David Riklan Self Self--Improvement Guru Shares Resources with Millions He could be dubbed as the master of self-improvement. Growing up in a family that valued education and continued self-improvement, David Riklan took to heart the lessons he learned. As an extraordinary entrepreneur, Riklan has built a successful company focused on helping others improve their lives. Selfgrowth.com is a massive repository of resources designed to help hundreds of thousands of people enhance their lives through experts and other resources. “The vision for Selfgrowth.com was to provide a one-stop shop for people to find out how to improve their lives,” says Riklan. “I found out that people want to improve and achieve more success in their lives. They want to improve their health. They want to improve their relationships, their finances and their level of spirituality. We identified a wide range of
topics that fit within those areas.” As a person who believes in continued improvement, Riklan is laying the same educational foundation for his family. He shared with Exceptional People Magazine what he considers the ten elements for selfimprovement.
cept of growth and education and improvement stops when they finish with their formal education. For me it continued past that point and it continues to this day.
EPM: As a young kid you always had an interest in self improvement and personal growth. Was it a family trait?
David: It was inspired by a couple of things but primarily right out of college I went to work for Hewlett Packard. I was in sales and two things happened while I was there. One was I realized that I didn’t want to work for a big company my entire life. I wanted to have my own business. The second thing that happened is they started sending me to training programs to become a more effective employee. One of the programs I attended was the Dale Carnegie training program on effective speaking and human relations. I fell in love with this concept that even after you finish your formal education you can con-
David: I’d say it was a combination of things. It was a part of my family and it was a strong educational ethic that came from my parents. My dad was also a psychologist. There was a strong interest in learning about the human mind and learning about how you can expand and how you can grow, and in the words of the Army, “How you can be all you can be.” So I grew up with that as a part of me, but for most people I think the con-
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EPM: What inspired your vision for your business?
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tinue to learn, grow and improve. I decided after a few years, that I was going to one day figure out how to marry these two strong interests: one of having my own business and the other, being involved in selfimprovement and personal growth. Jump ahead a few years and the internet came along, and it seemed like the perfect vehicle for me to do that. EPM: What is the general makeup of Selfgrowth.com in terms of the demographics, the people who are participating and the information that you are sharing? David: The vision for Selfgrowth.com was to provide a one-stop shop for people to find out how to improve their lives. For me, I found out that people want to improve and achieve more success in their lives. They want to improve their health, they want to improve their relationships, their finances and their level of spirituality. We identified a wide range of topics that fit within those areas. There are over 200 different topics that range from goal-setting, to empowerment, leadership, sales skills and finances. Our goal is to provide the widest range of information for individuals to improve their lives. We do that by providing a wide range of articles, websites and products, videos and experts on each of the topics. What we discovered through our website is that the number of people responding is over 1.3 million per month. They are roughly 55% women and 45% men, a fairly educated group and people who are generally looking to enhance their lives. EPM: So a person would have to sign up when they come to the website?
David: When you come to the website you’re going to find two things. There’s a ton of free resources that are accessible to virtually anyone. So if you visit to the website, you can watch videos and you can read a wide range of articles. We have over 100,000 articles on different topics, and you can browse through our list of experts to see who in particular you’d like to learn from or work with. In addition we have free membership and when you join, it provides a wide range of other benefits. A quick hint of some benefits include free bonus items, including e-books and audio programs. A couple of them that we include are a copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill, the Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles and As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. In addition we’ve done a number of interviews ourselves or through our partners. For example, anyone who joins Selfgrowth can download an exclusive interview with Tony Robbins and a wide range of other programs. It’s all part of a free membership but you must sign up to gain access to them. EPM: Is the makeup mainly experts? David: We cater to two groups of people. We cater to people who are experts in some areas of selfimprovement and self-growth. We have roughly 50,000 plus members who are providing us with articles, videos and products, their websites and information about themselves. The much larger audience is the 1.5 million people who are coming to improve their lives. Our goal is to provide two services. One is for people who are looking to improve their lives to find the widest range of information available to them. The other
audience that we cater to is experts or business owners, and we provide a wide range of tools to help them get the word out on what they’re doing. We almost see our selves as matchmakers, where we are looking to match those who are looking to improve their lives and looking for information with people who are providing it. EPM: You have connected with many people over the years while you continue to build Selfgrowth.com. What are some common denominators in the way that many experts think about success? David: There are a wide range of things that I see. This is an interesting question because a lot of people come to me and ask “What’s the best technique, who's the best expert, how are we going to approach it? There are so many experts, where do we start?” There are definitely some common denominators that I’ve found that many of the experts and programs teach and I actually identified ten of them. We call them the ten laws of self improvement. You may be familiar with many of them, and it’s a matter of how we incorporate them into our lives. 1. The first one is that it’s important to take responsibility for our lives. 2. Second, it’s critical to take action. You can use thought to drive action but eventually you will need to take action. 3. Third, it’s critical to understand and get in touch with your desires. Understand yourself and become aware of what you want and what you need.
