These are our 6 key beliefs that form your pathway to success.
1. Time doesn’t fill me… I fill time.
Average people allow time to impose its own will on them; successful people impose their will on their time.
2. The people around me are the people I chose.
Some of your employees drive you nuts. Some of your customers are obnoxious. Some of your friends are selfish, all-about-me jerks.
You chose them. If the people around you make you unhappy, it’s not their fault. It’s your fault. They’re in your professional or personal life because you drew them to you – and you let them remain.
3. Experience is irrelevant. Accomplishments are everything.
You have “10 years in the web design business.” Whoopee. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing what you do. Years of service indicate nothing; you could be the worst 10-year programmer in the world.
I care about what you’ve done: how many sites you’ve created, how many back-end systems you’ve installed, how many customer-specific applications you’ve developed (and what kind) … all that matters is what you’ve done.
Successful people don’t need to describe themselves using hyperbolic adjectives like passionate, innovative, driven, etc. they can just describe, usually in a humble way, what they’ve done.
4. Failure is something I accomplish; it just doesn’t happen to me.
Ask people why they have been successful. Their answers will be filled with personal pronouns: ‘I’, ‘me’, and the sometimes too occasional ‘we’.
Ask them why they failed. Most will revert to childhood and instinctively distance themselves, like the kid who says, “My toy got broken …” instead of, “I broke my toy.”
They’ll say the economy collapsed. They’ll say the market wasn’t ready. They’ll say their suppliers couldn’t keep up.
They’ll say it was someone or something else.
And by distancing themselves, they never learn from their failures.
Embrace every failure. Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently.
5. Volunteers always win.
Whenever you raise your hand you wind up being asked to do more.
That’s great. Doing more is an opportunity to learn, to impress, to gain skills, to build new relationships – to do something more than you would otherwise have been able to do.
Success is based on action. The more you volunteer, the more you get to act. Successful people step forward to create opportunities.
Remarkably successful people sprint forward.
6. The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland.
Everyone says they go the extra mile. Almost no one actually does. Most people who go there think, “Wait … no one else is here … why am I doing this?” and they’ll leave, never to return.
That’s why the extra mile is such a lovely and lonely place at the same time!
That’s why the extra mile is a place filled with opportunities.
Be early. Stay late. Make the extra phone call. Send the extra email. Do the extra research. Help a customer unload or unpack a shipment. Don’t wait to be asked; offer. Don’t just tell employees what to do – show them what to do and work beside them.
Every time you do something, think of one extra thing you can do – especially if other people aren’t doing that one thing. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it!
That’s what will make you different.
And over time, that’s what will make you incredibly successful.
