Jim Rohn said, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment”.

Raizcorp is in the business of transformation. We provide a safe environment in which entrepreneurs can unlock their potential and fly. Over the years, we have noticed that this environment does this not only for the entrepreneurs, but also for those who work with them. It not only transforms those we assist, but ironically it has also been a space in which we, the Raizcorpuscles, effect our own transformation. Part of our journey has been to develop better and better methods for identifying “real” entrepreneurs - those with the fighting spirit and the real desire to create something special. Over the past 7 years we have developed an intake process that has become the envy of incubators around the world. And, true to our philosophy of Kaizen, we are never satisfied; we continue to improve the process.

One of the characteristics of highly successful people is self-discipline. In an amazing experiment, undertaken by psychologist Walter Mischel of Stanford University in 1960, Mischel decided to measure the self-discipline of children at an early age and then trace their relative success in life. Here is more on the experiment:

“The experiment began when the children were aged four; Mischel devised a game involving a treat that pretty much all children like - marshmallows. He placed one marshmallow in front of each child and told them they could eat it right away if they wanted to. However, if they could wait several minutes before eating it, they'd receive a second marshmallow as a reward.

You can imagine how difficult this test was for such young children!

Some ate the first marshmallow straight away without a second thought, while others managed to last up to fifteen minutes waiting for a second one. Even the children with more self-control found this experiment very difficult, one even licked the table around the marshmallow.

Mischel carefully recorded each child's result and then progressed their success throughout their later lives. The correlation between self-control in the marshmallow test and later success was amazing, according to the reported results.

At the age of eighteen, those who ate the first marshmallow immediately were found to have low self-esteem, be stubborn, have envy problems, become bullies, and be easily frustrated. They also had more challenging adulthoods, including a higher likelihood of suffering drug problems by age thirty-two.

Those who managed to wait for their marshmallow had much better life outcomes. They were better at coping, being assertive, trustworthiness, and academic challenges. They apparently averaged SAT scores 210 points higher than their less-controlled peers.

This is strong evidence that what many of us already suspect is true - that self-discipline plays a big role in success.”

It has become very evident that entrepreneurs that pay themselves market related salaries (or salaries at all) when the business is in the early stages and is battling to grow, are less likely to succeed. The same is true for people working in entrepreneurial businesses. The ones that demand large salaries are usually the first ones to leave for money. The ones that “get” the business and love what it is trying to achieve, normally sacrifice the bigger salary and find themselves duly rewarded later in the businesses lifecycle.