Stay Humble, Kick Hard: Finding Success and Significance in Life and Business

By Benjamin Moriniere

An entrepreneur starts off with dreams of changing the world and quickly run into the hardest times of their life; the mind-numbing, hard work that it takes to start and grow a business.

As the stress sets in, every entrepreneur begins to dig deep looking for hope and, most of all, wishing there were instructions or a guidebook that could provide them the answers they need at such a critical moment.

This book is a MUST read for goal-oriented people looking for innovative and easy-to-follow processes for business and personal growth; solutions that propelled Benjamin Moriniere to the front of the martial arts and fitness industry.

Benjamin Moriniere uses light-hearted stories, practical wisdom and hands-on tools to teach you the secrets to his success. As a former US military officer, award winning HR Manager and life-long martial artist and entrepreneur, his experiences and insight will provide you the tools and mind-set to move to the next level in business and life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984554994

Benjamin Moriniere

BENJAMIN L. MORINIERE brings years of international martial arts and business success together from the very unique perspective of his success as an U.S. Army officer, an award winning HR Manager, and reaching the highest levels of martial arts practice and instruction to students around the world. Known as a "Renaissance Man," Benjamin has been a dynamic, inspirational speaker since the age of 16, is an award-winning artist, published musician and songwriter, and still an active martial arts competitor.

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Copyright © 2018 by Benjamin Moriniere.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018911395

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-9845-5497-0

             Softcover      978-1-9845-5498-7

             eBook           978-1-9845-5499-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date:   02/15/2019

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1   Is This Business for You?

Chapter 2   The Shamgar Principle

Chapter 3   The Money Game: Find, Get, Keep, and Grow It, All While Avoiding Jail

Chapter 4   Building Your Brand

Chapter 5   Marketing

Chapter 6   Professional Development

Chapter 7   Building the Right Team

Chapter 8   Leading from the Front and Leaving a Legacy

Chapter 9   Dealing with Different Types of Customers

Chapter 10   Business Networking

Chapter 11   Community Outreach

Chapter 12   Projects

Chapter 13   Business Analysis

Chapter 14   Final Thoughts and Tips for Success

PREFACE

As crazy and tough as it is to own a business, everyone should do it. It’s liberating. It doesn’t matter whether your business is small or large, just that it’s something you own. Life begins anew when you become the master of your own fate, not stressed out and worried about how you will make it tomorrow or hating the life and career you are in. It takes hard work and dedication to become excellent at something, especially if you want people to believe in you and pay you for your products and services. I believe you can do it!

This book is a collection of the life and business principles that have helped propel me to success and that have helped me keep growing in good and bad times as a martial arts expatriate in Japan. Japan is home to many martial arts, and it’s a tough place for a non-Japanese like me to rise to the top. I did it though, and I love teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs the whys and hows behind my success.

Throughout this book, I share principles and tools in a step-by-step, methodical way, and I illustrate my principles with stories from my journey. Keep an open mind, and with every new principle, take some time to reflect on its wider and deeper meanings until you understand how you can apply each to your life and business. If you are anything like me, a hungry entrepreneur, then you are searching twenty-four hours a day for little nuggets of wisdom that will help you get to the next level. Believe me, there is always a next level. We must never stop growing or reaching for the stars.

My greatest wish is for you to walk into your destiny and experience not just success but significance. Anyone can be successful, but material possessions, lights, and cameras fade away as other individuals rise to take our place. The people we love and who love us, the lives we impact, and the legacy we leave behind: these are what matter most in life. This book is going to push you to new heights and impart you with a sense of urgency to leave your mark on history through your life and business. The road is not easy, but you can do it.

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1

Is This Business for You?

The Beginning

I remember the very instant I became an entrepreneur. It wasn’t when I opened my first business. I was a young officer in the US Army, and during an operation in the Republic of the Philippines, I had the privilege of staying in beautiful Subic Bay for a few weeks. While there I stayed at a hotel called the Seorebeol Grand Leisure Hotel, and I had the opportunity to befriend the hotel owner’s wife. The owner was Korean and his wife a Filipina. After we talked for a bit one day, I told her I wanted to go into business one day soon and possibly get out of the military. I wanted to open a martial arts studio. She said, I have just the thing for you. I have a book I want you to read. I will bring it tomorrow. We parted ways, and the next day she gave me the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I read that book like there was no tomorrow. Once I returned to my military duty station in Japan, I left a message with the front desk at that hotel in the Philippines, thanking her for everything. Then I immediately submitted my paperwork to get out of the military and opened my first martial arts academy. That is how this whole story began.

