Here are my top 12 success tips if you’re starting up a business – or indeed if you want to be successful being employed in an organisation:
Self-Devt – constant learning from books, experiences, and other people. Go on every training course you can, and spend time and if necessary money on self development. Your brain is your biggest success tool! As well as reading the books make sure you act upon them. And remember that self development means that you have to be willing to change.
Appearance – make sure you are always friendly, whenever you meet anyone new or who you already know, remember to smile even if you are having a bad day. And always dress smartly – ideally 10% smarter than the other people you are with. Smart appearance makes you seem more trustworthy – which of course you are.
Yourself – have the courage to be yourself, you can’t be successful unless you are, because otherwise you aren’t authentic, people will sense that, and also by hiding parts of the real you will only lead to you diminishing yourself.
Help others – you have to sow before you can reap, you can’t be successful without helping others first, so take every opportunity to help other people without any thought of reward. It feels good, and it’ll come back to you at some point.
Influencing skills – work on being likeable, complimenting people and thanking them, being aware of and then controlling your emotions, and being adaptable to the personalities of others.
Volunteer for challenges, in order to come out of your comfort zone. Take every opportunity that comes along, however inconvenient or difficult or scary it might be, even if your busy or tired – you never know where it’ll lead. Stretch yourself so you learn and achieve to the maximum
Organised = reliable. Write everything down, probably in the form of a master list and a daily jobs to do list every day – make sure you use your time to the maximum, which means saying no to many things, and spending more time on important things and less time on unimportant things. And make sure you have systems for everything that repeats, so you don’t waste time on things that could be automated, e.g. recording your expenditure and receipts, or calculating your tax – these can be automated using financial software.
Listening – this is THE most important success habit. It will make you much more likely to be liked, because it’s both arrogant and boring to talk about yourself and it shows respect to listen to others, it makes them feel important. Also it’s the only way you learn, and the more you know about other people the better – maybe you can help them, maybe they can help you, maybe you have things in common, you won’t know unless you listen.
Contacts – make an effort to meet people, connect with everyone you can, and keep in touch with them. Find out people’s name when you meet them, even if they don’t appear very important – maybe that waitress or repairman is working through college, or they could be the son or father of someone significant, you just can’t assume. Become a collector of people.
Associating only with positive people – most people will drag you down, tell you can’t do it or you don’t want to do it. Set up a mastermind group who meets regularly where you all help each other – and hold each other to account.
Nostalgia is out! – no harking back to the past, either with nostalgia or with regret about what you did. Forget the ‘good past’ and forget the ‘bad past’, only the present is real, …and the future will be real – the past will never be real again; it’s gone, you can learn from it, but that’s it. Focus on the present and the future only.
Objectives – last but maybe most important is to have clear goals for what you want to achieve. Nobody ever achieved anything without first having a clear picture of it in their head. So have the most detailed plan you can for what you want to achieve, both at work and in your personal life, and it should include things you enjoy doing and things you want to achieve. Onwards and upwards!
CC
Chris was pondering this in LA……
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