1 Million Dollars in 365 days…

Ok, so maybe it was JUST 42km, but it may as well have been 1000 miles! This is the start of the 45th Rotorua Marathon, complete with Maori Warriors giving us runners some extra motivation.

It turns out that 42km is quite a long way. This was certainly such an amazing experience and I stil can’t really come to terms with the fact that I actually completed it. You reach different milestones on the race. There’s the 1km mark, you feel great, charged and full of energy. I was still feeling great at 10km.

At 18km I couldn’t take it anymore and had to start walking. I had managed to injure my right knee (which did happen once during training). I was alternating between running and walking, but eventually it was too painful to run.

When I set out to achieve this goal and complete a marathon, I envisioned myself running the whole thing. Sometimes life doesn’t always work out exactly how we plan, but don’t let that stop you. I certainly didn’t let it stop me. I decided before I even ran the marathon that I was going to finish.

I wanted to complete the marathon (my first ever) in under 5 hours. I had trained for 12 weeks and put a lot of effort, sought lots of advice from experts, and drank a lot of water and ate a lot of carbs! I also was doing this to raise money and awareness for STOP THE TRAFFIK - an international organisation dedicated to freeing people across the world from slavery.You can read more about the fundraising at http://www.justgiving.com/ryankilfoil

I didn’t make the decision to start walking easily. I tried to run through the pain as long as I could. I had never walked any long distances before, so wasn’t sure how my body would react or how long it would take me.

“It didn’t matter that I didn’t know those answers. I knew the outcome -I would finish this marathon today.”

That really helped me get through this. It’s crazy because you don’t realise how long it takes to walk 1km until you have to walk 25 of them in a row! I kept picturing myself walking over that finish line.

The last 10km were really tough…..then the last 3 were even tougher. They were tougher physically but, mentally, I knew I had made it at about the 36km mark….when I turned the corner and saw my beautiful wife standing there, so happy to see me. It gets lonely on the road…

This is a picture of myself, walking the last 100 metres, with my beautiful wife and our daughter Sophie, cradled in her arms:

Walking with her gave me more energy. I couldn’t stop to moving because my legs would seize up so I just kept on walking as fast as I could. She walked with me for a few seconds, gave me a kiss and moved back to the car, where our 12 week old daughter was still sleeping.

At the 3km mark I got another boost, when I saw my dad walking towards me. He walked with me for those final 3km. It felt like ages, and it was so great to have him by my side. When I got the final 200m, I was greeted by the rest of my family. It meant so much to have them all there, cheering me on. I felt like I was about to cross the finish line in the Olympics for gold….what a feeling!

As I walked over the finish line, there was more cheering and the announcer called my name. 6 hours and 26 minutes of constant movement. I did it. I completed a marathon - my first ever. Sure, I was in a lot of pain and my body ached from fatigue, but I felt like a million dollars!

Sometimes in life we get thrown some challenges, and it’s all about how we respond to those challenges and the support that we surround ourselves with, that will decide the outcome.

This is me and my good friend Dan Necklen, after finishing the marathon. I couldn’t have done this without you mate. Thank for the support - you’re a legend!

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all those hundreds of people that have supported me in this effort. Those that had the courage to make a donation to make a difference for those people in this world that are still sold into slavery - by supporting my charity - STOP THE TRAFFIK.

For all those amazing people that gave me advice about running and training - thanks for your efforts, it was all worth it! To my wife and two kids, thanks for your patience, especially on my long 2 hour runs. Your support has been invaluable! To everyone else that I haven’t mentioned personally, sorry but my goal tonight is not to make this the worlds longest blog post…although it probably getting there!

I would like to end this entry, by saying to everybody - don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. This is how we grow and evolve. When you next challenge yourself, throw everything you have at it. See yourself crossing that finish line, whatever it may be. Until next time, keep those dreams alive….

 All the best - Ryan Kilfoil

Wow, what a weekend it has been! So many things happening, with just under ONE WEEK to go until I find myself running the Rotorua Marathon…

In my effort to raise ₤10,000 in just 10 days, I’ve contacted everyone from CNN, to Tony Robbins! I’ve emailed CEO’s and social networked like there’s no tomorrow, so here are some of my tips, which have actually generated some great results.

