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Do You Have These 5 Essential Traits of Successful People?

Derek — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:27:00 +0000

Here is Michael Martine’s guest post to the Success Factors blog series.

“The secret to success is … and for a few bucks it can be yours.”

Sound familiar?

People claim to know the secret and they try to sell it. Other people buy it because they want a shortcut, but it never works. Success is about hard work, but there is more. There are five other essential traits of successful people and in the remaining part of this article, I will show you all five of them.

1. Passion

Passion comes in many forms. There is the Gary Vaynerchuk blow the top of your head off with enthusiasm sort of passion and then there is the quiet, reflective, and influential sort of passion of Brian Clark. Wherever you fall, you need passion to be successful. Consider these two points:

It’s Not About The Money - Do you think Gary Vaynerchuk would have been able to video blog about wine for 8 months with zero traffic if he cared about the money? He actually lost money because sales dropped in his store-front.

Without Passion, It’s Just Work – Do you think the guy at McDonalds that says “Would you like fries with that?” is passionate about his job? No, he’s doing it for the money and it’s just work. He doesn’t go home and dream about it — nightmares maybe…

But how do you develop your passions? You need to make a list of what you really love in life. The things you talk about, the things you dream about. If you feed these things time, money, and effort, they will grow into something more and the money will come soon thereafter.

2. Compassion

Let me say this again. Compassion. ComPASSION. CompanionPASSION. This is where you care about other people. It helps you earn a living by helping others — it’s win-win. If you care about people, they will care about you and your business. But how do you develop compassion?

Pick a Cause – Find something you care about and donate time and money. Like a bank, you have to make some deposits in society before you make withdrawals.

Listen to Complaints - Every complaint is an opportunity. For example, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google, they undoubtedly heard “I can’t find anything on the internet” as a complaint. So, they solved it.

Help the Desperate – Find the people who need help and help them. Your kindness will be appreciated and remembered.

So what have you done for your community lately?

3. Observation

Success starts with an observation. Larry Page and Sergey Brin observed that you couldn’t find information on the internet. That single observation changed the world. They set off a chain of events that created new products, new markets, and new innovations. Now what are you doing to become more observant?

Start a Journal and Fill It Daily – Whether you’re blogging on the internet, or writing in a moleskin, daily writing forces you to make observations.

Watch What People Do - When you go to work, just watch what people do. How do they drink their coffee? How do they hold their paper?

Make Observations – Simple, right? Just make observations. When you shop, look at how goods and services are presented. Look for inconsistencies. Look for opportunities. Just go out there and do it.

4. Imagination

At Disney, imagination is one of the most valuable attributes of a person — they even have positions called “Imagineers.” Do you know why? Imagination is the only durable competitive advantage. It can never be taken from you. It helps you solve problems, create art, woo a mate, and the list goes on. But how do you develop your imagination?

Imagine a Movie – Watch the first half of a movie and try to imagine how it ends. Then, compare how close you were.

Imagine the Solution - Find one of the problems in your many observations and imagine a solution — even if it’s unrealistic.

Play Games - Scrabble… Risk… Video Games… Any games. Just play games. They make you suspend reality so you can develop your imagination.

Now what are you doing to imagine solutions to your customer’s problems?

5. Bravery

And here is the rub. You can have every one of the above qualities, but without the guts to do something, they’re pointless. Success is not easy and most people will never taste its sweet nectar. The few who do had to overcome personal difficulties and make tremendous sacrifices. But let me reassure you one thing: you can learn to be brave and here are two ways how:

Stay Conscious - Have you ever seen a kid curl up in a blanket when they’re scared? Don’t be that little kid. Be aware of your surroundings and be willing to make tough decisions.

Stay Scared – Want to know the best way to develop bravery? Keep doing things that scare you. Scared of public speaking? Grab a soap box and speak. Scared of rejection? Go get rejected.

Share Your Thoughts

Did I miss any other key characteristics of successful people? Why not leave them in the comments?

About the Author: Michael Martine blogs at Remarkablogger, which is in the top 100 business blogs and the top 100 internet marketing blogs. Why don’t you follow him on Twitter?

Why You Should Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

Derek — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:29:37 +0000

Prevential offers Success Factors to help rewire your business and personal life for success. Please check back for a new “Success Factors” article daily in January 2009.

Remember the old saying, “Never put all your eggs in one basket?” People believed that options were the key to success. Unfortunately, they had it all wrong.

