Success

Success is often talked about, but hardly ever truly explained in my opinion. I mean, like I want a blueprint that I can follow that has a darn good chance of working.

Well, after much thought, interviews, being involved in successful and not successful ventures, here is what I believe it is boiled down from all my decades of observation and participation.

While Positive thoughts are necessary to succeed, positive thoughts alone are not sufficient to succeed.  It still involves Work and it also involves a willingness to go to extremes.

A lot of the Gurus of Success coaches out there will not tell you this. But, because I truly do want you to succeed, I am going to lay out a Secret that the “Secret” from a few years ago never mentioned.

Success does have a price and there is no way around it. Now you can make it much, much easier on yourself by several factors, but you still will have to pay a price. It is as simple as that.

You may have to give up watching most of all of the Boob Tube for the next several months to several years. Point in fact, if you watch more than an hour of TV a day, I can almost guarantee that you will not be successful. How it that for being blunt? The TV is an electronic success vacuum cleaner. It will literally suck success from your life.

You have to be willing to give up some of your leisure time. You will have to have a willingness to get organized. You have to pay this price in advance.

You may have to give up your vacation time, some of your hobbies, and you have to be willing to work smarter and harder.

To Do Lists and Not To Do Lists

You will have to make To Do Lists and also Not To Do Lists. In order to make way for something new, you have to get rid of something old, therefore you have to stop doing some things. Perhaps doing nothing is one of the things that you need to stop doing.

But part of the success process is to sit down and take an inventory of things that are getting in the way of your success. You have to find time to do new things that will make you successful.

You must work on not procrastinating in several areas. If there is one thing that I have observed in all successful ventures, the participants did not procrastinate. Procrastination is not an option if you want to be successful.

On the flip side, I highly suggest that you also take at least one whole day a week off as soon as you can.

If you know this up front, then you won’t be surprised by it. But if you are willing to do this, then you will have time to take month long vacations anywhere you want and stay at the best hotels and resorts if that is your cup of tea. So, the question you have to ask yourself is this. Would I rather watch Dancing With The Stars, or go to Spain and learn do dance myself? Or pay to have private lessons?

Success does have many, many rewards.

Failure Is A Requirement, Not An Option

Successful people are also not afraid to fail or rather try new things. More than likely, many things that you try will not work.

But… and this is a biggy here… if you can figure out how to get that one thing right and do it well and invest in yourself so that your income goes up 25% per year, in just two years and seven months you will double your income because of the the compounding effect.

So, if you have the willingness to do what it takes, then the payoff can be far greater than you can ever imagine.

What you have to do is try as many ideas as quickly as possible and get them to fail as quickly as possible so that you can figure out how to get to the next thing that does work.

This goes against most of the common wisdom that is out there which is an oxymoron.  Most common people don’t have a clue how to be successful. You have to be uncommon and do uncommon things.

You income is limited by your weakest key skill. More than likely that is Marketing, although it could be different for you. It might be something totally different.

So, either you need to get good at that weakest skill or higher someone who is great at it and harness their skills to make you money. While this is a simple concept, I do believe that here again that it is counter-intuitive.

In fact, figure out your weakest skills and figure out how to partner with or pay someone that is great at that, and concentrate on what you do best and get really good at it.

Specialists usually make 10 more than what generalists do.

Every Hero Was Once A Zero

Remember that everyone that is successful started at the bottom and worked their way too the top.

With that being said, there is no time to start like the present.

Speed Of Implementation

Perhaps the single most important element to success in any business venture is speed of implementation. The velocity of a product effects all aspects of the process. From bringing in Cash Flow, to gaining market share. A good product that is first to market can do ten times the sales of a product that is 20% or even 40% better that comes afterwards. Taking away market share is nearly ten times as hards as establishing it in the first place when there is no competition.

Even a few days can have a compounding effect and cannot stress enough that you need to treat product development as if someone had a gun to your head and was about to pull the trigger. Because at the end, if you do dilly dally, the result may very well be the death of your idea and company.

When I see people dawdling during development and not being decisive, I can almost guarantee that they will not be successful. You need to act like you are being chased by a Grizzly Bear that would like to have you for a snack during the development stage.

If you do, this one thing alone and put success in your corner more so than any other element.

Successful people are decisive and act quickly. While other people are pondering the merits of something, successful people have already grabbed the opportunity and are running with it.

So the bottom line there is a blueprint for success and there is a price, but ask the vast majority of successful people if it is worth it or not, and you more than likely get a look that says “ are you kidding me?” that is if you can stop them long enough to ask them.

Cheers and here is to your success.

Andrew Anderson