanted to go. I had no life goals. I applied for one job after another and when one didn’t work out I applied for another, and so on it went. I worked as an apprentice engineer in a cigarette factory, a technician with a pharmaceutical company, a laboratory technician in a hospital, a microbiologist in a pet food factory and a jack-of-all trades in a cheese factory.
In 1969 I married Valerie who I thank for the twenty-three years we had together and for our three now grown up children, Antony, Nathan and Rebecca. I love you all.
During this period I did not lose my thirst for knowledge and in 1970 I qualified as a microbiologist at Trent Polytechnic, now Nottingham University.
Here comes the question again,
“Why was I so inconsistent in producing the results I really wanted?”
I wanted to find a job I really loved and really do well at, but what I wanted and what I achieved were two entirely different things.
“So why was I so inconsistent in producing successful results at work?”
Toward the end of this ten year voyage I had been contemplating the idea of getting into sales. I figured out that sales reps always looked well dressed, drove new cars and lived off company expense accounts. At the time I spent everything I earned and was constantly in debt. I also had a strong feeling inside of me that I had not yet found a job that was challenging enough or exciting enough to hold my interest for very long. So I decided I was going to find a job as a sales representative. After many interviews all over the country I eventually landed my first job as a sales representative for a global chemical distribution company which was based in the United States. I remember a friend of mine taking me down to North London for my first day at work and my life changed from that day on. It reminded me of grammar school all over again. Here I had managers who were interested in me and who coaxed the very best out of me. I was in the top three salesmen of a sales force of three hundred for two consecutive years. I rapidly moved up the ranks and was promoted to senior management positions several times in quick succession. I was earning unbelievable wages, driving a brand new car every two years, wearing nice clothes, taking expensive holidays and buying bigger homes. Life was wonderful. Everything I did worked, the results were consistently phenomenal. At last I had found a job that I loved, and it showed. Opportunities to run overseas branches of the company were offered to me – Ireland, South Africa and Norway. I declined these offers and eventually fell into the comfort zone. I was well paid doing my job here in the UK and Europe. I was good at what I did and I had a job for life with a generous pension at the end of it. So why should I work any harder? But I was soon to find out that being in the comfort zone in life is a dangerous place to be. I began to lose my passion for a job that just a short time earlier I was giving everything I had for. My drive to sell slowly but surely dwindled and once more I was left facing the same question,
“Why had I become inconsistent in producing the results I really wanted?”
I remained in the comfort zone for another year or two. During this time I began to think seriously. What do I really want? I reckoned that over the years I had earned millions of pounds of sales revenue for my company for which I had been generously compensated. But what if? What if I set up my own company, and then I would be putting all of that money into my own bank. And that was when I made a decision. I decided to set myself the goal of creating my own company. For the first time in my life I had made a conscious decision to create a GREAT BIG GOAL to aim for. My emotions ran high, I really wanted this. And so to everyone’s surprise I left the comfort zone and launched myself into the unknown. I was excited at my new venture and to be absolutely truthful I was a little bit scared at the same time.
The next two or three years passed by unbelievably quickly. I set up a couple of small businesses and whilst they didn’t make me instantly rich I was learning valuable new skills and developing new ways of thinking and evaluating. I experienced many ups and downs, many disappointments and there were a few dark times to say the least. But in spite of it all I remained faithful to my goal to create my own successful company.
And eventually my persistence, determination and self-belief finally paid off.
Never again would I have to ask the question,
“Why was I so inconsistent in producing the results I really wanted?”
In 1995 I started my own business based in the English Midlands. I grew the business into a successful and profitable company within a short time by employing creative marketing strategies and carefully selecting and training the best people to help me achieve my goal. I was paid a generous salary and in the third year the business was making sufficient profit to pay substantial director’s dividends. I had never earned so much money in my life. I moved with Diane to a charming seventeenth century cottage in a picture postcard East Midlands village and traded my old Rover car for a brand new top of the range Mercedes.
I was now into the regular habit of setting not only corporate goals, but goals in all areas of my life. Diane and me tried new adventures and we both found a passion for the great outdoors. On our first visit to Scotland we climbed to the top of Ben Nevis and visited the Isle of Skye. I remember saying to myself that one day I want to live here. The following year we climbed Snowdon and in 1999 completed the West Highland Way long distance walk from Milngavie just north of Glasgow to Fort William, a total distance of 95 miles.
I first began thinking of an exit strategy around two years before leaving the company I had first created in 1995. I groomed and mentored my successor and in 2004 I sold my shares in the business and moved up to the enchanting Isle of Skye with Diane and our three cat friends of course, Romeo, Amber and Sam. With the generous six figure sum I was paid for my shares I had choices. And I chose