I hope that through reading my story and journey, you will be inspired to do great things in your life and that you will take to heart and put into action the principles of success identified herein.

Business Is a Calling and a Burden

Going into business requires more than ambition or desire; it is a calling. A calling is a strong innate desire toward a vocation or way of life. Many people don’t understand that we all have a calling, a powerful urge, to do something grand in life, to take charge of our futures, but the calling only gets you on the playing field. A burden will keep you there.

Every day across the world, businesses open and close at a rapid pace. In the business arena, entrepreneurs take one of two paths: either they stop at nothing to succeed, or they allow hardship and struggle to immediately or eventually derail them. Those who succeed go through much adversity and give every bit of their lives before their baby, the business, dies. Those who fail start out with great intentions but do not maintain the consistent balance of being attentive to detail, being long-suffering, thinking critically and innovatively, maintaining a strong heart, practicing character-driven leadership, and demonstrating the financial savvy they need to be successful. They may have heard the call but never develop a true burden.

A burden is a load or an obligation carried with difficulty. A burden is much more than a passing responsibility; it is something that must be done, something a person has gone far out on a limb to accomplish. Like Alexander the Great, the burdened person has burned all bridges leading back to mediocrity. A lifeguard can carry heavy equipment around all day, but putting himself or herself in danger to save the life of a drowning person is the lifeguard’s burden. If you have ever met a lifeguard who has saved someone’s life, you know that is the highlight of his or her career and that he or she would work twenty more years lifting heavy equipment if it would lead to another chance to save a human life.

However, many people hear the call on their lives to do something greater but turn around when they perceive the burden, sacrifice, or obligation is too overwhelming or heavy. In business, you need courage to make the necessary sacrifices in your life now and continuously. The journey is not supposed to be easy. Therefore, it is important for each of us to be honest with ourselves from the very beginning and through every stage of business. Brutal honesty with ourselves concerning our strengths, weaknesses, and current state of life, coupled with feedback from others, helps us realize what we need to work on before we consider opening a business and as we proceed throughout a business’s lifecycle.

In my life, I had to seriously and intentionally count the cost, by which I mean take an inventory of my ability to be a professional martial artist and coach as well as assess whether my current level of business acumen in the industry could professionally sustain me. Most importantly, I had to inventory the resources I had and how long, or short, they could last.

You will see, as we travel through this journey, that a burden can feel unbearable at times, but with sound business principles and a mind set on improvement and self-development, we can become, like mules, more surefooted with every additional burden and every additional step we take in life and business.

Are You Prepared?

As a young officer in the US Army Quartermaster Corps, which focuses on logistics, I found out very quickly that being prepared was most noble. As a new lieutenant, I was given orders and placed in charge of many missions that did not allow for procrastination, for mediocrity, or for a lack of attention to detail. These orders and missions always had a monetary and sometimes a lifesaving element that behooved me to properly prepare. Once our military unit relocated to a training location or to a hostile destination, there was hell to be paid for officers who failed their mission and their soldiers because of a lack of preparation. In the military, we prepared based on a mission, and missions have focused goals and objectives. It is the same in business. In every stage of business, we must prepare for our own mission, our own focused goals and objectives.

Higher education and degrees do not necessarily, or automatically, qualify a person to handle a business; however, understanding what it takes to be successful may allow you to better gauge your current standing. Gauging your current standing will focus you in your journey toward progress and growth. As with preparation during my military career, it was not my charisma, academic pedigree, or political savvy that made me successful as a business owner. Success came through realizing that I needed help from people far more successful than I was, I had to continue my professional development in the areas where I was strong, and I had to passionately pursue knowledge and wisdom in the areas where I was weak. Laying a solid foundation for your business takes intensive research, honesty with yourself regarding your talents and your resources, and sound advice from people who have stood the test of time—people who have consistently demonstrated a knack for success in your field despite any failures or setbacks.

