Don’t ever think you are successful
Let’s say your business is finally showing signs of life and you’re making more than you ever imagined you could make. You think life is great and everyone around you thinks you are successful. You eventually believe this to be true as well and be comfortable with your life. Do you know what happens next?
Your business eventually will lose momentum and you notice things start to change. Instead of growing your business, your business starts to fall apart and collapse.
Success is not achieved when you can just relax and do nothing. You need to keep going and never stop growing your business. Sure you may achieve your goals but once you reach them you need to have a new set of goals. Otherwise, you’re going to become relax and things will fall apart.
Think about it. There are dozens of companies, some Fortune 500 that seemed unstoppable yet ended up collapsing. In the business world, you need to constantly be growing your business and focusing on making more money.
What is success?
I believe success is a state you can be in. It’s very hard to enter but it is incredibly easy to fall out of. It can take years before you can call yourself successful but it only takes a few days to lose that success.
I’ve learned this from my own personal mistakes. I got relaxed after doing really well and ended up losing all of my money plus some. I got blinded by my success, started cutting corners and ended up paying for it. I stopped focusing on my business.
There really is no such thing as “too big to fail.” A wise man once said: “Every time you stay out late; every time you sleep in; every time you miss a workout; every time you don’t give 100% – You make it that much easier for me to beat you.”
Think about it – your competition isn’t going to stop growing and trying to compete against you. People with the same dreams as you are just as motivated to put you out of business and continue growing theirs.
Success cannot be measured – it changes over time. Those who know how to predict these changes will win and be the most successful. If someone tells you that you are successful it should be a warning to you. This is when you need to pay attention to your business and ensure that you make the smartest business decisions.
Staying Successful
Obtaining success is difficult but staying successful is even harder. Once competitors start mimicking what you are doing, you’ll notice the competition will do whatever is necessary to put you out of business.
Just look at Google. They wouldn’t be successful if they limited themselves to search. There is a reason they’ve expanded upon their list of products to include laptops, apps, mobile, and tablets. They are constantly innovating and it’s why they are one of the most successful companies in the world.
Google understands their competition is right behind them. If they stop innovating, their competition will begin to crush them and take some of their revenue away.
The main reason why it is so hard to stay successful is because success blinds us. Becoming successful is an exciting feeling and for some reason this feeling goes straight to our head and we become complacent.
Once complacency sets in, business owners start making mistakes and forget what it truly takes to be successful. They feel unstoppable and don’t treat their business with the same effort as they need to. It’s a dangerous situation and unfortunately it is incredibly difficult to get out of.
It is vital that you stay focused and not let yourself be blinded by success. Money truly does change people. It makes them comfortable or lazy and if you let this happen to you, you will fail.
The best thing to do is forget about money and remember how you started. Remember how hard life was before you reached success. You certainly do not want to go back to where you started. Life was rough and you certainly do not want to go through everything you went through again.
If you reach success and fail, you may not be able to reach success again. Depression might set in. You might find yourself struggling to function in life. It’s a terrible feeling and it is something you should do everything to avoid.
I personally have seen this happen to many people, probably just like you. It’s a sad set of circumstances. This is why I am emphasizing how important it is to avoid making these mistakes.
Setting New Goals
Without goals, you can forget about having any chance of success. Success is about achieving small goals. Have you heard the saying you need to walk before you can crawl? This saying applies to business.
If you haven’t thought about your goals, then the time is now to start. Setting your goals now will ensure you avoid failure and you can immediately begin to make them happen.
“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” -Benjamin E. Mays
To reach your goals, you will need a plan. Having a business plan will ensure you do not just run in circles and not achieve anything. In my personal opinion, developing a business plan is the most important aspect to starting and growing a business.
Before you start anything, you need to make a plan and not rely on being lucky. Luck will not pave your way for success. You are simply lucky or you are not. Sure being lucky is great from time to time but if you are determined on being successful, you won’t need luck. You can be successful without it.
Life and business are both about gaining inches. You need to slowly inch your way to success so you can steadily get closer and closer to your goals and dreams.
“Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make a fucking difference between winning and losing, between living and dying!…I'll tell you this, in any fight it’s the guy that is willing to die who is gonna win that inch…” – Al Pacino
To gain those inches, you need to know how you are going to be successful before taking any steps.
The purpose of this chapter was to make you realize how much you need to commit to a business. If you do not commit, you simply won’t be successful. You need to seriously think about how badly you want to be successful on your own. If you aren’t willing to roll up your sleeves and work hard, you should stick to making somebody else rich.
Nobody is stopping you from success and if you don’t take action, somebody else will. Chances are there is someone with a similar idea as you who is working their tail off to be successful.
It's up to you to ensure that you are the one that achieves success and it is up to you to leave your competition in your dust.
or go back to last part:
