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James Maioho is the author of Winners Give Up! which is a little play on words there. I think most people would stay that winners don’t give up, but in this case it’s giving up the baggage or things that you are holding on to that are holding you back from achieving the things you really want in life.

James Maioho is the author of Winners Give Up! Inspirational insights into the habits of accomplishing your personal goals. The book was a labor of hope and commitment to doing the things necessary to climb back from the abyss. It is the fulfillment of an inner need to inspire others who also want to be “the best possible version of themselves.”

Zeb’s Take – Don’t Dwell on the Past

It was great talking with James about his book and some of the philosophies that he has on life. Actually he and I share a similar path in that we both experienced this kind of traumatic period in our lives where we were in a really interesting place. I kinda described it as I was kind of lost I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I’m not sure if he described it in the same way but it was similar circumstances. So I can definitely relate to what he was going through and how he worked to overcome that. The way he worked to overcome that was by providing value and helping other people. That’s exactly what I try to do as well.

One of the things that he talked about in the interview and what he wrote his book on, Winners Give Up. Which is a little bit counterintuitive but I do understand exactly what he’s trying to get across there. Which is that the most successful people learn to let go of the past. They learn to let go of that baggage and look forward and take action in the present so they can go on to achieve things in the future. They don’t look forward to the future. They don’t spend time dwelling on the past. They live in the present, planning for the future, and taking action on things in the present so that it impacts the future. So that it can be the future they want.

Sports is a great analogy for anything in life. One of the things I’ve noticed in the sports world, is that failure is constant in sports. In baseball for example, even from one at bat to the next. You can hit a homerun in one at bat and strike out at the next one. But if you dwell on the strikeouts you’re not doing yourself any favors. You’re not planning for the future, you’re not getting better you’re just dwelling on what happened in the past and that’s a strategy designed for failure.

I would like to encourage all of you to take a moment to think of those things that are holding you back. Those things that you are dwelling on that aren’t serving you for your current and they’re not serving you for your future and let those things go. It really does no good for anyone.

I can remember specifically during that dark time in my life, literally, I would just sit there and I would kind of obsess over the fact of how I was wronged and things were going against me. Once I realized that that wasn’t doing me any good and I took steps towards something that was going to make a positive impact and have a difference my life opened up and became so much better. I’d encourage all of you if you are struggling, or it’s a tough time in your life, or you’re not sure where to go take some steps to do something that’s going to impact your future for the better by helping other people. I think that’s a great step to take and you can just start going from there.

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Find Out more about James Maioho and the book Winners Give Up

Visit WinnersGiveUp.com or to bouce business ideas or things off James go to MadkoGroup.com. He says he’ll answer any questions for the people that care to contact him. If he has time he’s happy to do it.

Quotes

• “I had to do something positive. I had to try to do one thing, take one step forward in a positive direction to make my time worthwhile instead of wallowing in a pool self pity.”
• “If you want to be a writer you have to write in a manner that is about something, one that you have passion about, two that you have some sort of knowledge and believe that you can be of value to other people with really no expectation of any sort of fiscal return or anything. That’s the mindset I would have going into it.”
• “My biggest mistake has occurred when I didn’t do the preparation and the work that I needed to do and had the wrong attitude in pursuing my goals.”
• “One, find out what your heart of hearts desires, what your true passion is and whatever that is pursue that with relentless vigor regardless of what anybody else thinks about how you’re doing it and what you are doing. Do everything, every action that you take, every breath that you make, try to do it for the benefit of somebody else. Those are the two things.”
• “My drive right now is just to try to share whatever or little experience that I have in a way that benefits somebody else, if they’re hurting, or if they want to get from point A to point B, or things aren’t working for them or whatever the case may be.”
• “Everybody has to be brave enough to define their own success on their own terms.”
• “You have to define success in some sort of way that incorporates the happiness of yourself and the happiness of others.”
• “You can’t feel bad about dropping your bad baggage whether it be thought processes, guilt resentment, the way you think in business situations, putting other people first, negative people, negative family members, any of those things. All of that stuff has to go if you want to get to whatever your goal is. You really have to dig deep and be honest with yourself to define your own success.”

More from the Interview

James says his career path is not linear. He’s had several different careers or different components to my career. He first went to school in Michigan on a music scholarship he wanted to be a musician. He ended up getting his degree at a school in California. When he was sitting in a studio just about to get his degree. He had a conversation with a guy who was a pretty successful studio musician. That guy said that he didn’t make any money, so if you can do something else, you should do something else.

James took that, went back to Michigan and got his business degree. He was selling electronics, clothing, he ran a tire store while he was going through school, he sold chimney sweeps. He went to work selling only to high asset high value clients, bonds. He got all his SCC licenses and started learning the business. He says, “Except when you are 23 or 24 years old and green as can be. In that world, in that market, nobody is going to give you $100,000 because you don’t know what you are doing. Even if you know all the ratios, all the numbers, all the charts, and got those things memorized backwards and forwards, you don’t have any experience or real credibility.”