The state of being prepared can relate to an objective when it comes to hard numbers, such as cash, but generally preparedness is a subjective idea. Before you begin your business, seek counsel at every major stage of development from at least three trusted, successful advisors. This tedious task of building relationships with mentors and conducting intensive research is the work you must do before you open your business.

This concept of preparedness reminds me of my toughest course in college, one of my architectural engineering classes. In this class, we had to study bending moments. A bending moment is the maximum amount of weight that a building’s beam or column can hold before it collapses. The trick to it all is balancing structural strength against budgeted expenses. It is not cost effective to install a beam that is well over the size and strength needed to hold up a point of the structure. Builders are looking for the precisely sized beam or column needed to maximize company profits. Well, to tell you the truth, this class was a nightmare. If you have ever seen movies of Einstein or any movie in which characters are decoding an alien language on a chalkboard that stretches around a large warehouse, well, it was kind of like that. The final test for the class was only five or six math questions, and it took hours! Thankfully, our class could finish five or six questions in a few hours by the time the course was completed, because when we first began the course, our homework was literally one or two questions a night, and it took me sometimes into the wee hours of the morning to finish it. What this course taught me was that in being prepared, preciseness and attention to detail pay off in the long run. Also, one must be willing to put in the work up front, including the research and mentorship, because every choice you make to be excellent or to be mediocre comes back full circle somewhere down the line.

During my world travels as a youth and an adult, I saw builders in some countries make new houses or buildings without preparing the foundation. They would just set up wooden framing and pour concrete. Due to labor costs, or maybe due to lack of knowledge, they would not clear the land of debris, flatten the land, or perform any other preparations before they started pouring concrete. Sure, the structure would go up just fine, but their process made for a poor (poorly poured!) foundation. The foundation’s structural integrity was poor because of either poor planning, ignorance, or stubbornness.

In the business world, our foundation, and a great predictor of our success, is this preparation stage. Most people don’t make it through this stage, and their businesses remain nothing more than figments of their imaginations for the rest of their lives. For those who make it through this stage, their hard work and the great advice they receive from mentors sets the tone and standard of excellence for their businesses to build upon.

Your Continuous Evolution

Being successful in business is a multifaceted endeavor that requires continuous evolution. To be successful in any industry requires three pillars. First, our craft must be perfected; second, we must be able to replicate our efforts in others; and three, we must be able to conduct, grow, and lead within our business—in other words, we must be business savvy.

Each industry will have a different business model but generally the same goal: to make an impact while being profitable. These three pillars must have a solid foundation of research and mentorship to stand on, and they require continuous maintenance and improvement. Let’s examine these pillars of business more closely.

Perfecting Our Craft

You should be continuously practicing and improving your talents and skills. If you expect to grow in business, then don’t look at today’s success alone; look at your craft as a lifelong journey of innovation in the pursuit of excellence. There is no finish line for progress; you either grow, or someone moves you to the side and takes your place.

In that regard, set short- and long-term goals for self-development. You will find that setting small and large goals will bring you an optimal experience. Long-term goals will give you the passion to lead and a tangible vision for the future, while setting and reaching each short-term goal will rejuvenate your efforts, especially when you are going through tough times.

Many entrepreneurs find and settle into their success, not realizing that victory is always a moving target. Real growth is not in the continuous procurement of new business but in retention while adding or multiplying new business. If you don’t continue to develop your skills and talents, then what you and your business offer can quickly be perceived as low quality in a demanding economy and industry.

You can only take customers and your staff as high as you are willing to sacrifice and grow to reach. Without constant innovation and creativity in today’s marketplace, you will fail. The customers of today can soon forget you, unless you remain relevant and special. To stay relevant, you must continue to grow and perfect your craft.

Replicating Our Talents and Skill in Others

Your ability to replicate and develop your skills, talents, and even leadership and management styles in others is a completely different aspect of business. Some people think that because you are great at subject A, you are automatically great at passing on the principles and concepts of subject A to others. That thought could not be further from the truth. Teaching, leadership, and management