In a world of opportunities there is no time for fear and doubt. There is only time for decisions and actions. Decide now to take your life to the next level." ~ Rik Rushton

It's my pleasure to announce that our second "Success Junkie" interview is with a man I consider a personal mentor and one of our country's finest speakers and coaches.

Rik has achieved extraordinary things in his sales, leadership and training career. At 28, he was the youngest person ever appointed as the 'Head Trainer' for the Australian Real Estate Network. With a sales career beginning in the Recession of 1990, Rik progressed through to be the General Manager of a highly awarded 8 office Group with more than 50 staff to their next level as a group and more importantly as individuals. Through his training company Insight Personal Development, Rik consults with some of the country's leading companies and their sales professionals. Rik has also traveled extensively and regularly delivers his dynamic programs around the world.

I spent time with Rik on the phone this afternoon doing this interview. When asked if he had time for it - he simply said "I'm here to help you in any way I can", such is Rik's generosity. I'm sure you'll enjoy his insightful thoughts on coaching and personal peak performance and his own personal story.

Rik, tell me about coaching, what is it, why would I want to have it with you or with someone that does coaching like yourself?

I always see coaching as the art of helping people achieve their full potentiality, so the role of a coach to me is to help their people, student, or person that they're mentoring to be the very best they can be.

Is that why you do it? Because you want to people reach their potential.

Definitely. One of the values I have in my life is that I love meeting people and I love helping people. So helping someone, kind of put the last piece to he puzzle in place and then reach something they didn't think was possible, or something they've really always wanted to do and helping them do that is an amazing feeling, so there's no question that's why I do it.

And do you think everyone can benefit from some form of coaching?

I think that the best people on the planet who are regarded by society as the best in the world, take Olympic athletes, they all have coaches. So if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me as a real estate agent, you as a business entrepreneur, anyone in life.

Who are some of the most interesting people you've coached over the years?

I've coached a lot of people from different endeavours. I've worked with a fellow by the name of Aaron Badley since he was 15 years of age, at age 18 he had a whole list of goals and things he wanted to do, one was to win the Australian Open for his 20th birthday, one to be on the US PGA tour before he was 21 and he did all of those. Aaron's interesting in terms of sporting athletes, I've also worked with Olympians like Rachel Sporn, Lauren Burns and I've worked with the world junior tri-athlete champion.

I love coaching people in the game of real estate as well I've worked with a couple of auctioneer champions in terms of Peter Kakos who won the Australasian Auctioneering champion in the most recent of times, worked with John McGrath when he won that in '98. I've been very fortunate to coach people who are at the very top end of what we do in this business as well as people who are starting out. I don't think it's a case of the more interesting, I think it's a case of working with people who want to get better at what they do.

I guess what people get amazed about is that I've been able to coach at the AFL level and to work with two AFL football clubs is something that people kind of find a little bit interesting from someone who is meant to be a real estate agent.

Rik I know you've met some of the people who I most look up to in the speaking world, people like Dr. Denis Waitley, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn. Who would you say is the most interesting person you've met in your travels and why?

Certainly the no question that the speaker / presenter / coach or however you want to terminalise it that I've ever met is Jim Rohn. Who is a gentleman in his fairly late 70's although you wouldn't know it to be with him because of his fitness levels and his mindset would be equal to someone in their late 30's. He's commonly known as the grandfather of the peak performance industry. Jim Rohn would definitely be the best I've been around. Tony Robbins is the best marketer of what he does being a speaker, trainer and coach.

The most exciting or different person I've ever been around in a speaking format was when I was speaking at a conference in Chicago. One of the speakers I met in the green room was a man called Frank Abagnale Jr, wo I didn't know it at the time but there was a book about his life called "Catch me if you can" and when I was speaking with him at the conference Dreamworks were making a movie about his life which was directed by Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio played his character growing up. And he was perhaps one of the most interesting guys I've been around because he left home when he was 15 years of age and impersonated a Pan Am Copilot and traveled around the World all on Pan Am's expense accounts - just an amazing, mind blowing story.

Click here to see details on the movie Catch Me if You Can.

Let's pretend Rik that you're coach to the whole of Australia right now, if there was one message that you could get across to everyone in Australia what would it be?

I think everybody who would be receiving this newsletter would agree with this, so I hope the rest of Australia will as well. And that is that most people are settling for a life way below what their potential is going to allow them to do if they really tap into it. So I guess the message I would want to get out there is that everybody who is reading this could have so much more in their life if they just decided that. I would encourage people to try and find their capacity, find their success level whatever that may be. And for many people, they're settling for far less than that right now and that they could be doing far better. I think the message would be: they're worth more, they are better than what they're displaying and they could be doing much more in all areas of their life both in their business and personal lives. If they just tapped into a few success strategies they could probably enjoy a much better quality of life.

Who do you look up to in the business world and why?

In real estate I look up to a guy by the name of Philip Webb. Phil Webb runs without any shadow of a doubt one of the best companies not just in Victoria or indeed Australasia but throughout the World. He's been in the Real Estate industry for about three decades, his business, for my mind, is the absolute blueprint for what you can do with a really good culture attracting quality people and continually growing and improving your standing and seeing the real benefits of ongoing coaching and mentoring. His particular business is something I really admire, but him as an individual Kirsty I admire because his wife and he have been together for nearly 3 decades, he has 4 amazing kids and he has a thriving business and family and I admire that - clearly.

