Archive for Success
Scared You Will Fail? Good!
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“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” Robert F. Kennedy
I’ve spent sleepless nights staring at the ceiling in the dark worrying if we would survive failure.
We’ve built five businesses and helped turnaround a dying church. People have sabotaged and threatened me. We’ve come close to bankruptcy once and failure countless times. I’ve been scared. Yet, would I go back and do it all over the easy way? Not take on the challenges? Sometimes I dream about that. But no.
We all have dreams. Dreams to accomplish great and meaningful things. Dreams to be successful beyond the ordinary.
But when we set out to accomplish them it’s scary. We could fail. And the greater the dream the more spectacular the failure.
It’s so easy to run away. To think, “What am I doing? I can’t accomplish that. If I try and fail what will everyone say?” Read More→
One Absolute Essential to Rise Out of Mediocrity
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“Most people in this or any other industry are by definition mediocrities. Assuming you don’t want to be a mediocrity, this would seem to suggest that you had better take pains to seal yourself off from most of the people around you. Moreover, my experience. . . clearly indicates that you rise to the level of your superiors or sink to the level of your inferiors. . . depending purely on with which group you spend more time and energy interacting.” Nick Murray
Have you ever noticed how some of the most personable people, the ones you love hanging with, are also the most mediocre in their accomplishments? They’re fun. Always up for a party. Quick with a joke. We enjoy their friendship. Yet, occassionally we can feel we’re wasting our time. We feel like we’re being sucked into a vortex that’s going nowhere. In a word—mediocrity. Read More→
Quit Doing Good–Unleash Your Best
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“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” Henry David Thoreau
Most of us desire to achieve our absolute best.
Our lives fill with lots of good activities. Our career, volunteer time, church, family, hobbies. Fun things. Important things. Yet, when new opportunities open up we often don’t have any extra capacity. So we either ignore it or we paste it into our over committed schedule. Neither alternative works. One we miss it. The other we half heartedly pursue it. Read More→
One Man Who Changed History–You’ve Never Heard Of
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Last Saturday, unknowingly, I sat next to a man at a luncheon who literally changed history.
I was attending a weekend training conference of Rotary International for incoming club presidents.
Rotary International, is the largest and oldest service club in the world. There are over 1.2 million members in over 200 countries and territories. It’s made up of business and community leaders who choose to make a difference in their world with their time and money.
One of the major projects, for which Rotary is known today, is their effort to eradicate polio worldwide. 35 years ago they began this dream, when hundreds of thousands of primarily children had contracted this dreaded disease and died or been crippled for life. Read More→
Proactively Wasting Time to Increase Productivity
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“When we stop forcing, the breakthrough often comes. A creator then finds a rhythm. They certainly show up to their work. They put in hours harvesting what has come to the surface. They edit chapters, write blogs, polish songs, record their music and so forth. But they rest, too. They turn off their minds and let the soil work for them.” Don Miller
We’re the most connected generation in history. Facebook, Twitter, email, texting, cell phones. There is almost nowhere and no time we cannot connect.
Because of the technology there’s a huge movement to work remotely. We can work from home or on vacation and accomplish what could only have been done sitting physically in an office 50 years ago.
But the good news has also become the bad news. Read More→
Crazy or Genius? You Decide!
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The dream turned into a wakeup call. My first year as a financial consultant I netted $10,000. A little short of my goals. With a family of four and two kids heading towards college this was a setback of major scale. We had saved, invested and planned before launching but still this was worse than I ever imagined.
The biggest obstacle was self imposed. I wanted to build a fee based advising and planning business. By doing this I collected a small quarterly fee rather than a much larger commission. I wanted to build a business with a long term focus. Help people plan their financial futures while reducing the potential conflicts of interest.
In the short term it meant giving up 80 percent of my income. In the long term it meant building a scalable business that could grow exponentially.
Many of the veteran brokers told me, “You’re crazy. You can’t build a business like that. You’ll never survive. People won’t go along with it. You’re a fool.” Read More→
How to Rise from Obscurity To Become an Overnight Success
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Steve Cohen, “The Millionaire’s Magician,” became an overnight success. Really?
As a child he was intrigued watching and performing magic tricks. He had natural talent and unbounded interest.
He says, “While other kids went to soccer and football camp during the summer I went to geeky magic camp.”
No doubt growing up he probably wasn’t the big man on campus.
He performed through college, perfecting his skills and earning a living. After graduation he married a Japanese woman and they moved to Tokyo. There he connected with the general manager of a large hotel. After a private showing he gained a contract to put on magic shows.
He eventually returned to the US and set out to be a career magician. But how do you break into the big time? The field was already crowded with headline performers. And how do you make contact with the people you need to?
He would do small preview shows for agents to get contracts. Then start all over when it ran out. Read More→
Putting Off Your Dream? How to Live it Today!
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Rick King, a past president of Rotary International, in a recent speech said, “Quit putting off living. Whatever your dream—start now. Today is your life!”
Wow! So simple, yet so profound.
I think we all struggle with this.
We each carry inside the seeds of greatness. We have dreams of changing our world and making it better. We have abilities we enjoy and are fulfilled in sharing.
Yet, life happens. Good things. Family, work, activities. And our dreams often get put on hold. Our aspirations give way to everyday living.
And we think, “Someday. When the kids are through school. When life settles down. When the house is paid off. When I retire. Then I’ll accomplish all I wanted to. Read More→
