'Darlin', everybody hustles. It's just a question of how, when and where.' A taleof pre-Katrina New Orleans and your business success

 Smart Tips For Your Personal And Business Success Today..........'Darlin', everybody hustles. It's just a question of how, when and where.' A tale of pre-Katrina New Orleans and your business success.

Author’s program note. I didn’t have to look for the perfect tune to accompany this article. I’ve known it for decades. “I’m still here,” from Stephen Sondheim’s incredible musical “Follies” (1971). It’s a song about grit, determination, doing what you have to do with the person you must do it with… to move up, move on, and force the big guys at the top to move over. This is the song you listen to on days when the recalcitrant world is just not going the way you want… it’s the song you listen to when you mean to stop that… and try again, because that’s what winners do and losers can’t even imagine. Go to any search engine now… go into a room all by yourself, the better to turn up the volume to the ear-shattering range…and let Sondheim’s incredible music waft you to the place of your dreams… then listen to what you have to do to get there!In the days before Hurricane Katrina, I used to frequently teach marketing communications at the University of New Orleans. My classes were held on week days downtown and on Saturday’s on Lake Pontchartrain, whose name I loved, coming as it does from a great French statesman who had the infinite good sense to be painted by Robert Le Vrac de Tournieres (1667-1752).  I loved that picture from the first moment I saw it… and I loved New Orleans, too, its people, its spirit, its often painful mad cappery and self destruction. When I came to know about “A Confederacy of Dunces”  by John Kennedy Toole (published 1980),I read it with an avidity fed by its macabre history;  (the author had to commit suicide before any publisher would condescend to review it; it then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize). From the very moment I left my hotel room (where I spent the absolute minimum amount of time) adventures were drawn to me, because they knew I was completely receptive to them.Her name was Yvette…On my very first day in New Orleans (it was a Friday), I stayed in a big, fancy hotel just off the French Quarter. I never made that mistake again; on my many future visits I always stayed in a little hotel in the Quarter, steps from the wonderful people I met who filled me with admiration for their zest for living and unadulterated joy under unremitting duress. The first person who met me (note the language) was a person who looked to me like Tinkerbell on something. He walked up to me and said, “Honey, I can tell you are new to La  Nouvelle Orleans. Let me be your guide”.  I had never, and I mean never, been spoken to like that… but I recognized in these words Fate’s distinctive messenger. I accepted, bought my guide a drink… and in due course, having gleaned without difficulty but with some incredulity that I was a writer, he said, “But  you must meet Yvette.” Of course, I must. That too was Fate…She was, as the French say, a woman of a certain age; that might have been anything from forty into eternity. I knew at once she had that unmistakable quality the Parisians call “chien”. Yes, I know that means “dog”,  and its English connotations are not good…but she had, and unmistakeably, that mixture of age, chic, dress sense, allure and  brass that forces one involuntarily to look back and be sad that vision is rushing to be with someone else. But this time, perhaps for the first time, this woman with a Past was going to influence my future… and I was ready to hear whatever she said.The conversation turned to life… it always does in the French Quarter with such people as Yvette.  With each drink (and there were many) came another piquant observation that convinced me “real” life and I had only a nodding acquaintance.Yvette knew the vicissitudes of life inside and out… and I was bright enough to pay close attention to her observations, often as diamond sharp as Madame deSevigne (1626-1696). This one completely arrested my attention:”Darlin’, everybody hustles. It’s just a question of how, when and where.”  It instantly occurred to me that this is precisely the element missing from far too many of my business students and people starting and running businesses generally. They are running businesses; they are not hustling for success as if their very lives were dependent on it… and that was the reason so many of them were barely getting by and wondering why, when they were such good and proper folk.It’s because they were missing what Yvette had to spare: hustle. In short they wanted success, but they wanted it on their terms… which just ain’t gonna happen.YOU say you want success, but (for whatever reason) you are not willing to work all the necessary hours it takes to achieve success. SUCCESS says, “you will work as many hours as it takes to capture me… not merely the hours you wish to work.”YOU say you want success, but