Successful people can be useful resources for entrepreneurs and should not be underestimated. However, you have to learn from their success carefully. Likely, there is no single secret as to why they succeed but instead a set of various factors for different types of success. One night on the news, I saw a 100-year-old man explain that smoking a big cigar every day was one of the secrets of his longevity. It might be nice to know why he has lived so long, but I’m pretty sure we won’t learn by asking him.
Key To Success – Study Successful People
One key, then, isn’t in doing what successful people say but rather in doing what they do. This is how to learn success. Naturally, you have to look closely and apply a little brainpower to see what they are really doing that is causing their success. A successful real estate investor told me he didn’t believe in setting goals. However, watching him and listening to him, I came to realize that he knew just where he expected to be with his projects in six months. This, of course, is goal-setting – he just called the process something else.
Never stop listening to what successful people have to say, but read between the lines. Listen for insight into how they think about things, and how they approach their challenges. Suppose the advice of a successful basketball player is just to practice more, but he casually mentions “I saw that going in,” after a great shot. Isn’t it time to start visualizing your shots going in?
Key To Success – Model Successful People
You won’t always know what is causing a person’s success. Internet marketers promote their websites by exchanging links, but when I first tried to exchange links with other websites, the owners didn’t respond to my emails. Then I found a simple email letter used by a successful internet marketer to get links. It sounded silly to me, and I wanted to change it, but I tried it anyhow. It worked repeatedly.
It is more important to do the right things than to understand why they are right. To also understand is great, but at first, it may be best to just copy many of the actions, attitudes, and approaches of someone who is succeeding. Try to model success, even before you understand it. As you learn more, you can drop those parts that aren’t contributing, and add elements of your own. If you model a successful parent, for example, and life with your children gets better, does it matter if you know right away which changes were the most effective? Of course not.
Is it better to understand why what you are doing is working? Certainly, but you may not ever understand why some things work, and this is okay too. Successful people don’t just tell you that they are successful – it is better to ask them how they became successful. Do what makes them successful and not what they say.