How to Fund Raise on a limited budget:

• Setup a fundraising page. For something in NZ I would use, www.fundraiseonline.co.nz, and for overseas I would use www.justgiving.com. These organisations give you the frame work to donate directly to your chosen charity and don’t cost anything to get started. To see my justgiving page, click here.

• Upload a video on Youtube, supporting your charity. This is a great way to get your message across through one of the most powerful visual mediums. Don’t be afraid to try something different to make your video stand out.

• Contact your local newspapers. They usually jump on a story about something wanting to do some good in this current economic “doom and gloom” climate. It could be as simple as sending an email to the editor….you never know what will happen.(right column, about half way down)

• Get some free press. Try sites like www.free-press-realease.com and you can get something like this in no time at all. This can give you some massive leverage.

• Use your social networking sites, such as facebook and setup a group for your charity. Invite people to join and ask that in exchange, they donate a small amount to the cause.

• Open a Twitter account and start tweeting! This is new to me, but so far I’ve connected with some amazing people, including Tony Robbins, Larry King & Hugh Jackman!You can follow me on www.twitter.com/kiwimillionaire

• Lastly, and by no means leas, EMAIL EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND THOSE THAT YOU DON’T KNOW! Include some info about what you are trying to achieve, who you are raising funds for and how they can help (include link to donate, and/or forward email to their contacts). Don’t be afraid to go to the top, email CEO’s, people making the news, celebrities.

You really can achieve so much with the power of the internet, combined with people’s passion. The only thing that is stopping you, …. is you.

If you got some value from this post, please help me with my Charity - Stop the Traffik,by donating whatever you can afford to www.justgiving.com/ryankilfoil. Thanks for your support and all the best with your efforts

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your patience. People say that one way to ensure you accomplish something amazing is to set your goal high and never give up until you have achieved it. This is me not giving up….

With 10 days to go until my marathon event, I’m pulling out all the stops, and I would really appreciate it if you could help me in any way you can. I think I’ve summed it all up in this video:

Oh yeah, and for those of you that noticed. I have now changed my target from NZ$10,000 (approx ₤4,000) and increased it to ₤10,000! I thought it was confusing having two different amounts in two different currencies - so I did the opposite of what I thought most people would do - and increased my target for sponsorships! What a way to motivate yourself to achieve something great!!

“Ability to influence a system, or an environment, in a way that multiplies the outcome of one’s efforts without a corresponding increase in the consumption of resources.”

www.BusinessDictionary.com

 The above is the definition of “leverage”. In the past I have talked mainly about using leverage to help others, through charity etc. An example would be my fast approaching marathon, where I am trying to raise over $10,000 for Stop the Traffik. (If you enjoy this post - please sponsor me here) By contacting some local and national newspapers, I have managed to get my story run, and attracted a lot of interest in my efforts to raise funds to stop human trafficking. Seeing as I had already decided to run the marathon, the only extra thing I did to generate interest, was to simply contact a few local publications. Only a little effort compared to the massive results it obtained for me and the charity.

Today I’m going to talk about using leverage in a different way - to help you achieve success in your life. I’m assuming that by now you have some direction in your life, you have set your goals (and written them down), have your dream/vision board setup and work towards your goals on a daily basis? Excellent - if not, maybe start here. So now that you have your goals - how can you use leverage to achieve them?

How to use leverage to achieve your goals:

1. Choose a goal to focus on.
2. Find someone that has mastered that goal before. If you have a goal that hasn’t been done before, or you can’t find anyone that’s an expert in that field, then try to get in touch with someone as close to that description as possible.
3. Contact them. By taking action to simply saying “Hi, this is my goal, I believe that you have done this before, can you please give me some advice?, you’ll be surprised at the reaction you get. Lots of successful people are more than happy to share their experiences. Whether it’s just a quick email, or perhaps they take you under their wing and provide some mentoring - you’ll still be getting some top advice that you can use to achieve your goals!

As you are no doubt all aware. I’m running a marathon on May 2nd, after never running further than 3km before I started training 8 weeks ago. When I made the decision to run a marathon, I began to research running on the internet and sifted through countless pages of conflicting information about what I should and shouldn’t do.

So I decided to see if I could find someone who had at least run a marathon, and have a chat to them. Somehow I managed to do a lot better than that. I found Ross Steele, who also lives in Tauranga, New Zealand. Ross has just returned from Kilimanjaro after running his 26th Marathon!!!