are not willing to work evenings, week-ends, even standard holidays. SUCCESS says, “If you want me, you must be willing to sacrifice time you’d like to use for other things. Choose!”YOU say you want success, but you’ll only do jobs that make you such-and-such amount.SUCCESS says, “If you want the money, stoop to conquer. When you’ve got the money you want, then you can afford to be so picky. But that day hasn’t dawned yet.”YOU say you want success, but your spouse is doing everything but put you in a cage to make sure you can’t achieve it. SUCCESS says “Sugarbabe, there are moregood women and men in the sea than those who’ve come out. Dig my meaning?”YOU say you want success, but you’ll only look at business opportunities that cost you nothing. SUCCESS says “Lambskins, ain’t nothing’ ever come from nothin’. You’ve gotta invest to get a return on that investment.”Still more…YOU say you want success, but you are not willing to do the necessary homework and due diligence to ensure that what you do delivers the substantial rewards  you want.SUCCESS says, “Quit trying to beat the system. People who make money are constant,never-ceasing students of success. They review each and every thing to understand how it works… then follow the directions EXACTLY to achieve success. They are not trying to cut corners, because they know that doesn’t work.”YOU say you want success but once you get some, you don’t gun it to get more.SUCCESS says, “Every successful person on earth has a success system. They know that if they do X, they will get Y results. Thus, as soon as  they are successful and can prove their system delivers the desired results (or even better), they arrange their time and resources so they can replicate their successful system over and over again, each time reaping the expected (and ever increasing) benefits.”YOU say you will study successful people to see how they do and how they work because you understand that the achievement of success is inextricably linked to studying the successful and making a point of then doing what they do. SUCCESS says, “Well, are you studying the successful? I certainly haven’t seen you around anyone but your low-down worthless friends. The only time they’ll appear in the media is for robbing a convenience store! Dump ‘em.”YOU say you want success on the  Internet. Good for you; it’s where lots of people nowadays get big bucks and worldwide, too.SUCCESS says, “You’re all talk and no action  You don’t  have anyone to help you.You don’t have the necessary tools you need; you don’t have the training. And, as for your traffic, that’s a joke that you don’t know how to fix. Moreover, you have no way to profit 24 hours a day in this demanding 24-hour-a-day environment.And what of Yvette?…Let’s just say my appreciation for Yvette and what she taught me did not flag as the hours advanced. And as for her profound insight into the sustained hustling all true success seekers must engage in… why that has now gone from just Yvette to me…and now from me to you… and my next adventure
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About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com Check out Google Cash Monster ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=nt55xgzO

After 17 successful years online, I know the secret of Internet success. I’m spilling the beans right here.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Because today, August 1, 2011, is such a happy day, I wanted something suitably grand and festive to accompany this article; the kind of music that makes you want to jump up, throw up the sash on your window and, at the top of your voice, shout “Huzzah!”, because you want the rest of the too weary and downtrodden world to be as excited as you are. I’ve found that music.
It’s a royal German military march called “Hohenfriedberger marsch”, and you’ll find it in any search engine. Go get it now and let one of the most soaring of marches lift your spirits and put you in the right frame of mind to develop your own online empire into a place where such grandeur is an everyday event… and where you do so well your generosity of heart, mind and spirit match mine on this anniversary day.
Over the last 17 years online, I have talked to literally thousands of people who have begged, wheedled and pleaded with me to reveal the “secret” of Internet success. It is now my pleasure to tell you, tell all, withholding nothing.
1) Never say “How do I make money online?”. Say instead, “How can I help my customers achieve what they want?”
People who succeed online make a fetish of helping people. They know that if you give enough people what they want… you will surely and most assuredly get what you want.
This sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? A piece of cake. However, you must never underestimate the powerful pull of human ego, selfishness, and self- destructive avarice. In short, humans find it difficult to focus on others, rather than themselves. Yet it is and will always be these others who control your ability to get rich online.