They meant well, but they taught us to divide our free time across several “baskets.” The lack of focus prevented us from developing one basket substantially, which created an army of mediocre people doing mediocre things.

When the great Chinese General, Xiang Yu, burned his own ships the night before a battle with the Qin dynasty, he eliminated the “we could always retreat” basket. In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely notes that Xiang’s troops were scared, but since they were left with no choice, they had to fight. They ended up winning nine consecutive battles against overwhelming odds.

Xiang put his eggs in one basket and his troops accomplished the impossible. Luckily, you can apply this to your life and business without the fire and the blood shed. You need to rewire your brain and realize that options and diversity is not the answer. You need to “put all of your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket” (Andrew Carnegie).

But why do you need to focus on one basket?

10,000 Hours

Have you heard of the 10,000 hour rule (Malcolm Gladwell made it famous in Outliers)? K. Anders Ericsson and his associates found that elite music performers all had one thing in common and that was 10,000 hours of practice. It didn’t matter how “talented” they were, it just mattered how much time they spent practicing.

10,000 hours is a huge amount of time and it will be impossible to accomplish without focus. You simply can’t give 10,000 hours to every opportunity because there is only 24 hours a day.

This rule also applies to business and success.

It takes a long time to perfect a product and a business plan. Without initial focus, your company may struggle with several mediocre products that will never make a difference.

When McDonalds first started, they used to sell several different products. Once they realized that Hamburgers were the key to their success, they eliminated everything else. They focused on their core product and now you can see what happened with McDonalds.

Or, how about the story of Apple? When Steve Jobs resumed as CEO, Apple was floundering. They had tons of products and zero focus. Steve Jobs began canceling entire departments and brought Apple back its profitability and now you all have iTunes and iPhones and iPods.

So ask yourself, are you focusing on your core product or main opportunity? Are you giving one project all of your time and dedication? If not, it is time to reconsider and you may experience breakaway growth.

Deliberate Practice

Now that you know you need 10,000 hours of practice and complete focus, this doesn’t mean you can just start logging hours and expect success. It is possible to log 5,000 hours and have them equal 1 hour of practice.

In “Talent is Overrated,” Geoff Colvin talks about Deliberate Practice. The practice that makes you so tired and exhausted that you can only do it a few hours a day. This is what you need 10,000 hours of. You can’t simply do the same thing day in and day out and expect to get better. You need to push yourself beyond your limits and count those hours.

A friend of mine who is an executive officer at a Fortune 100 company was talking to me about recruiting and how to hire the perfect employee. He said something like, “you need to hire someone with 10 years of experience, not 10 years of the same one year of experience.” Or, in short, you need to hire someone who develops their career because the development shows successful deliberate practice.

From a business perspective, you can’t focus on one product and never make improvements. You need to constantly lower the price, improve usability, or add effectiveness. If you don’t, you may join the ranks of the other floundering companies in this competitive world.

So, if you recently began to focus on one thing and one thing only, what are you doing to ensure that you are pushing yourself to your limits? Are you improving the quality and efficiency of your company and products? Are you expanding your market reach?

Success Factors Spotlight

Throughout the “Success Factors” blog series you will see “Success Factors Spotlight.” This is where you will see real life examples of companies, people, or blogs that will benefit or have benefited from the ideas we talked about in the article.

We talked about Apple and about McDonalds, but what about the small business owners today? Are they carving out their niche by focusing on a single product and developing it relentlessly?

Yes they are.

Have you heard of Chris Pearson? He’s the guy behind the new Wordpress Theme called Thesis. It was released early 2008 and it has been revised and updated no less than 7 times. Most designers create a theme, release it, and forget about it, but not Chris. He continues to support Thesis and now you can see many well known blogs using it.

But do you think his success was an accident? Do you think Thesis became one of the most popular Wordpress themes because Chris got lucky?

Chris built Thesis with a ton of experience under his belt. He created four wildly popular Wordpress themes prior to it (Cutline, Pressrow, Neoclassical, and Copyblogger), so he knew where to start. However, the most important thing contributing to his success was his intent focus on developing the best Wordpress theme on the internet.

In short, Thesis became popular because of Chris Pearson’s single basket. He picked the Wordpress theme basket and put all of his eggs in it. So, if you’re looking to experience breakaway growth, you need to take a page from Chris Pearson’s book and focus on one basket. Then, continue to watch that basket to ensure you continue to do it right over the course of the product’s life.

What Do You Think?

Leave a comment and lets start a discussion.