Richard St. John and Working for the Passion

Robert St. John was a success expert, researcher, marketing guru, and CEO speechwriter. He was a self- described average guy who followed his passion and found success after doing research for a decade. He became successful in the corporate business world as a member of scientific staff at Nortel Networks R&D labs. In the entrepreneurial business world, he started his own marketing communications company ‘The St. John Group’. He won a design award for his mastermind and creative work in Nortel’s largest product launches. And he achieved top business marketing awards for the best video and script all over the corporate world and the highest award for business communications, an IABC Gold Quill.

About his personal life, he had a black belt in Judo. He climbed two of the world’s seven summits, Kilimanjaro in Africa, and Aconcagua in South Africa with his wife. Over seven continents, he ran more than 100 marathons (26 miles) with the fastest time 2 hours 43 minutes.

Sometimes people call him motivational speaker and his employees actually call him a de-motivational speaker. But he tried to be an informational speaker and he went out and found information on success. His story started from a plane when he was on the way for TED talk in California, a teenage girl from a poor family asked him “what leads to success?” She wanted to go somewhere in life so she kept asking him questions like “Are you successful in life?” After achieving a lot of success in personal and professional life still, John was not able to answer her question then he felt bad for himself.

To find that answer he has spent ten years in meeting with the world’s most successful people and asked the same question. He met Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch, the google founder and many more. In order to conclude all the meetings and their words, he ended up creating one of the most organized and largest databases on success. Also, he wrote the book ‘The 8 Traits Successful people have in common: 8 To be Great. John’s 8 secrets for success are:

• Passion: Don’t do it for money, do it for passion. Do what you love.
• Work: It’s all about hard work and fun, nothing comes easy.
• Get Good: To get success in life we need to put our nose down in something and get damn good at it.
• Push: Push yourself through shyness and self-doubts.
• Focus: Focus on one thing and work on it.
• Serve: Serve others something of value.
• Ideas: Be creative, curious, ask questions, make connections and come up with an idea.
• Persistence: Try to persist through all the failures and crap.

Successful people in all fields love what they do whether its astrophysicist Jamie Matthews, author J.K. Rowling, athlete Michael Phelps. When John met Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric and asked him do you like your job? He said that I don’t like my profession, I love it. Kathleen Lane also said the same that stress is not working for 15 hours at work which you like. But stress is working 15 minutes at work which you don’t like. But the main issue for everyone is to find the passion and fall into it. To know the passion, we need to go out, try different kinds of stuff and explore many paths like Robert Munsch (Children’s author). He studied as a priest but didn’t get success in that career. And then he tried to work on a farm but those people didn’t like him. After that, he tried to work on the boat but it sank. Still, he kept trying things and found something that worked for him. Finally, he started working as a children author and sold over 40 million books.

Richard believed that nobody can become rich by working for the money, do it for love. Once he had a good-paying job where he was travelling the world and making a lot of money. But he had not time to do what he wanted to do i.e. photography so he left that work and started his own photography company. Neither he had enough money for that nor his friends were supporting but he followed his passion and what his heart said. He found a lot of fun in doing the work he liked and learnt from that if you do what you love, the money comes anyway. And the additional choice is that if you don’t love your job then follow your passion on the side like Albert Einstein. He was working as a Patent clerk but he was interested in physics so he wrote four of his most important papers in free time. Now he is known as one of the world’s greatest scientists.

He also said that success is a continuous journey if we will stop working hard after getting success then we will fall. And this is the reason behind that why so many people fail after reaching success. We sit back in our comfort zone and stop doing everything that made us successful. Once he became successful then he started to think that he is good enough now and relax. He stopped working on critical thinking and ideas that result in losing many projects and clients. They took their money back and started working with others who serve better than him. He had a really hard time in his business, all the employees left the company except his friend. And then it took seven years to come back to the track of success with a huge business than ever. From that he learned success is not a one-way street, it’s a continuous journey.

St. John is considered as a most emailed, All-time favourite and most inspirational, funniest speaker at conferences. Even his TED talk on “Secrets of Success in 8 words, 3 minutes” is listed in the top 40 most viewed of 2000 amazing talks by great speakers. The largest bank in Norway dubbed him and Richard Branson as two business speakers at private VIP event for top CEO’s and highest level government ministers. College students like his nature because he is ground to earth, funny approach to high-level and serious subjects. In his talks and books, he always talks about the secrets for a wealth of wisdom shared by all the successful people he met. So that everyone can use those secrets to get success in their own life or for the accomplishment of their organization in which they work.

My pathway is not as bright as him right now because I am still searching for my success. I have done my bachelor degree in Electronics and communication engineering. After graduation, I started working in a KPO company as an internet troubleshooter. We used to deal with international customers over the live chats. I was really working very hard over there but I felt that what I am doing is not really worth. That was not something which I wanted to do in my life. So I quit that job and started working in the other IT company as an HR associate. I worked there for a few months because later on that project got shut down. After that, I began working as a Sales analyst for Facebook process and along with that, I made my mind to study further. I started exploring several colleges in Canada, a list of programs they provide and their future outcomes. But still I was not sure what I want to do and then someone suggested me GBMT in Georgian college on the basis of my experience and study. And luckily I got letter from college and I am studying here right now. After completing the study, I will use my skills and knowledge to gain some experience with reputed firms. And I am hoping that I will see myself as a successful Global Business Manager in the upcoming future.