That is kinda obvious…. If you are not in the game how can you possibly win? However, my thinking is more around the view that ‘a winner knows what to quit’. We quit every day because we are the result of the habits we pick and those that linger on. In our pursuance of a goal, we learn that there are some things we need to stop doing to be successful and others we should do massively.
1. First, our success is often the result of our expertise in an area. Expertise is a result of hard work; hours spent building expertise to make us proficient. Understand, overnight success is often a result of many, many years of hard work. Lack hardly plays a role in success but being prepared enables you to grab opportunities. This often happens so naturally, we think the person was lucky.
“All of us are a product of our own actions but only the successful will admit that” – Unknown
If you are moving into a new area of business where a new skill is required the number of hours you put in a day will determine how soon people start seeing expertise in you and wanting to pay you for what you are offering. The more the hours you put in the sooner people will start paying you more for your expertise.
2. You can shorten this period or process by hiring a team highly skilled experts making it difficult for competitors to replicate. Michael Jackson had a knack for this and he was hard to beat.
Expertise can also be built through generations and often is in family businesses. For example, a family that has been in a specific trade for generations has built innate knowledge and skills in the family. Different regions will also have expertise in different industries for example Champagne in France for Champagne, Kenya for Coffee and Tea, and China for reproduction (imitation).
‘Success is a fine cocktail of talent, hard work, networks and a dash of lack’
Choosing what to quit doing is often not that hard though making the step may be. Keys to success are things we all know and often do not need to be taught but we self-sabotage leading to failure.
3. Persistence If you cannot find the right people and do not have skills will you give up or keep searching for solutions if you know there is an opportunity out there? How long will you do it? This differentiates entrepreneurs who will succeed and ‘wantrepreneurs’. Persistence means you work hard and are looking for creative ways today, tomorrow, next week, next year consistently until you succeed and, you continue working hard because after you solve one problem there are other opportunities out there. It isn’t doing the same thing repeatedly but solving a problem or addressing a need effectively, and more efficiently. Most successful brands do this continually.
You also learn to make adjustments and improvements as you keep your eye on the ball and do not shift your goals and objectives at every little hindrance. Persistence requires that you have high positive energy even when things look dreary and it seems someone plucked the sun from your sky.
Persistence means passionately doing it like you just started yesterday. It’s not that you do not see the big, bad and ugly, but, remembering you are as big as your problems, you resolve to become the best, in difficult and good times. If you prepare yourself for the toughest, wildest situation and you get a bad situation it’s a breeze but when you do not prepare yourself you are likely to give up. Do not get emotional about business but learn to be calm, it is a very important feature of one who is doggedly persistent and helps your team remain stable.
4. Not embracing mediocrity is another requirement of being successful. For example, you reach target A before the time-lapse you had set for yourself. This does not mean you sit back and relax as you wait for the period to start implementing target B. Entrepreneurship and good leadership are both a marathon and a fast track race at the same time. You don’t know what is coming round the bend and working ahead of schedule does not mean a holiday. It is a great chance to forge on ahead and maybe make time to innovate and improve.
This is also the case when you save money. It does not mean splurging on a party or new executive offices but may be an opportunity to invest in new technologies ( not that an occasional celebration is bad but depending on the situation weigh the best options. As a rule use resources to build capacity and motivation within your team.
4. Partnerships and collaboration. Networks matter. The right ones result in the success the wrong ones are costly. You sometimes have to quit some relationships if they are dragging you behind, get rid of some contractors that do not add value, and even employees who would be more successful elsewhere and not in your company. Success requires that you surround yourself with people of like mind and values. As an individual if you can’t get them physically get them in books you read, videos you watch, and functions you go to. As a business strategically seek the right partnerships e.g. through membership in industrial associations.
5. Patience. Discern when you need to move fast to make quick wins and when you should be patient and what to be patient about. The results do not come overnight. A good indication of how long you should wait is how long it has taken others doing similar things to accomplish that which you are hoping to accomplish. Understandably, we now have the technology, however, we are always dealing with human beings so while taking technology into consideration do not expect that human beings will move at the same pace as the technology… they rarely do and at the end of the day whatever, your success is it is pegged to serving somebody somewhere.
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day, while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the cumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.” -Jim Rohn
6. Understanding oneself. When you know who you are, and are not, you know what you can successfully do and what you cannot and need help. Of all keys to success, this is the most important. It makes you very conscious of attributes in others that you do not have. The benefit? You know who to bring onboard your team to make you all successful, and how everything else fits together. Understanding yourself is the first step in being a successful leader and entrepreneur.
For a successful entrepreneur, the adage ‘what you don’t know will not hurt you does not apply’. What you don’t know will destroy you. Continually doing these six things massively and repeatedly analyzing whether you are on the right track can make you ‘an overnight success’.