I tell my marketing students “Your money is in their pockets,” the “their” being your customers. The only way to get it out is by completely changing your focus from yourself to…. them.
Cautionary note: Like everyone reading this article, you will pledge your online operations to complete customer centeredness… and for a day or two you will be an empathetic paragon. Then imperceptibly you will slide back into the inveterate selfishness that condemns so many Internet entrepreneurs to humiliating, unnecessary failure. Remember: humans are born selfish, but it is only the customer-centered who succeed. Post this message so that you never forget, for to the extent you do is the extent to which you’ll undercut and block your own success.
2) Make it easy for your customers to connect with you.
We live in an age of true communication marvels with a myriad of ways to connect, connect fast, connect now. The problem is, we don’t use them properly, rather infuriating customers by misusing these tools, or, worse, not using them at all… so that the age of instant contact becomes instead the age of thwarted contact. Are you one of the culprits?
First, review each and every means you have for people connecting with you, including email, telephone, fax, etc., etc.
Then review them as if you were the customer. Look at how you use them. When you use them. Even whether you use them.
Are you a customer enabler… or are you a customer frustrater and avoider? You’ll SAY that you are doing everything humanly possible to expedite and improve customer contact and communication. But in all likelihood you’re not. The only way you’re going to know is by acting like a customer, ascertaining just how easy (or difficult) you’ve made things. You’re likely to be amazed at the maze and obstacles you’ve erected to frustrate customer relations. As soon as you know, re-arrange things so that you don’t just THINK you are customer-centered, but actually are.
3) Make an offer… then make a better offer.
To make money, give things away. To make more money, give more things away.
The richest people online are those who give the most away. They spend their days not just creating and discovering useful new products and services. That’s necessary and essential for success… but it isn’t the key variable. That key variable is the extras, the special offer you’re going to give customers for acting NOW! In other words, the all-important offer.
Now hear this: OFFERS are what get people to buy now… thus, the better the offer, the faster the sale. It’s as simple as that. So, let’s see what you’re doing now and whether the offers you’re making will take you to the financial destiny you desire.
First, are you making any offers at all? You’d be surprised at how many entrepreneurs have a “take it or leave it” attitude about what they’re selling… punctuated with this killer proposition: “what I’m selling is so good, it sells itself.” This is one of the most foolish of propositions. Nothing, absolutely nothing, sells itself. But if you don’t have a special enticing, motivating offer with what you’re selling then you’ve cooked your own goose. Immediate re-thinking is necessary.
If you’re making some kind of offer, good for you. At least, you’ve got you r foot on the right road. Now let’s see whether you’ve got what it takes to move ahead. Review your offer in the light of what your competitors are doing, easy enough on the Web. If what you’re offering to induce immediate sale is only as good as (or less than) what your competitors are offering… then you’ve got a serious problem… and you need some serious action at once.
The offer you make, the offer that delivers the sales and the cash, must be demonstrably better than anything offered by anyone… and the customer must be able to see this at a glance….
4) Create a customer-centered blog and use it daily.
Over the last 17 years online there has been one astonishing development after another. One of the most important is the creation and development of blogging; it’s a device that every successful Internet entrepreneur understands and uses daily, the better to achieve more substantial success.
You will succeed online only to the extent you understand blogging and blog daily. Let’s start by helping you understand why it’s so important. A blog gives you the opportunity to send out advertisements daily, without risking your list as people do who email ads and nothing but ads. Your blog is anchored by useful articles and information. These client-centered articles and information protect the integrity of your list. So long as your ads are accompanied by this useful content, you can email your list regularly. Sending ads alone cannot achieve the desired objective; instead you’ll list will dwindle into insignificance.
Enjoy the game.
Successful online entrepreneurs know they’ve participating in the greatest game of our time, a game that delivers customers and customer sales 24 hours a day and can turn even the smallest home business into an unstoppable cash cow. And isn’t that just what you want?
