KEYS TO SUCCESS — EIGHT STEPS IN YOUR JOURNEY

The keys to success will open the doors of opportunity. But along the way you will encounter multiple doors that must be opened to get to a single opportunity.  So you will need multiple keys to success.   It is up to you to succeed.  Only you can  do it.  But success is a journey and as with any journey, you will need a roadmap.  There are eight keys — checkpoints — that you will need in order to be successful.

At the end of the rainbow, you will find your dream.

1.  Your Dream. The first of the keys to success is your dream.  You must have a dream.  And you need a burning desire to achieve that dream.   Most dreams for most people never come to fruition.   They are just dreams.  Pipe dreams?  Maybe.  Or maybe the problem is the dreamer, not the dream.  If you don’t want the dream badly enough, you will never have a chance to make it a reality.  And sometimes the problem is the lack of a vehicle.  If there is a dream and there is a dreamer who really will do whatever is necessary to become successful, the dreamer still needs a means of achievement, a vehicle.

2.  Goals.   Once you have the dream in your mind — I know, I know, it has been there most of your life, waiting to be released — once it’s there, you may find that it really is HUGE. Big as a DRAGON.  Big as a MOUNTAIN even.  And scary as your MOTHER-IN-LAW.  Sorry.  Please don’t tell her I said that.  The dream may be so big and so far away that it gives you anxiety attacks to even contemplate trying to achieve it.  And that is part of the problem with dreams.  They are unreachable.  Everyone says so. Right?  So why do some people actually get to theirs?  Because they have the second key to success, goals.    They make their dreams practical by creating goals that can actually have action plans and can be broken down into smaller pieces so that the journey becomes a series of steps instead of one giant impossible leap. Goals.

Wrong Jungle!

4.  Vehicle.  Oh, did I say there has to be an action plan? Stephen Covey wrote a story in his book  7 Habits of Highly Successful People that represents this well.  There was a group of hard working men who were cutting their way through a jungle with machetes and their supervisors were trying to manage them well to make sure they were as efficient as possible so they could get through the jungle and reach their objective.  Just like we would do to achieve our dreams and goals.  Then one enterprising young worker climbed the highest tree in the jungle and looked around, then yelled, “WRONG JUNGLE'”.  You want to make sure you have the right vehicle or you will get a lot of work done but will never reach your goals.  Whether it is a storefront business, a sales organization, a network marketing company, or the next great internet idea, a huge key to success is the vehicle you use to get there.  And it has to be the right one for you.

5.  Leadership self-development.  Number 5 and number 6 are related keys to success.  They both have to do with your education.  Don’t ever get so bogged down in the day to day grind that you neglect  this key.   It must be a continual part of your life.   Learn your trade but also read books on attitude, leadership, and business and listen to CD’s, take continuing education courses.  Never quit developing yourself.  It will be an investment of money and time that will pay dividends many times over.

6.  Expertise.   This is akin to number 5 but has to do with your trade — your specific chosen business.  Know your vehicle well.  At first your survival will depend on it.  If you recruit quality people in the future, you don’t have to be the best at every facet of your business — that’s why you recruit the best people you can find and lead them well — but you should have a respectable knowledge of every facet of the business.  This is a leadership function and a control factor.  It is hard to inspire your people or know whether they are doing a good job if you yourself don’t know how things are supposed to  work.  As your business gets really large, you may find it impossible to know how to do everything so you will have to find other imaginative ways to lead and control.

7.  Back to dreams and goals. Even after you think you have succeeded, you will encounter new doors that will require new keys to success if you want to take your business to the next level.  You will need to think about dreams and goals again.  But now we call them vision.  If you don’t know the really big picture of where you want your business to go, no one will want to follow you.  So do strategic planning so that the vision is really clear in your mind.

Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!

8.  Communicate.  Finally, the better you can communicate your vision, the more loyal to you and the vision your people will be.  You might even want to let them participate in formulating the vision.  You may want to then put it in writing and use it constantly.  Another useful document for many businesses  is a  philosophy, also developed as a group, that everyone tries to live by.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  And make your business a collective enterprise.  The more your people are a part of the planning and the responsibility for the business, the more they will take ownership of it.  This too, will pay huge dividends and suddenly you might find that those unreachable dreams have magically  been reached.  So I guess the next step will be to start dreaming bigger dreams.

It all sounds so simple.  Right?  Wrong. It will take a lot of hard work and your own imagination and leadership to make it work really well.  But what I will give you will be a road map that will help you to make your dreams achievable.  It does sound  like a lot of work, right?  Yeah.  It is.  But remember, those dreams are HUGE.  It is not easy to find a  pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and there are leprechauns everywhere who are trying to stop you.  May the luck of the Irish be with you on your road to success!

This is only an outline and a guide.  I will get into detail on all eight keys to success  later. But if I have left any out or if there is a specific concept about which you would like to learn more, please leave a comment.  I would like to know what is on your mind.

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Let me know about your success or lack of it in the past and what you have gotten from this blog so far to set you on a new path.  Please  leave a comment.  I would like to hear from you.  And if you leave your contact information at the top right corner of this page, I will also send you notification anytime I add a new article to  the blog.