The Success Design

It is a challenge to succeed. If it were not, I’m sure more people would be successful, but for every person who is enjoying the fruit from the tree of success, many more are examining the roots. They are trying to figure it all out. They are mystified and perplexed by what seems to be some strange, complex and elusive secret that must be found if ever success is to be enjoyed. While most people spend most of their lives struggling to earn a living, a much smaller number seem to have everything going their way. Instead of just earning a living, the smaller group is busily engaged in designing and enjoying a fortune. Everything just seems to work out for them, while the much larger group sits in awe at how life can be so unfair, complicated and unjust.

“I am a nice person,” the man says to himself. “How come this other guy is happy and prosperous and I’m always struggling?” He asks himself, “I am a good husband, a good father and a good worker. How come nothing seems to work out for me? Life just isn’t fair. I’m even smarter and willing to work harder than some of these other people who just seem to have everything going their way,” he says as he slumps into the sofa to watch another evening of television. But you see you’ve got to be more than a good person and a good worker. You’ve got to become a good planner, and a good dreamer. You’ve got to see the future finished in advance.

You’ve got to put in the long hours and put up with the setbacks and the disappointments. You’ve got to learn to enjoy the process of disciplines and of putting yourself through the paces of doing the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable. You’ve got to be prepared and willing to attack the challenges if you want the success because challenges are part of success. Now that may sound like a full menu of activities, but let me assure you that the process of going from average to fortune isn’t really all that difficult. Thinking about it is the difficult part. Anticipating all the effort and the changes and the disciplines is far worse in the mind than in reality. I can promise you that the challenges you’ll meet on the road to success are far less difficult to deal with than the struggles and the disappointments that come from being average. Confronting and overcoming challenges is an exhilarating experience. It does something to feed the soul and the mind. It makes you more than you were before. It strengthens the mental muscles and enables you to become better prepared for the next challenge.

I’ve often said that to have more, we must first become more, and to become more, we must begin the process of working harder on ourselves than we do on anything else. But in addition to gathering new knowledge, new skills and new experiences, it is also important to discover new emotions. It is how we feel about what we know that makes the biggest difference in how our lives turn out. How we feel about the chances we have and the choices we have determines the intensity of our effort. Whether we try or don’t try. Join or don’t join. Believe or don’t believe.

I’d like for you to discover some strong feelings about your life and about what you want to do with that life. You probably have much of the knowledge and a lot of the experience and perhaps most of the skills that it takes to become successful. What you may be lacking are the strong feelings about what you want and what you want to do. You may be one of those who have become so involved in the process of earning a living that you’ve forgotten about the choices and the chances you have for designing your own life.

Let these strong feelings help you take a second look at your life and where you’re headed. After all, you’ve only got one life, at least on this planet. So why not make it an adventure in achievement? Why not discover what you can do and what you can have? Why not discover how many others you can help, and in the process, how that can help you?

Why not now take the Challenge to Succeed!

No one can make you serve customers well….that’s because great service is a choice. Harvey Mackay, tells a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this point.

He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey .

He handed my friend a laminated card and said: ‘I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags in the trunk I’d like you to read my mission statement.’

Taken aback, Harvey read the card.. It said: Wally’s Mission Statement: To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment…

This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean! As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.’ My friend said jokingly, ‘No, I’d prefer a soft drink.’ Wally smiled and said, ‘No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice…’ Almost stuttering, Harvey said, ‘I’ll take a Diet Coke.’Handing him his drink, Wally said, ‘If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.’As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card, ‘These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you’d like to listen to the radio.’

And as if that weren’t enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him. Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of day. He also let him know that he’d be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or, if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.

‘Tell me, Wally,’ my amazed friend asked the driver, ‘have you always served customers like this?’

Wally smiled into the rear view mirror. ‘No, not always.. In fact, it’s only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer, on the radio one day.

He had just written a book called You’ll See It When You Believe It. Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, ‘Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd.’

‘That hit me right between the eyes,’ said Wally. ‘Dyer was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.’

‘I take it that has paid off for you,’ Harvey said.

‘It sure has,’ Wally replied. ‘My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I’ll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I don’t sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.’

Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I’ve probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two took the idea and ran with it.

Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn’t do any of what I was suggesting.

Wally the Cab Driver made a different choice. He decided to stop quacking like ducks and start soaring like eagles.How about us? Smile, and the whole world smiles with you… The ball is in our hands!A man reaps what he sows. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up… let us do good to all people.

Ducks Quack, Eagles Soar.

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Three key words to remember: weigh, count and measure. Now why weigh, count and measure? To see what your results are from your activity, your attitude and your philosophy. If you find that the results are not to your liking, there are only three places to look. Your philosophy needs to be fine-tuned, your attitude needs to be strengthened or your disciplines need extra skill. But that’s it. Activity, attitude and philosophy create results.

Now on results I teach that life expects you to make measurable progress in reasonable time. But, you must be reasonable with time. You can’t say to someone every five minutes, How are you doing now? That’s too soon to ask for a count. Guy says, “I haven’t left the building yet, give me a break!”Now you can’t wait five years—that’s too long. Too many things can go wrong waiting too long for a count to see how you’re doing.

Here are some good time frames:  

Number one: at the end of the day. You can’t let more than a day go by without looking at some things and making progress. The New Testament says, “If you are angry, try to solve it before the sun goes down.” Don’t carry anger for another day. It may be too heavy to carry. If you try to carry it for a week, it may drop you to your knees. So some things you must get done in a day.

Here’s the next one: a week. We ask for an accounting of the week so we can issue the pay. And whatever you’ve got coming, that’s what you get when the week is over. Now in business there are two things to check in the course of the week: your activity count and your productivity count. Because activity leads to productivity, we need to count both to see how we’re doing.

My mentor taught me that success is a numbers game and very early he started asking me my numbers. He asked, “How many books have you read in the last 90 days?” I said, “Zero.” He said, “Not a good number.” He said, “How many classes have you attended in the last six months to improve your skills?” And I said, “Zero.” He said, “Not a good number.” Then he said, “In the last six years that you’ve been working, how much money have you saved and invested?” I said, “Zero,” and he said, “Not a good number.” Then here’s what he said: “Mr. Rohn, if these numbers don’t change, your life won’t change. But if you’ll start improving these numbers, then perhaps you’ll start to see everything change for you.”

Success and results are a numbers game. John joins this little sales company. He’s supposed to make 10 calls the first week just to get acquainted with the territory. So on Friday we call him in and ask, “How many calls?” He says, “Well.” You say, “John, ‘well’ won’t fit in the little box here. I need a number.” Now he starts with a story. And you say, “John, the reason I made this little box so small is so a story won’t fit. All I need is a number because if you give us the number, we’re so brilliant around here we could guess the story.” It’s the numbers that count—making measurable progress in reasonable time.

Here’s the best accounting. The accounting you make of yourself.Don’t wait for the government to do it. Don’t wait for the company to do it.But you’ve got to add up some of your own numbers and ask, “Am I making the progress I want and will it take me where I want to go now and in the future?”You be the judge!

I just finished a wonderful book by John C. Maxwell, Failing Forward.  The book’s thesis is the if you’re not failing, you’re not taking enough risks and if you’re not taking enough risks, you’re not going to succeed.  The book begins with this wonderful quote by J.M. Barrie that goes “we are all failures — at least, all the best of us are.”  The book encourages its readers to view failure as a positive thing and to revise our definition of failure.  Failure is not a static placement in life; it’s a very temporary place on the ladder to success. 

I would recommend this book to all those who are striving for success!