Don’t wait another minute to get started. Put a smile on your face and set about the task before you, making liberal reference to these recommendations. It’s the way to ensue 17 years of success online, as I’ve had, with many more successful years after that.
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About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com.Check out Above The Matrix -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=qc7oyPYE

What really constitutes success? Courageous researchers turn the world upside down, as they reveal why failure should be your career path of choice.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Actung! Warning! Cuidado!
The world’s foremost authorities on what constitutes success have released their long-awaited report. It is a blockbuster, an astonishing tour de force on what really constitutes success and failure.
This astonishing report, an eon or two in the making, drawing as it does from the circumstances and life paths of people worldwide, delivers its grave conclusions with a plethora of detail previously only hinted at; so explosive are these findings for you and for people worldwide who, until this very minute, have been kept from them by a worldwide conspiracy. Thus the publication of these findings is not only an act of intellectual boldness but of actual physical courage and pluck.
Now we know, for a certainty, what truly constitutes success and what we must do at once.
1) Getting out of bed in the morning is dangerous to your health.
Among the report’s most revolutionary conclusions is that the shear act of getting out of bed is perilous to your health and very existence. For instance: 100% of the people who get up this morning, who dare to put feet into bunny-slippers, will die. Thus, the researchers delivering this now irrefutable truth, are adamant: if you wish to be healthy, indeed even keep life, you must not, cannot and always should not even get out of bed at all. You now have this on the highest authority. Bad things happen to those who get up!
2) Shocking but true. Avoid taking a shower, sprucing yourself up, dressing up, even dressing at all. All and every one of these actions is dangerous to your health. Indeed these courageous researchers go farther: they each individually and all collectively result in certain death! No wonder, they aver, conspirators have been keeping these explosive findings from us!
3) Don’t prepare an agenda or to-do list for today. In a conclusion sure to roil old-time success advocates, it is now known that 100% of people resorting to the use of preparatory notes, check- and to-do lists and business aide memoires will, day by day, be wiped out . This is now unarguable.
4) Get rid of your positive attitude. Another seismic conclusion for the people worldwide who embrace the Cult of Success: drop your positive attitude at once. The short term- effects of a positive, can-do attitude are hazardous; the long-term effects are terminal.
Your positive attitude could, indeed most likely would, place you in the closest possible proximity to other positively attituded people worldwide, thereby compounding the effects of this condition. For example, It is well-known that people in business with positive attitude will a) attract people to you b) cause these people to do business with you, thereby increasing your (always undesirable work load), and c) result in the acquisition of money which further increases your work load. One, after all, cannot merely have money; one must work to determine what to do with it. And the punishing effects of all this work add up: work to get it, work more to invest it, work still more to handle the increasing wealth begat by this demanding increasing wealth, the whole a burdensome, staggering amount of work — and all easily avoided.
Researchers are clear and adamant: for real success, JUST SAY NO! Save your life; don’t lift a finger on your own behalf, much less for anyone else, any one at all. Remember, you are in this life for yourself and yourself only; even your “nearest and dearest”, are really nothing more than cannon fodder. (But don’t let them known, lest their generosity to you stop at once and absolutely.)
5) Never, ever offer your business prospects and clients a good offer, much less a superior knock-their-socks-off offer. Why? Because they might take it… and that would never do. After all, you’d then have to do the work, not least having to cater to them and all their quaint, whimsical notions about what constitutes proper and acceptable customer service. And this will, as stated, never do, for they too are nothing more than a necessary evil.
Researchers have now shown conclusively that the correct, more eminently sensible way to a handle these pests is to promise everything while delivering nothing. The researchers pointed out that a good many businesses, even the most renowned and long-standing, already do this with (so they report) happy impunity. They are and truly in the vanguard, and their notable effects on behalf of customer (dis) service are hereby noted — and praised. These titans set the trend for us all.