Not only that, but finishing that Marathon meant that he had run a marathon on Seven different continents, making him a member of an elite club, with only 240 members world wide. Ross was definitely qualified to give me advice about running marathons. Ross will also be completing in the same Marathon I will be completing on May 2nd.

I emailed Ross the yesterday and he gave me a call shortly afterwards, only too happy to meet me to talk about this passion that is running marathons. Ross was fantastic, giving me time loads of advice and practical tips that I now see as invaluable.

I feel much better equipped for my marathon and have only grown more confident since talking to him, and learning from him. Even if it was just an hour that we spend discussing running. So I learnt what a powerful tool it can be, to talk to someone who has achieved as much success in the area that you are trying to excel in.

You can read more about Ross’s recent achievements here. So now that you’ve finished reading this. What are you going to do? Have a coffee? Get back to work? Have a sleep? Or are you going to take action, and get in contact with someone RIGHT NOW, who will be able to help you achieve your goal?

There is an old saying “Charity begins at home”. While I always thought this to be true, I now believe the opposite. Charity begins with Charity. If you wait until you have enough spare cash to give to charity….I think we can all agree that you may be waiting a long time.

“But how can I give money away when I can’t afford to pay all my bills?” Well, there’s really two solutions here:

1. Reduce the number of bills you have to pay!
2. Give something - it doesn’t have to be 50% of your income! Maybe start off with 5%? Chances are that you won’t even notice it’s gone, but I bet you the people that you are helping will surely notice your contribution.

I think this goes back to being grateful for what you have. No matter what is happening in your life right now, I bet you can find people in this world that are a lot worse off than you are. If you are reading this blog, then you should be counting your lucky stars because you obviously have power and Internet access! Some people don’t even know what those things are!

My goal is still to make a Million Dollars in 365 days….and I have some exciting developments that I will share with you over the next couple of days with regards to my progress However, during this journey so far, I have discovered some other opportunities out there - and one of them is to challenge myself.

And that I did, by committing to running a marathon! Not only did I commit to running a marathon, but then I publicly committed to raise $10,000 for the charity - STOP THE TRAFFIK! Do you have any idea how great I feel? Not because I think I’m doing this great thing, but because I have no doubt that I will complete both these tasks - I have to - there are people counting on me!

If I just kept these goals to myself, how easy would it be for me to decide that things were too tough and make a bunch of excuses and then quit? It would be pretty easy. Now, there’s no way I can quit!  I’d be getting emails and phone calls from all over the globe! If that’s not a great form of motivation then I don’t know what is.

I have been training since the 23/01/2009 and just last Sunday I managed to run 15km’s which made me feel like I had accomplished a major feat! It was fantastic! A lot of people asked me how difficult it was to run that far (it’s far for me okay!). My reply was simple, I didn’t find it difficult.

Why not, you ask? Well, like a lot of things, it comes back to perception. What am I comparing this marathon to, or at least this training to? If I’m comparing it to sitting on the couch at home watching TV then hell yeah - it’s painfully difficult!!

I’m not though. I’m comparing this marathon, this training, with an average day for some of the people out there, that are supported for by the charities I am raising money for. STOP THE TRAFFIK does a lot of work to stop people trafficking - can you imagine what it would be like to be sold to someone? When I’m running, I think of what someone else might be going through, how they might feel and what they would do if they were offered the chance to live a day in my life….now those are some powerful perceptions.

Now I’m not doing anything overly special here, I’m simply trying to raise some money for these guys. The question is, can you help? Maybe you don’t want to donate to this cause, maybe you can’t afford it. I’m sure you can come up with more creative excuses than that! However, the point is that this is not the only way you can help.

I challenge others out there to do also take on a marathon, and raise funds for a charity of your choice, get your community behind you, get the world behind you. Do it for yourself, do it for others and do it for the right reasons.

If you’re not in the mood for a marathon, then luckily for you, I have another solution - you can contribute to my Marathon by donating directly to STOP THE TRAFFIK, through my page at www.justgiving.com/ryankilfoil

I have set myself a big goal, and I’m confident that with your help we will be able to achieve it. Whether you can afford $1 or $100, please support this worthy cause right now. I truly appreciate you reading this entire post, and even more so for making a difference for this Charity. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly, especially if you have any other ideas on how to help raise even more funds for these guys.

Thanks again readers, for your amazing support and I look to keeping you updated with my progress. Have a great day and I hope you have gained something positive from this piece.