In terms of the real estate speaking industry there is no question that the person I admire the most is Peter Gilchrist who was one of my first real estate coaches for pretty much the same reasons I admire Phil I admire Pete, he and his wife have been together for nearly 30 years and have 4 boys. Both those two gentlemen have the balance right - they've got thriving successful businesses but they didn't have to sacrifice quality family life to do it.

In terms of the business world the guy I connect most with and speak to often and admire the most is probably Eddie McGuire and not because of the fact he's president of the greatest football club on the PLANET! But also because of the fact that he's someone who has the work life balance right. So whenever I'm having a busy day or fitting a lot in I think about what he's doing commuting between Melbourne and Sydney, running the nine network, and his family is the real centre of his Universe so someone like that inspires me.

I'm a great believer that the most successful people fail more often that those who experience lesser levels of achievement. What's a business failure or challenge of yours that sticks in your mind?

I'm glad you're allowing me to cap it at just one! I've probably had thousands of mistakes and failures. I really think one of the big issues for me in terms of mistakes in terms of growing my real estate business was that I was looking for people just like me. I was looking for people who had similar traits to myself. I found out that was probably a major mistake because most sales people are inherently very good at creating sales and making money - they're just no good at keeping it or following through. And so the biggest mistake I made was that our business was turning over around $2 million and we could easily spend $2.1 million. When you have that situation happen you realise you've got people that are very good at the game of sales, but not necessarily good at the game of knowing numbers. So the first mistake I had to rectify in our growing and expanding business was to recruit people who perhaps were diametrically opposed to me in terms of skill sets, more analytical with the money and knowing the numbers. But who still had the same philosophy of wanting to get better each day, and who enjoyed coming to work.

I think the other mistake that I've made that I've consistently probably thought about things for too long rather than just doing them. I typically was one of those people who wanted perfection before I got it into place instead of just getting progress happening and then fixing it up along the way.

What book would you most recommend everyone read to help them get to their next level?

The best book that I've read in the most recent times is a book called 50 Self Help Classics by Tom Butler-Bowden. What he's done is he's actually got the top 50 selling self help books of all time, so books written by Dale Carnegie right through to Anthony Robbins, all the very best books by sales in the personal development world and he gives a 2 or 3 page ethos on each book. And the reason why I love that book, is that if you're not an avid reader, and I certainly wasn't when I started down this track, it's a good way of reading a little bit about a book and saying - yeah I get a feel for what that book is about and I wouldn't mind going a little further.

He also wrote a follow up book called 50 Success Classics which is much more business oriented including books by Steven Covey, Dr. Phil McGraw and Jack Welch. They would be the sort of books that I'd recommend as a smorgasbord to ensure you're getting value from the books you do invest your time to read in.

Rik, I know you're a big family man, aside from family what motivates you on a daily basis?

Ultimately for me it's living life in line with what I value. Part of my core value is that I wake up every day and I look for the gift in the day. So what motivates me is looking at the opportunity to - for example - to do this today. It was something that wasn't on my radar when I woke up today I wasn't expecting to be talking to you in this sort of interview. That meets one of my values which is connecting with people, contributing with people and obviously helping people with any of their endeavors and or goals or dreams. And this phone call with you meets those values to me. And you're right, family is what I value more than anything else, so I've got to look for ways to be a fulfilled Dad today, and really that's my definition of motivation and or success when what you're doing meets your highest values.

What's more important - attitude or skills?

That's a no brainer - definitely attitude would be much more important. If you do any research on recruitment or what separates amazing organizations from average ones you'll see that hiring people with the right attitude is far more important because of the fact that it's one of the two inherent qualities that can't be trained into people. If they've got a great attitude but not the skills - I can educate them with the skills they need to be successful as a real estate agent, receptionist, mum or football player for example. I can give them those skills. But someone who's got all the skills but a pretty ordinary attitude never really goes anywhere in life. In the coaching I do if I was in a room where there were 100 people with 50 on one side with all the knowledge and skills but you don't go out and do anything with it and on the other side 50 with the right attitude who don't have the skills or the knowledge, which group would be more successful? You and I know both know it would be the group with the right attitude. They'll develop the skills as they go along.

What would you ask you if you were me doing this interview?

I'd want to know what got me interested in coaching and speaking because it's not something that was natural for me growing up and it's not something where if you asked me 25 years ago what would I be doing 10 years down the track I would never have been thinking that I would have been coaching / mentoring / speaking it would be about 101 in the list of around 100 things I would have thought I'd be doing.

And now answer it for me!

I grew up kind of poor financially and in terms of role models and opportunities but the one thing I really enjoyed growing up was playing sport and I was really fortunate to get around some great sporting coaches and I just loved their approach to how they got the best out of me and their communication skills and how they got me to see further than I could have seen by myself and how they got me to play better than I could have done so myself. Everybody needs coaching

And Rik how can people get in touch with you if they want to find out more about you as a speaker or coach?

By email which can be requested at our Contact Page - Click Here.