6) Never return a phone call. For this too increases your already rocketing out of control work load. Here the researchers remind us: 100 per cent of working people, the more so every small and home-based business owner, reports stress. Medical researchers are clear that there is a stress-related component in virtually every human illness. Thus, work is the truest cause and reason for human ailments and demise. The strongest possible action is immediately necessary to combat these trends and fight human morbidity.
Thus, stop placing and stop answering phone calls at once.
Now hear this: EVERY time you place or return a phone call you are initiating a process that increases your already aching work load. Again the stress factor is not only apparent; it becomes determinative as the number of such calls increase. As your usage of these becomes paramount, the inherent destructive effects become uncontrollable and destructive. You no longer work the machine; the machine works you… right into stress, disability, and the certainty of an early demise where only the heirs to your earthly fortune are contented. As the researchers make clear, cease and desist and so save yourself — your progeny to perdition
7) Never say “thank you” and never, ever “give back”.
To lead the most perfect of lives, to achieve the quintessence of success, there are, so researchers emphatically point out, things you must do (e.g.”avoid all work for yourself; delegate lavishly to others”.) and — even more importantly — things you must never do. Here are two of the most important of the latter:
Never say thank you to anyone at any time for any reason. Saying thank you is not only a task, and all tasks, whether menial or significant, should be discarded as energy draining and unproductive. Moreover, to say thank you to others opens a Pandora’s box of woes… not the least of which is that a thank-you in any form becomes a standing invitation for the person being thanked to ask you for something, thereby increasing your always uncongenial work-load. Don’t go there, for there lie dragons.
Finally, never “give back”. Researchers have deduced, in one of the most breathtaking of their findings, that the successful hoard, not disperse; they hide resources, never disclosing; they are adept at asset shuffling, never asset donating. And you must be the same… for to start on the road of “giving back” will inexorably lead others to expect, implore and even insist that you do so; thereby diminishing the mountain of property you have created for yourself alone, any other use being inimical to your own best interests. By following these entirely frank, candid, insightful observations on the true realities of success, you will truly be a success, the very acme of what you can be. Such an event needs a celebration and such a celebration needs a great voice to do you homage. I have invited signature crooner Bing Crosby to serenade you. Look in any search engine for “Swinging on a Star” from the 1941 film “Going My Way”. Oh yes, by following the researchers’ recommendations, you’ll surely swing… but not on a star. For der Bingle was right, all the monkeys don’t live in the zoo…

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.  Republished with author's permission
by Howard Martell CEC
http://HomeProfitCoach.com

You are not ‘self made’. No one is. Reflections on the need to admit, to acknowledge, and, above all, to thank.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am, amongst other things, a professional speaker of many years experience. Such people are trained to read audiences; see what works… and run with it… while eschewing and abandoning any line that doesn’t arouse the audience and fails to seize their hearts and minds.
The other day I was delivering a lecture on the need, the absolute and unshakable necessity, to work as part of a team on the ‘net; to stop believing that you can succeed alone, all by yourself.
In an instant, I felt the connection with my audience strengthen; it was just as if I had grabbed the hand of my beloved and felt, in prompt but unmistakable way, the slightest pressure in return; slight perhaps but there, there! It is an unforgettable moment, highly charged with rapture, bliss, and possibilities such is the deep- seated power of connection. I now had that power at my command….
The noxious phrase: “self-made”.
It is time to take aim at one of the most inaccurate phrases in the English language, the one that allows (usually men) to preen and brag about the fact that are “self-made.”
When they say that you know you’re in for a reverie composed of the achievements, great and small, of this fellow traveler, fueled by pomposity, egotism, brash self-congratulation. One needs to be well fortified indeed to abide it… for the cascade is likely to be long, fulsome, and right from the start, excessive.
“Devotions upon Emergent Occasions”, John Donne, 1624.
John Donne was an English poet preparing, as he wrote this work, to die. With eternity in mind, he was engaged in a sober, fully engaging business; nothing was more important than to get it right. Out of this frame of mind came these words of profound insight:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The pressing task now, before the bell tolls.
