1 Million Dollars in 365 days…

“… although it may not always come in the package you were expecting”

Well folks, I believe this will be my last post before my time frame of 365 days is up. I started writing this particular blog post in Perth, Australia. I am now in my original home town of Somerset West, South Africa.

When I took up this challenge, 364 days ago, I could not have dreamt that I would have experienced all the joys, challenges & range of emotions that I have encountered thus far.  The people I have connected with, because of my journey have been amazing! So I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your inspiration, feedback, help & love over the past year.

To recap, for those of you who don’t know, just over a year ago I had an experience that changed my life. I was struggling to make it as a real estate agent. I had a lovely fiance and a little 6 month old boy and not money. My fiance was forced to go back to work, while I juggling my straining career and looking after my son. When I thought it couldn’t get any worse it did - we were broke and the strain was tremendous.

I spent my nights in tears on the phone to my mum, begging her for money to pay that weeks rent. We were piled high in debt, credit cards, store cards & personal loans. I had to borrow money from my younger brother to pay for groceries so that my family could eat. I even asked my 90 year-old grandmother for a thousand dollars at one stage.

As you can imagine, this put stress on my relationship with my fiance, family & friends. It was my 26th birthday (6th October 2008), when I decided that enough was enough. I knew that I had to do something different if I wanted to change my love and the lives of those I cared about.

I made a goal, to make $1 Million dollars in 365 days. From that moment on, my life has changed. I no longer was a spectator in my life, going with the flow and making excuses for why I couldn’t do certain things and placing blame on external factors.

I was now in control of my life. I realised that I needed to do some different things in order to achieve some different results. My plan was to start this blog and update my journey as I went, culminating at my final goal - 365 days on.

One of the challenges at the end of this time frame for me, was to quantify all of the success I have had & been privileged to enjoy. I didn’t want to seem egotistical and at the same time I wanted to keep the relationships I had built with my readers, a truthful one. So I’ve decided to talk about the areas of success that I have focused on, for the past year. Not to show off, but to show you that you can achieve everything you want in life, just by simply changing the way you think.

There are many areas that I invested in, on my journey:

• Family- my number one priority. Because it’s when I’m with my family that I am happiest. My family bring me more joy than anything else in the world. I’ve managed to spend quality time with my family on this journey. The following year is going to hold even more time for my family.

• Friends - value them and keep them close. Don’t be afraid to have too many friends or to give out more love, it’s amazing how much love one person can have. I don’t have time for hate, it will not get me where I want to go.

• Holidays - I like to celebrate my successes, and part of this for me is to spend time away from attaining my other goals and just focus on enjoying myself with my loved ones. Have little break aways, they don’t have to be expensive and you’ll be amazed at how you can recharge your batteries with just a few days away.

• International Travel - one of my favourite things to do. I love experiencing new cultures & getting to know people in other countries. I love that I can provide this experience my my family and children. I believe that it gives them a better grounding and respect for others.

• Property - We managed to purchase our first home in March this year which was an amazing experience. We love our home and I feel very blessed to call it my home. It’s great to entertain family & friends. It’s a base for me to reflect on life and a sanctuary for our family.

• Business (for myself) - I’ve always been interested in business. At first it was about making money, but I soon realised that I’m not going to be successful by focusing on money. I’m in business to help people, to help myself, my family & the world. I love being able to take an idea and make it a reality. We often don’t give ourselves enough credit as to what we’re actually capable of. I’ve been involved in a number of start-ups and believe there’s no better way than by actually “doing” it.

• Work(for someone else) - An instrumental part of my success has been my full time job. I have been privileged enough to work for a company that has a great team of people. I’ve been able to apply what I have learnt on my journey so far, to achieve some great successes. My job gives me flexible time & security. It has also been a great place to learn from others and through my job I have met many interesting and inspirational people.

• Giving - before I started this, I didn’t really believe in giving and always felt that “charity starts at home”. There’s no better feeling than being able to help someone else. Whether you are volunteering with time or money, you can have a massive impact. It’s been challenging at times (see my marathon) but there’s nothing like other people relying on you to push yourself and see what you are capable of!

• Mental - this is a big thing for me. I’ve realised that your mind is very important in everything we do. You need to be careful what you let in your mind, because it all influences who you are. I’ve spent the last year
  re-training” my mind and making certain things habits. You can train yourself to do anything. I mean how many of us have bad habits? Why not focus on good habits instead?

• Health - With my holistic view on success, I’ve been able to focus on my health. I want to be able to enjoy my kids and my family. I don’t want to be stressed out and die at a young age. I’ve realised the importance of regular exercise. We all know what we should be doing, I’ve just been able to put it into action. It’s about empowering your body and mind, so you need to look after yourself too.

• Relationships - I feel that I’m a better father & husband than I was 12 months ago. I feel more connected with my wider family and my circle of friends has expanded rapidly. It’s like moths being drawn to light - if you’re positive and empowering then people are drawn to you - they want to be around you. So all you have to do is make the decision to be positive and empowering. And don’t get hung up if you don’t succeed all the time - just keep trying

• Personal Development - I’ve attended a personal development seminar, attend courses & read books that empower me and help me achieve my goals. This helps me reprogram my brain so that I am more successful in what I do. I like to learn from others, so often seek advice from people that have “been there, done that”. I’ve met some amazing people and learnt from every one of them and will continue to do so.

So the big question is “How did I do all of this”? Well, I took advice from lots of people. I studied other successful people and I believed in myself. I’ve lost count of the number of people that have laughed at me and what I’m doing. It was a challenge for me to get past what people think. Now I feel so liberated because I know that I can actually achieve anything I want in life. I now gladly tell people what I’m doing. If they laugh, they stop pretty quickly once they see the conviction in my face.