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4. Fourth, set goals and develop a game plan. 5. Fifth, it’s critical to pay the price. You need to invest the time, the money and resources to go from point A to point B. 6. Sixth, you need to be persistent. 7. Seventh, learn from your mistakes. 8. Eighth, be willing to change your game plan based on learning form your mistakes. 9. Ninth, have strong beliefs and the right belief system. Believe that you are going to be able to achieve what you want to achieve. 10. Tenth, visualize your success. See yourself accomplishing your goals. These are the ten core areas and there are countless ways to implement them. Some people recommend implementing them using the law of attraction, others talk about hypnosis. Still others talk about the power of being thankful and grateful. There are countless ways and systems. Regardless of which technique you use, those core denominators I mentioned are things that many experts talk about, they teach and demonstrate techniques and show you how to implement them. Many people are aware of these core areas but many of us have challenges or difficulties implementing them. EPM: You have three children. As a self improvement junkie, as you call yourself, what principles do you instill in your children about life, success and giving back?
David: I try to instill in them that life is a never-ending learning process. You always want to learn and you always want to grow. One of the habits that Steven Covey author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People talks about is his eighth habit. My view of the eighth habit is once you develop a skill, you want to share, teach, become an educator and help other people. That’s something that I instill in my children. It’s a part of what my wife and I try to instill in them. It’s important to grow individually and it’s important to help other people and help the world at large. EPM: With your huge thirst for knowledge, where do you expect it to lead you in the next three to five years? David: I take a look at what we are doing and all the resources that we are providing through all the people that we work with and I still see what we’re doing at the one percent mark. I see us about one percent along the vision. Right now we have a little over a million people coming to the website and I think we can get over 100 million a month. Also, one of the things we’re looking to incorporate is how to help people find which resources are best for them. Currently we provide a Wikipedia-wide view of selfimprovement where you can find out about a wide range of techniques and systems. One of the main challenges for people is finding out which one is going to work for them. We are formulating systems that will enable them to determine which ones will work best for them. EPM: In what ways has Selfgrowth impacted your life?
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David: It has impacted my life in many ways. One of the biggest ways is that it has enabled me to fulfill my dream. My dream was to have my own business and be in the self improvement business. So it enabled me to leave corporate America and operate my own business. That’s been a phenomenal change for me. By having my own business, it allows me to have more flexibility. My office is literally two miles from my home, which allows me to see my kids more. I’m as excited about what I’m doing now as I was eight years ago. EPM: That also is a key to success. You have to be excited and love what you do. David: It’s critical. You need to find your passion or your life’s purpose. It will make your life that much more enjoyable. EPM: You believe that a person should have more than one mentor. Why? David: One of the things I find interesting is that a lot of people I know think that all they need to do is find one mentor who’s going to change their life. For years I was struggling to find that “mentor” who could change my life. What I found is I didn’t need to find that one mentor. I discovered that you can have many mentors. And by mentor I mean someone that you can learn from and you can be inspired through. So the way I see it, I don’t have a single mentor. I literally look at every single person in my life that I touch, reach, speak to and read about. I view them all as mentors and I ask myself, what can I learn from this person? In some
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cases, the learning experience is what not to do. Even if I’m learning what not to do from someone, in a sense they’re still my mentor, they’re still teaching me. Most people are not going to learn everything from one person. My recommendation is not to find one mentor but to learn from as many as possible to enable you to grow fully. One of my philosophies is there is no cure-all for everything. My goal is to help people find what’s right for them. EPM: Speaking of mentors, who are some of your mentors and what makes each of them different and helpful to you? David: My original mentors were mom and dad. My dad is no longer with us but I still have memories and there’s still a lot that I’ve learned from him. My mom is still around, playing tennis at 78 years old. Those are two of my original mentors. There are mentors and people that I learned from while growing up during my formal education. There are a lot of mentors that I learned from in the self-improvement and self-growth arena. I love listening to and watching people like Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy. I still remember listening to Zig Ziglar tapes while growing up. There’s a wide range of people and they provide different lessons for me or I’ll learn similar things in a different way. EPM: As a parent what is your biggest wish or dream for your children as they grow up? David: I have two dreams for them. One is that they’re happy. One of my prime dreams is that I want my children to be happy. The second biggest
dream is that they find what they want in of life. The other dreams include wanting my kids to be healthy, wealthy, wise and well-educated, but the first two are my biggest dreams for them.
level of society. People are also in the mode of blaming themselves. My general belief is that you need to get out of the blame mode and take responsibility for changing your life. No one else is going to do it.
EPM: If a child at the age of four or five says “I know what I want to do, do you think that’s too young for a parent to encourage them at that age?
EPM: When you begin looking at yourself and begin changing your life, you are also helping to change others.
David: I don’t think it’s too young to encourage a kid but I wouldn’t lock everything else out, personally as a parent. One of the challenges I find and the same thing with selfimprovement is I believe there is not one system or one way that works perfectly for everybody. It’s the same thing for parenting. There are many different parenting styles. Parents need to find and adopt the style that’s going to work for them. What we try to provide through Selfgrowth are resources to help people find the proper parenting techniques and implement them.
David: Exactly. You need to take action! ♦
EPM: What is the foundation for your life? What are the principles that you live by? David: There are a few principles that I live by everyday. One is to try to be a good person. That means being honest, trying to be right by myself and the people that I’m working with and trying to help people – passing on what I’m learning. I get my greatest pleasure from helping people. That’s the core of what I’m trying to do, my guiding principle. One thing I’d also like to share with people is that you need to find your own vision, your own passion and your own path. One of the challenges I think a lot of people face is we have a blame mentality, where it’s everybody else’s fault. I see it at every July-August 2011 | Exceptional People Magazine | 41