One day, ready or not, the bell will toll for thee. Before that occurs you need a moment like John Donne’s, a moment of pure insight into who you are, where you are, and how you got to be that way and here.
This is a process that calls for honesty, sincerity, integrity and the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For now is the time to see your life as a process aided and facilitated every step of the way by people who gave of themselves so that you might advance.
Too often you have been forgetful of these people; yet they are the engines who have vitally assisted in your development and prosperity.
John Dunne is right. You are not the continent; you are but a part of the continent. You have surely worked hard and long for your success…. but you have not been the sole reason for your success. You are not “self-made”; you are “team made”, a part, but never the whole reason for advancement.
Now, therefore, resolve to thank, thank often, thank lavishly, the greater your prosperity, the more to thank. They have all made you who you are.
Thank your parents.
It is easy, in fact the easiest of all, to take your parents for granted. I have myself been remiss here and am relieved to acknowledge it and commence correction.
Now that I am far, far older than my parents were when I was conceived, I am clear on what they did for me… and what I owe them. They were not only young and in love when I arrived; they had undertaken on my behalf a responsibility of unparalleled magnitude and life-changing, life challenging importance. My very life and well being depended on them getting it right from the very first thing they did… as well as everything thereafter.
Such people, and the claims are even greater if you had but one parent or were raised by people other than your parents, such people I say desire and must have more than a card on Mother’s or Father’s Day. They deserve and must have more than a bouquet belatedly thought of and hastily delivered. They need to know that you remember them, what they did… they need to be reassured, whatever your age, that you remember…. and are grateful; that you will never forget them as the tolling of their bell comes ever closer…
Today is the day for your parents.
Thank your teachers, too
We are all the product of the teachers who gave of themselves, not just for a pay check either, to mold, craft, transform and enhance us… day after day. We have, too often, taken them and their generosity of action and spirit for granted… and we must not do so.
First, understand and acknowledge there was nothing in what they did for us which justifies us taking them for granted. It must be our first task to expunge that dereliction … to see what they did as a blessing, daily given, good people working on the never-ending work in progress who was you. You are the result of dozens of people and their continual attention.
First, remember them by name. You are older now… you are able to see what they did as a great responsibility, taken in seriousness, given beyond expectations… a true gift.
Remember them… and, whenever possible, contact the special teachers who went far beyond whatever could have been expected for you… for you. Send them the most memorable letter any teacher can receive: the one that thanks them, that remembers them, that renews their pride in their profession and what they did, its value and its importance. Remember the many others, too.
Remember, too, the counselors… the clergy… the coaches. They, too, gave generously… and deserve your remembrance and acknowledgement. It is too easy to forget… and overlook. But they deserve much more than that from you. Will you take the necessary action, the generous action and connect with them, yet again, and deliver the pure bliss of gratitude? Take this action with joy in your heart, for it is the right thing to do.
Start today. Rejoice at the happiness you will bring the people who have helped make you… and the contentment you will give yourself and deserve, for such sentiments come from the heart, the very best and most important thing created by all, given by you.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant’s live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Commission Crusher -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=fe2JEfUO

There is only one thing worse than not achieving a goal and that is achieving it.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Are you a goal-driven individual?
First, do you regularly set goals for yourself?
Do you then plan just how you’ll achieve them… and once having planned your work you work your plan?
If this is you, congratulate yourself. You are literally one in a million and the world is your oyster.
In theory.
People who set goals… people who achieve goals are a precious minority of any community, for-profit, or not-for- profit organization.
They are the people who live the celebrated epigram, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” When they lead, they perform the leader’s task with efficiency, organization, and, yes, joy.
When they follow, they listen to the designated leaders, making sure they know their task, then doing it.
It is a thrill and a privilege to know such people, not least because they create an environment conducive to success.
Why then have I said that there is only one thing worse than not achieving a goal… and that is achieving it?
In this article I shall make clear the problems that afflict the special people, the performance oriented people, the movers and shakers. Keeping successes coming, greater successes, important successes, more magnificent successes is never inevitable. And here’s the rub, just because you were successful today, by no means ensures you will be successful tomorrow.
Indeed, the world is awash in one-time successes who once were the center of attention, the golden boy or girl. They had what everyone else wanted… but having didn’t mean keeping. That proved to be not only elusive… but, after a time, impossible.
There is nothing sadder than listening to an individual once undeniably successful… now talk and live exclusively in that past; the success they had was fleeting and its continuing absence noticeable and glaring.
I am here to ensure that you do not become that sad individual, the person for whom the calendar always says yesterday.
1) Successful people aim for a sequence of successes, not just successful episodes and incidents.
Review the history of the prevalent “once-upon-a-time” successes and you will see that their success was limited to a particular time, place, and thing. It was isolated, unique in their experience, non-recurring. The situations of successful people are radically different.
They do not succeed one or twice and live off their decaying laurels forever; instead, they aim to have success after success after success, until the very idea of failure is unthinkable.
2) Successful people see life as a gigantic planning opportunity; an unequalled opportunity to bring home the bacon time after time after time.
The successful lead lives where what they do and how they do it is always linked to the master plan that they have worked on for their entire lives. No incident can be viewed in isolation, because every incident is a step towards larger goals and greater successes. For such people any success is nothing more than a step to ever greater success.
3) Successful people analyze what went right and what went wrong in each success they attain. Every success is not a conclusion, but a necessary learning opportunity.
By definition successful people place each and every success under a microscope giving it a full and complete scrutiny. Successful people study success; it is in fact their constant endeavor to turn each success into a learning laboratory.
4) Successful people have a succession of goals. Moreover these sequential goals are written down, regularly reviewed and updated… and always represent more challenge and responsibility. For the successful, life is a step ladder, never a sofa and easy chair.
Do you have such goals? Are they written down? Do you constantly consider just what goals achieved today mean in terms of more substantial goals and achievements tomorrow? As successful people grow and mature they become masters of such questions and answers.
More things successful people do.
5) Successful people are all about the future. They focus is on now, of course, because it is in this now they must learn the essentials of success and achieve each individual success.
But successful people always keep an eye on the future. They focus on what they want in that future, vividly aware that what they do today and how well they do guarantees the future of their desire.
6) Successful people make mistakes.
There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t make errors of commission and omission. Successful people know that reviewing today’s errors ensures tomorrow’s victories. And as it is victory they want and insist upon above all, each error is analyzed, understood, turned into part of the primer on success.
7) Successful people are not defensive.
The characteristic response of the unsuccessful to areas where they have erred and need a different, improved response is defensive. Such responses will be of the “no one told me. I’m innocent. It’s her fault, it’s her fault” variety. These responses are a clear indication that the person in question has little or no idea what successful people say in such circumstances.
“Thank you for pointing this out to me. I have made written notation of what you want.”
Bingo, with such a response you are no longer defending the indefensible, you are instead turning an error, a misunderstanding, a questionable act into a valuable learning experience. Successful people keep journals, diaries, etc.
So long as you live you can become a success story all your own. One thing you need is the most detailed and thorough notes about yourself. Remember, every single thing you do either assists success… or retards, even destroys it. That is where detailed personal journals are mandatory.
In such documents, you put yourself under a keen scrutiny which never ends and which must be both complete and honest.
The extent to which you fail to have and keep such personal information is the extent to which you are prepared to jettison intensely valuable information… and all the successes which might have hinged on their existence and use.
9) Successful people thank the people who helped them.
Successful people are people who are beneficiaries of constant assistance from parents, other family members, teachers, clergy, coaches, etc., a process that only ends with death.
Successful people feel privileged to acknowledge and recognize the hard work and sincere assistance provided by many, many others. Unsuccessful people feel diminished by such help; not enhanced by it.
The avoidable tragedy of The Void where there are no new goals to take the place of old goals achieved.
