Today I want to talk about immigrant mentality. We often hear it referred to, but what is it, what is it derived from? While it’s so critical and so beneficial to people who are immigrants, can you have it or can you develop it? They are a great example of success, both personal and business success. That’s the topic for today.

Immigrants have their first Breakthrough Success when they enter the US. They see opportunity and continue to be drawn by business success.

Think in terms of immigrant mentality as they come to this country, the incredible speed that they rise in education, income, wealth, prestige, etc., whether it be in their community or in the general area. These advancements that they have: Do you have it? Do you have those ingredients? Can you get it? I want to describe a little bit at the end about how I got mine, in essence, even though I wasn’t an immigrant. What changed me, and how did it do it? How it might, and how you might recognize it for yourself.

Yes, the success of immigrants as they move from some other country. In most cases, they speak another language. They have to learn English or get better at it; they build themselves through their own businesses; their children excel. You hear some of these stories of these children that come from environments and backgrounds that they basically have little to no education – they come here and excel in our education system without even starting out with the language.

What did they do and how did they do it? Yes, they worked hard, but let’s get a little bit deeper than that. Anyone born in this country with all the advantages that you already have—you already have the languages, you’re already in the school, you know where everything is—it’s almost a shame for anybody at all to complain. If you can see around yourself, people who come here with a foreign language and excel, and you don’t. If you see any of this, then inquire to yourself: What is the mindset of the immigrant, and can you get it?

First, where do they come from and why? Look at the comparison of opportunities. What they’re looking at is the mobility in this country that they see that we don’t necessarily see. They have the chance that they see to move just not from 9 to 5 jobs or to excel in it. In a sense, they’re hungry. They move from another country, they’re hungry for success, they also live generally debt-free so they don’t have those stresses, etc., and they make ends meet, but that’s part of the discipline that they build into their system.

They’re enterprising, and they’re determined to build it for themselves. They’re not relying on anything else or anybody else. The idea, in general, is to build it for yourself. I know there are exceptions. I don’t want to bother with those, because we’re not looking at a political debate. We’re looking at how to succeed, how you can succeed, and how you can build your business newer, better, stronger.

Interestingly, the immigrants find opportunities anywhere. They work at opportunities that are often built and they build them to last. It could be that they’re plumbers, or electricians, or they go into the computer fields. Almost anything, the sciences, etc. They find out what needs to be done in order for them to prepare themselves to accomplish something, and they get it done.

How do they push themselves to this extent? Their determination and drive for success is enviable. Not just to get enough, but to be far superior to where they had come from and where they had first thought. One of my propositions is they’re seeing things that we don’t tend to look at. That is, they come here and they’re completely in a new environment, so they’re not constrained by the neighborhood that they’re living in. When we’re born in this country, we tend to be in a neighborhood and our environment has a very strong influence on what w...