Interview With Stuart Mills – How to Add Value

This is an awesome interview with Stuart Mills from UnlocktheDoor.net. Stuart is a great guy, a guy who really knows what he’s doing. I’ve been following Stuart for over a year now, I truly believe in his words and he’s a guy I can vouch for .

If I may ask you, do you add value? How do you add value? Why should we add value? These questions are enough to make one think deeply if he or she is really impacting lives. I’m imploring you to take your time to read this interview in order to learn more about adding value!

• Hi Stuart, could you please tell us about yourself?

I was always the kid at school who preferred to be left alone. Always the quiet one, my favourite way of working was to get on with the task, ask questions if necessary, and not bother with the fooling around that most of my classmates preferred to do. As the years went by, I became more withdrawn from the class environment, having only a few close friends who I could easily talk with. My idea of ‘fun’ was very different to the accepted norm.

But up until I was 21 years old, I was unhappy with life. I had experienced a pressure to conform to others at school and at college, and it was starting to take its toll. I’d been bullied at school on numerous occasions, to the point where I had developed a stammer during a 2-year period. I had nearly failed my entire college years, preferring instead to spend my spare hours in the computer room.

Although I was glad to have gotten into university and gain some independence, I was making few friends and having minimal fun. I still preferred my own company above anyone else’s. Although I was doing well in the course, my social prospects were still pretty grim.

Then on Christmas 2007, my Dad gave me a book, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma. I thought it was a stupid title, and I was fully ready to skim read it before dismissing it as fantasy.

I didn’t expect the immense changes that this book would soon coax out of me, changing my life permanently.

As a result of reading that book, I had my spiritual awakening on January 2008. I realized that there is far more to life than I first assumed, and far more to the world than I took for granted. The years went by, and I felt a sense of power within me that I never felt before. I got my first permanent job, I strengthened my relationships with my family, I made new friends as well as meeting a beautiful girlfriend who is still with me today, and I found time to further develop my knowledge of myself. I was, for the first time in a long while, enjoying life.

To this day, I feel like I’m still growing more as a person and as a beautiful creature.

 

• What’s the idea behind UNLOCKTHEDOOR.net?

The concept of Unlock The Door was inspired by a scene from The Matrix. It’s the scene where Neo and Morpheus are standing in front of The Oracle’s door, about to go in. As Neo goes to open the door, Morpheus stops him and says, “Remember, I can only show you the door, you must walk through it”.

I remember the time when I wanted to join the online world and start my own website, but I was stumped for inspiration. I then remembered this scene and thought, “What does it mean to walk through a door, to access a new world, a new way of thinking?” I reflected on the idea for some time. Then I began to realize that we haven’t unlocked everything that could possibly be unlocked. There was still a long way to go before we realized a harmonic world.

I then let my thoughts drift for a while and thought about what it would be like if I was a real-life ‘Morpheus’, helping people by showing them these doors that they can open and walk through. So much potential would be unlocked, and the world would be a much better place. This pleased me immensely, knowing that I’d be doing my part in making the world stronger and healthier.

Then it hit me – why don’t I be like Morpheus? Why don’t I help others to open the doors in their mind and in their life, and access their vast well of potential within?Better yet, why I don’t help them to unlock their doors? I could use my website as a vehicle to help the world unlock and open the doors in their lives, and help them live their potential.The pieces of the puzzle had fallen together.

Unlock The Door was born.

• I learned that you just launched an eBook called “Value101”; can you tell us the idea behind Value 101?

A few many months ago, I had the idea to create a project that would go ‘beyond the blog’. I wanted to achieve something that would elevate Unlock The Door to the next level, and get my name recognized amongst a wider circle.

At the time, my reader base was fairly small. I didn’t have any major connections, although I was on acquaintance terms with a few ‘big-name’ bloggers. I knew that unless I did something important here, I would stay in this level of obscurity for some time.

For this project, I wanted to do something that included all my readers, where everyone had an equal platform from which to voice their opinion and offer their advice. I decided to achieve this by asking everyone a question – a question that would unite everyone into one equal group. This question would be sent out in a request via e-mail, provided I knew what the right question was.

I couldn’t ask a question like “How did you reach 1000 subscribers?” when most of my reader base hadn’t got that far. I realized it had to be a question that any person in the world could answer. After much deliberation, the question I decided to ask everyone was, “How do you provide value?” From this, the project name ‘Value 101’ was born.

What followed was a 12-part series where 67 bloggers provided answers to the afore-mentioned questions. The response was incredible, and after the series had finished, I decided (after listening to requests from readers) to produce a compilation in the form of an eBook.

• Who is the book meant for?

The eBook is meant for anyone who wishes to find ways to provide value, whether they’re providing value to their family, to their customers, to their peers, or to their colleagues. Value is an element which can be found and generated anywhere. Therefore for this eBook, I wanted to include a variety of contributors who come from varied backgrounds, and who can provide different perspectives of what it means to provide value for someone.

This product is also meant for those who wish to gain a better understanding of how bloggers operate, particularly how they operate in their own fields. Each blogger is an individual, and there is no right or wrong answer on how to provide value. For the reader, I would suggest reading through all 67 contributions and using those which resonate with them. That way, the reader can provide value in a way that’s true to them.

• Why should one add value?

Throughout our lives, we are always providing value, even when we don’t realize it. Value is provided when we offer to take out the trash for our elderly neighbor. It’s provided when we pick up a box on the floor so our work colleagues don’t walk into it. It’s provided when we read our child a bedtime story before they drift off to sleep. Value is provided and added at all times, by all people.

In one sense, we don’t need to add any more value. But we can be more aware of what value we’re actually offering, and decide for ourselves whether it’s value that we want to add, or whether we feel that we could add a different, better kind of value.

If we don’t possess an awareness of how and where we provide value, we can lose what works for us and for others. By viewing how others provide value in the Value 101 eBook, we can gain a better understanding of where value works, and how it works, before deciding what changes (if any) can be implemented into our own value-giving approach. Awareness is key.

• What advice do you have for readers of MegaBizFlakes?

I have two pieces of advice. The first is to be patient. We often have a tendency to rush ahead on projects, in the desire of seeing the finished result. We want to achieve, and achieve fast. But this approach doesn’t work purely because we can’t rush a good result. We must be more patient if we wish to see the results that we desire. Otherwise we end up with a half-complete result that no-one wishes to see. Patience ensures that we see things out properly, until its due end when we can enjoy the complete product.

The second piece of advice is to follow your heart. As businessmen and women, we can often become overwhelmed by the menial tasks involved with business, the countless chores involved with entrepreneurship, and the sheer demand to succeed. Because of this, we always run the risk of losing our way in life, and forgetting why we became an entrepreneur in the first place.

In these times, listen to your heart. Remind yourself of the passion you felt when you started out your entrepreneurial journey. Do whatever it takes to get yourself back on track, and if you now find that your heart’s desires lie elsewhere, then shift your focus patiently (remember the first piece of advice) to align with your heart’s new calling. Stay true to yourself.

Thanks so much Stuart!

Follow Stuart on Twitter: @StuartMillsUTD

Download “VALUE101” eBook here! Do it now because later might be too late. I’m sure you won’t regret it!

Thanks for reading. If you have any suggestion or opinion, please feel free to comment below by using the comment section.

 

Tagged as: how to add value, Stuart mills, value101