So You Want Success?

 

       The question often comes up on social media on how to grow an existing business or launch a start up. Everyone has great advice, that helped them and it’s all good. But in order to grow fast, and purposefully you must build with intense focus. I listened to a Success webinar on Friday night, yes those of you that know me well know I am that dork. Well to be fair it was the last day it was available so I really had no choice. Darren Hardy took 6 years of interviews with top entrepreneurs and boiled their success down to just a few principles. I thought I’d share a few of them with you tonight.  You must narrow your focus and think big. Keep your eyes and ears open because everyone around you is a mentor. I have marketing ears; I hear messages all around me that I can use in some way for my business. The size of your success will be the size of the problem you are willing to solve.  Second, Invest in your people, and it you are an independent that means you still need to build a team. Surround yourself with the right people, those that will keep you in check, not just in love with yourself.  Good people tell you what you want to hear; great people tell you what you need to hear. Build a team around your deficits, your company is only as good as the people in it.Third,  Have a game plan and maximize your team’s strengths.  Multiply your capacity through team.  Push yourself, we are all best under a bit of pressure. Be tenacious and be willing to work like hell. Getting the most out of your work day is more about saying no than saying yes, focus is about saying no. What is the most important point of impact for your business? Is it social media, networking, word of mouth? You must know what the best thing is to focus on to move your business forward. Prune your life and delegate the rest to someone better than you.  Fourth are you failing enough? From every failure comes great lessons. Learn from it, come back and start again, or as Richard Branson says “Screw it let’s do it “.  If you are only succeeding you are not taking enough risks and this is where you really learn to fly. When you think it’s time to bail is where the greatest opportunities exists.  Failure is part of the pathway to great success and you’ll be in great company. Get out of your own way, out of your comfort zone. Break barriers and don’t be complacent. Knowing you have room to improve will keep you hungry and hungry people succeed. Learn from others and get better. Be greedy in acquiring knowledge. 

 

     Warren Buffet says: Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. What skill, if you knew it, would make your business skyrocket? Go learn that skill and invest in your growth. Fifth Did you know that distractions are the number one threat to your business? It costs us as country $650 billion dollars in lost productivity. We are constantly fracturing our focus, so much so there is a new term for it. It’s called Digiphrenia,or digital chaos. When we are overwhelmed we are in danger of convenient distraction, oh let me just check my email, again or see what’s happening on Facebook. Learn to control your attention and put a filter on what you let enter your head. Find a few things that matter and learn to grey everything else out, again prune your digital world.  And last but not least you need a proven strategy, daily, weekly,  monthly strategies to stay disciplined and sustain your passion. Jim Rohn said success leaves clues so study business, study successful people. Hire a coach; work with a mentor and focus on your productivity. You can only grow into your goals by investing in yourself. If you haven’t read the 4 hour work week I highly recommend it. While all the principles may not apply directly to our day to day business the practices certainly apply to our entrepreneurial mindset. Focus focus and more focus will create amazing productivity and that’s smart marketing.