Determine and Take the Right Approach

The successful know that they can quantify what works and what doesn’t work, whereas the unsuccessful focus solely on “hard work.” The right approach may be to institute a public relations program that softens the market, provide consumers with the right tool, or compel management to make the most powerful connections, find the best first investors, or hire the highest-quality staff. Whatever the method may be, the successful don’t think in terms of hard work (even though they are, of course, willing to work hard). Instead, they figure out how to work “smart” and handle the situation by finding and using the right approach until they succeed. The unsuccess- ful always find work to be difficult because they never take enough time to improve their approach and make it easier on

themselves. The first three years of my life as a salesperson was hard work and gave me sporadic results at best. Then I committed two years and thousands of dollars to improving my approach—and selling was no longer “work”!

Successful people invest time, energy, and money in improving themselves. As a result, they don’t focus on how hard the work is but rather on how rewarding the results are! When you are winning because you have perfected your approach, it won’t feel like work; it will feel like success. And nothing tastes as good as the victory of success.

Break Traditional Ideas

The most successful of the successful go beyond the concept of mere change and challenge traditional thinking. Look at organizations like Google, Apple, and Facebook, and you will see companies that challenge traditions and create new ways of doing things. They break that which already works in order to get to a better place. The most successful are looking to create traditions—not follow already established ones. Do not be a prisoner of the thinking agreed upon by others. Figure out ways to take advantage of the traditional thinking that holds others back.

The successful are called “thought leaders” who design the future with forward thinking. I built my first company on the notion of breaking traditional ideas that one industry had long accepted by showing it a better way to take care of customers. Highly successful individuals are not concerned with the way things “have always been done”; they’re interested in finding new and better ways. They look at why automobiles, airplanes, newspapers, and homes have changed so little over the past 50 years and try to determine ways to create new markets. A word of warning: These people are also able to maintain their companies’ existing structures while disputing conventional concepts and bringing new products to market. They don’t

suggest change for the sake of change; they do so in order to design superior products, relationships, and environments. The successful are willing to challenge tradition in order to discover new and better ways to accomplish their goals and dreams.

Be Goal-Oriented

A goal is some desirable objective—typically something yet to be achieved—that a person or company needs in order to move forward. Successful people are highly goal-oriented and always pay more attention to the target than the problem. They are seemingly able to bend bullets because of their commitment and focus on the goal. Far too many folks spend more time planning what they will get at the grocery store than they do setting the most important goals of their lives. If you don’t stay focused on your goals, you will spend your life acftieving tfte objectives of otfter people—particularly tftose wfto are goal-oriented.

Goals are incredibly important to me. I begin and finish each day by writing them down and reviewing them. Any time I encounter failure or a challenge, I take out a legal pad and write my goals down again. This helps keep my attention on where I desire to go and the goals I want to achieve—instead of letting me dwell on the difficulty of the moment. The ability to remain focused on the goal and keep your orienta- tion on that goal’s achievement is vital to success. Although I try to stay focused on the present, I want to keep most of my attention on the bigger picture of my goals rather than on just the task I’m accomplishing at that moment.

Be on a Mission

Whereas the unsuccessful spend their lives thinking in terms of a job, successful people approach their activities as though they are on a religious mission—not as work or merely “a job.” Successful employees, employers, entrepreneurs, and market

changers consider their daily activities to be part of a more important mission that will change things significantly. They are always thinking bigger and homing in on some massive target to achieve. Until you start approaching your job as though you are on a mission, it will always be reduced to “just a job.” You must undertake every activity with the zealous attitude that this endeavor could forever change the world. Approach every phone call, e-mail, sales visit, meeting, presen- tation, and day you spend at the office not as a job but as a calling for which you will forever be known. Until you adopt this attitude, you will forever be stuck in a job—and probably one that isn’t very fulfilling.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 587