Sometimes you have to hear things a number of times before you take any notice. All I did was take ACTION on things that lots of people have told me since I was born.

“I hope that this is yourmoment. Maybe you’ve had goals in the past, done things, heard successful people speak, done personal development - whatever. Well this is your time, this is your chance to prove yourself, to make a difference, to live the life that your dreams are made of! How? Just choose to take action right now. That is what has started me on this wonderful journey.”

I’m not asking for money, you don’t have to buy anything. All I’m saying is give it a go - what do you have to lose other than everything you’ve ever wanted? It’s better to give it a go now, than to wish you’d given it a go when you’re lying on your death bed.

THE WEEK BEFORE I ACHIEVED MY GRAND DREAM GOAL:

I’m in a strange place right now. I’m in this beautiful country where I grew up. I’m staying at a luxurious apartment with amazing views, a pro golf course & beautiful sunny weather, yet I feel as though I’m missing something.

On my journey I’ve learnt a lot things to help me through difficult times, and I’ve never come up against a challenge quite like this. It was a long flight with our two beautiful children. We even brought my mother-in-law with us to help with the kids. We have been looking forward to this trip for months! The main reason was to attend my best friend’s wedding in South Africa and then show my family where I grew up and introduce them to a large contingent of family and friends in South Africa.

After spending our first night in South Africa, we awoke excited and eager to explore. While we were getting ready that morning, we received a phone call - my father in law had suddenly passed away. To say that this news was shocking was an understatement. All of a sudden everything changed.

After a very busy 24 hours, we managed to get my wife, mother-in-law and 2 kids back on flights to New Zealand. I am now still in South Africa for my best friend’s wedding on Saturday. We are often faced with difficult decisions. I am so grateful that  have such a strong wife. She has truly been amazing.

The last year has been incredible for me. I’ve learnt so much, achieved so much, met so many amazing people and totally transformed my life and that of my family. My father in law’s sudden death has reminded me, once again, how precious life is and that we really do need to treasure every second of every day.

This isn’t the ending I had envisaged for my last week, however it has certainly put things into perspective again for me. After much soul searching, I have decided what I will be doing with my life and how I will continue on and help others to achieve their goals. To get through the last few days, I’ve had to really use my “gratitude” tool. This basically involves me asking myself “what am I grateful for” and “what’s great about this”. While often, especially in times of despair, these are the most difficult questions to answer, if you keep asking them, eventually you will get the answers you have been searching for.

If you are reading this right now - then you are unbelievably blessed to still be here on this earth. Don’t waste any more precious time. Enjoy yourself & love everybody. God Bless.

Ryan Kilfoil - aka The Kiwi Millionaire

I would like to dedicate my final blog post to an amazing, talented, clever & passionate man, loving father, husband & son. To John Stone, may you rest in peace and may your memory continue to inspire us all.

Today we bought a house… This is our first house and part of me is still struggling to understand that we own this house, that I won’t have to talk to a landlord for a really long time. I have always dreamed of owning our own home, however the picture I had in my mind until about 6 months ago, was a run down, dreary, home, waiting for me to spend massive amounts of hard earned money on it and lots of blood sweat and tears in order to get it up to scratch.

I better tell you how this happened. Almost two months ago, I was driving to a nearby city, listening to an audio program that I purchased a few months prior. This was by Kurek Ashley and is part of his Life Success Club series. This is one of the things I have chosen to invest in for my personal development.

On this particular audio program, Kurek was talking about Grand Dream goals and an exercise he carried out with a group he was working with at the time. He asked them to write down their grand dream goals on a piece of paper, and then circle one of them. Remember, a Grand Dream Goal (GDG) is one of your life ambitions, it’s something massive that when you’ve achieved it, you can look back and be amazed!

To cut a long story short, Kurek divided the group into pairs and told them that they each had only 1 month to achieve that GDG, or their partner would be fines $5,000.00! What an incentive. At the end of the story, he talked about how people grew during that process, whether they achieved their goal or not.

Next he told us (the listener), that he was laying out the same challenge for us. We had to choose one of our GDG’s then and there and commit to doing everything we could to achieve it within 1 month! I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that I was going to focus on achieving those goal with everything I had.

I chose my GDG about owning our own home. The goal on my dream board reads:

“We have just bought our first property on or before 12/06/2009″

It was January 2009….even if I could have pulled this off by the 12th of June 2009, I would have been over the moon! I had no idea how I was going to make this work. That was the last dis-empowering thought I had about my goal.

I immediately decided that I was going to achieve this goal within the next month. I decided that I would get up 15 minutes earlier everyday for the next month, and spend that time figuring out how to achieve this awesome goal. When I got home, I wrote up a new goal and pinned it on to my dream board:

“What am I going to do today, to ensure that we own our own home on or before 15/02/2009?”

That note stood out everyday when I walked past my dream board. The end result - I didn’t achieve it within the month. We had an offer on a house that was accepted on 13/02/2009. We move in to the house next weekend, so we’re living in our house 1 month later.

What an amazing journey. This was a goal that I thought would take many months, if not years, to achieve and here I am - less than two months later, about to move into our new 4 bedroom home! What other things have we been telling ourselves, are difficult to attain? Maybe it’s time to readjust our expectations and make our dreams a reality.

Below is a photo of our new home - it’s absolutely beautiful. The best part is that my wife loves it. Months ago, I planned on finding a cheap 2 bedroom unit that we would have to renovate and do-up over time. Instead, we are moving into this luxurious home - our first home!

Over the next week, I will talk about how I achieved this great success.For now, I am going to practice another one of my favourite past times - celebrating our successes. It makes you crave more of them