All the best - The Kiwi Millionaire

Every day, people do things that astound me, and the last couple of days has been no exception! Five days ago the voting was going well with over 4,000 votes cast for the $10,000 challenge, which was a massive effort!

When voting closed, at 4pm today (28/02/09), the results absolutely BLEW ME AWAY! We had received a massive 51,247 Votes! I never dreamt that my cause would be able to reach this many people.

And the Winner is…

Congratulations to Stop the Traffik (www.stopthetraffik.org) with their fantastic effort, receiving 92% of all the votes cast!

So they official results are as follows:

1st Place and the recipient of all funds raised by me for the Rotorua Marathon is Stop the Traffik with 47,372 Votes!!

2nd Place was Save the Children with a great effort and 2647 Votes!

3rd Place was the Child Cancer Foundation with 1112 Votes! This charity also blew me away, with the massive support from the public and I hope to be doing something with them next.

4th Place was the Heart Foundation which finished with 146 Votes!

My sincere thanks to EVERYONE that voted and to all the charities that were involved. I know a lot of hard work went into this and I do believe that ALL the charities managed to raise their profile through this exercise.

As charity is an ongoing process, I do hope to work with all these charities over the coming months and appreciate all the correspondence and support I have received so far.

The difficult has now passed - we have a winner. Now all we have to do is raise the $10,000! So keep an eye out for some innovative fundraising activities courtesy of your Kiwi Millionaire!

To donate to STOP THE TRAFFIK please visit http://www.justgiving.com/ryankilfoil

Hi guys, here are the results for the $10,000 challenge so far. Remember there are still 4 days left to vote. So if your favourite charity is not in the lead, then cast your vote below!

Placings as of 9:00am on Tuesday 24th February 2009:

1. www.stopthetraffik.org - 830 Votes - 52% of the votes
2. www.childcancer.org,nz - 543 Votes - 34% of the votes
3. www.savethechildren.org.nz - 177 Votes - 11% of the votes
4. www.heartfoundation.org.nz - 28 Votes - 1% of the votes

Total votes to date: 1578

With only 4 days to go, spread the word and place your vote below:

As most of you have heard I am running a marathon on May 2nd, 2009. I have started training over the last few weeks and run further than I have ever run in my life! I also chosen to raise $10,000 for my favourite charity. Since I could not decide what charity to donate the funds to, I have given the vote to those visiting my blog.

If you haven’t already voted, please do so now. The votes will be tallied at 4pm on Saturday 28/02/2009 and the winning charity announced.

“There are only 7 days left to vote”

http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/ryankilfoil/

Thanks for all your support! I cannot believe all the positive comments and emails I have received. And don’t forget to sign up for email alerts (top right of the blog) to keep track of my progress.

Wow! The results for the voting have absolutely astounded me! Thanks to everyone for their votes so far, and everyone’s comments and emails. You have no idea how great it is to receive so much positive feedback about this journey!Congratulations to the Child Cancer Foundation which is now leading with approximately 75% of the vote. I have also received so many great emails of encouragement from many people that have had dealings with this this charity in the past and now. It is great to hear how much great work they have done and how many people appreciate all their support.

For those visiting this blog for the first time please vote here:

I also bought some new running shoes, socks, shorts & singlets today. As I am taking this very seriously, I feel it is important to invest in this event. I’m also taking some Omega 3 Fish Oil supplements, glucosamine & chondroitin, to ensure that I look after my joints.

I’ve also setup my online fundraising page. If you like what I’m doing, you can donate today and when the winning charity is announced on 28/02/2009, your donation will be given to this charity.

Otherwise you can visit the fundraising page (http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/ryankilfoil/), and I then once the winning charity is names, the two months of excessive fundraising will begin!

Once I chose my four charities, I decided to leave the voting up to the public. I sent an email to each of the four charities to let them know what I was doing. It then up to them to help spread the word.

A special thanks to Lucy from “Save the Children” and Jade from “Child Cancer Foundation” who have both taken it upon themselves to get as many votes for their respective charities as possible.

Currently “Save the Children” are miles ahead with 67% of the total votes - great effort guys! Remember - YOU STILL HAVE TIIME TO VOTE: 17 days in fact - so get voting!

• Remember, the winning charity will receive all the funds we can raise for this event
• Thanks again for your support!!
• Remember to sign up for email alerts (enter your address in the top right of the blog)