Eventually he learned local manufacture and at construction, he started working with Caterpillar and learned how to do territory management, client based selling, large asset value setting. Then he migrated out of that went into a family business, his ex wife’s family’s business. He got the opportunity to learn about fabric manufacturing, importing, direct marketing. This was a company with very large house file list management, a large call center, lots of fulfillment. He got all kinds of experience with direct marketing, a completely different type of selling than just territory management. All kinds of marketing to support it.

From there James went to work for a private consulting company out of Chicago and was a turnaround consultant. He would take troubled businesses and teach management skills, inventory skills, the business of running a business really. “You walk into a business and you have to shift the paradigm of thinking of an organization, because if it’s struggling, it’s struggling for a reason. Normally the reason that it’s struggling is because there’s bad decisions being made.”

With that job, he had young children, but for work he was on a plane 5 days a week. He said it was a fascinating job and he had a lot of success.

That brought him up to the point when he started writing, doing articles, and putting out the book and those things.

During his path there was a point in time when James’s decision making was poor in his personal life and professional life. He was unemployed. He was travelling back and forth to see his kids. For a time he says, “I could not do one thing right for a certain window of time in his life.”

His assets had evaporated, the separation from his ex-wife was unpleasant, it was a bad time personally — financially, professionally and emotionally. He moved back to his dad’s old family farm and in Michigan the job market was terrible. He couldn’t even get a job at McDonald’s. He’s convinced it was partly because of his attitude at the time. “My thinking and everything was so negative. Almost like an abysmal downward spiral. I had to do something positive. I had to try to do one thing, take one step forward in a positive direction to make my time worthwhile instead of wallowing in a pool self pity. So I started writing the book, and the first few chapters, the first little bit of it, th idea of it was just like pulling teeth. But once I started going I started to have a paradigm shift of my own. Once I started accepting some of the things that were attributable to me and getting a better healthier, more positive constructive attitude going and it just starting to come out. Things started eventually getting better little by little and then all of a sudden, some period of time later, the flood gates just opened. But it took more than just mechanical things, it took a lot of correcting in my personal thinking to get that accomplished.”
His book, Winners Give Up! is a play on words. When you think of winning generally what comes to mind is that winners do whatever it takes to win. You never give up. You never surrender. But Winners Give Up! is more about giving up the baggage and the negative thinking, the negative habits, the negative processes that you’ve burdened yourself with in order to get from point A to point B on your journey towards success.

It’s more about winning through shedding yourself of all these other things. It’s really an attempt to have a paradigm shift towards the positive. Everybody is not the same. There’s lots of different areas where we are hung up with a negative paradigm where we haven’t accepted responsibility for a certain situation. Where we’re blaming someone else in our life for some negative situation.

On writing the the book he says, “It really started my path towards getting my personal thinking and my energy and my habits corrected. I had a lot of personal baggage I carried around, a lot of resentmen,. I carried around a lot of bad paradigm in my business habits, I had a lot of unhealthy eating habits, unhealthy lifestyle habits, unhealthy substance habits. All of these things were able to finally be knocked off after I was serious and made the commitment to doing this. This first book was really a cathartic experience for me. It was really just about trying to reflect on making my personal situation better. Ever since everyday has been better than yesterday for me.”

James is coming out with another book called I am (Not) a Salesman. He says that book is trying to shift the paradigm of the sales process. He has a lot of experience with different ways to go about the sales process. “Absolutely a clients-based needs-base model. Nothing is more important than uncovering what the true needs of your client are.”

“If you want to be a writer you have to write in a manner that is about something, one that you have passion about, two that you have some sort of knowledge and believe that you can be of value to other people with really no expectation of any sort of fiscal return or anything. That’s the mindset I would have going into it.”

Writing is not how James makes a livin. He works at an environmental services firm, construction services, I get to act on it in a consulting business on that. That allows him to be involved in a lot of chamber groups, minority support groups, other things in the area and that gives him freedom to do his own consulting business. The bases are there for everything, once his family focus is shifted and his children grow older then he may migrate and do this other full time.

James say the biggest mistake he’s made is being unprepared. A sub to that is being overconfident and thinking that you are entitled to the business without putting in the work. “My biggest mistake has occurred when I didn’t do the preparation and the work that I needed to do and had the wrong attitude in pursuing my goals.”

“One, find out what your heart of hearts desires, what your true passion is and whatever that is pursue that with relentless vigor regardless of what anybody else thinks about how you’re doing it and what you are doing. Do everything, every action that you take, every breath that you make, try to do it for the benefit of somebody else. Those are the two things.”

“My drive right now is just to try to share whatever or little experience that I have in a way that benefits somebody else, if they’re hurting, or if they want to get from point A to point B, or things aren’t working for them or whatever the case may be.”

“Everybody has to be brave enough to define their own success on their own terms.”

“Right now my definition of being successful is just being happy and being peaceful.”

“You have to define success in some sort of way that incorporates the happiness of yourself and the happiness of others.”

“You can’t feel bad about dropping your bad baggage whether it be thought processes, guilt resentment, the way you think in business situations, putting other people first, negative people, negative family members, any of those things. All of that stuff has to go if you want to get to whatever your goal is. You really have to dig deep and be honest with yourself to define your own success.”

He says that right now every day is better than the day before.