The worst thing that can happen to a person who wants true, continual success is to finish a goal… and not know what he/she should be doing next. As indicated above you must always have goals that go beyond even the most major goals you are working on now. There must never, ever be a gap… for that is an opportunity for losing track of your objectives and becoming directionless.
Now that you have read this article with its admonitions and recommendations, you will never have this problem. With clockwork regularity you will always conclude a goal, knowing just what major goal follows.
Your job is to turn the achievement of success into an unrelenting, never ending system. And now you know how to do it.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com. Check out Affilorama -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sf2aGWtY

It’s time for your bonfire of excuses. Reflections on gettingout of your own way, seizing success today

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
One way and another I have been in business for, what, over 40 years.
I have created and run businesses, right up to the present.
Taught  thousands of business students of every age.
Written 18 business books and thousands of business articles.
Had a nationally syndicated radio program on business.
But you get the point. Having now established, I trust, my bone fides, I am going to have my say about why so many people who say they want to be entrepreneurs will never, ever succeed in business.
Hint: it’s something millions of entrepreneurs do daily that keeps them firmly amongst the also-rans.
It’s the matter of excuses. The better you are at making them, the less good you are at making money and the less success overall.
Thus, today I want to propose a new and absolutely essential project for yourself…  retiring your characteristic excuses, one at a time, and then burning them in the most important fire of your life, the bonfire of excuses.
First, hear what you say and perceive how deeply ingrained excuses are in your conversation.
Language is made up of building blocks, starting from letters of the alphabet, through words, phrases, etc. By the  time we’re adults most of us have long since stopped paying attention to the building blocks of communication; we talk, we hope others listen to what we say because we’re not listening to it ourselves. Why should we? We know what we mean, right?
Your first task today is to put yourself and your daily attempts to communicate under a microscope. To root out excuses you must first know you make them. Are you aware, for instance, how often you blame lack of time to invest in your business for your failure get ahead?
This is a classic excuse, with innumerable variations.
Here excuse means to cite as a cause for failure or inaction an event, person, or thing which in point of fact has absolutely nothing to do with the matter; to excuse yourself from responsibility and provide a spurious reason for lack of progress, growth, success. In the process you deceive all and sundry; most importantly you deceive yourself.
Let’s look at one crucial area where your facility with making excuses is killing your profits and growth: ad copy. When was the last time you reviewed each and every ad you’re paying good money to run? I bet it’s been a long, long time (if at all). Instead of reviewing  your ads, keeping track of all your responses and profits, knowing how much these ads cost, and then retiring the losers, you instead say “I would have done it, but I was too busy.”
This is, of course, rubbish.
The long and short of the matter is that you
1) didn’t budget time;
2) let lesser activities take precedence, in part because you were slothful and they were easier;
3) therefore let unresponsive, unremunerative ad copy continue without a plan for reviewing, removing, re-doing.
If you are to stop and permanently eradicate from your business life the crippling excuses which are so damaging to your success, you must be willing to see yourself as the clear problem… and do what it takes to radically change your ways.
As regards the above matter of reviewing ad copy, you need to scrutinize your current daily activities (how many hours did you say you took for “breaks”?) and ruthlessly drop the activities which aren’t paying and rigorously substitute those that either save you money, make you money, or both.
“I don’t have the money.”
Think of the machines, the personnel, the training, the marketing and advertising, the research and development your business requires. It can be, and for many is, daunting.
Thus when asked why you have an outmoded computer or Internet services, etc. you offer without thinking that you “don’t have the money”. More rubbish.
The truth is you most likely have not reviewed each and every dollar you spend, to determine (with the most severe scrutiny) just where it all goes… and, taking the matter one step further, to where it ought to go.
Thus, your knee-jerk response, offered over and over again, is that you lack the funds.
“My computer is old, but I just don’t have the money…”
“My delivery van needs to be traded  in for a new one and the correct, updated advertising information painted on it, but I just don’t have the money…”
“I know I look like a homeless person, but I just don’t have the money for suitable clothes…”
Each and every one of these commonly-used excuses spurns the truth in favor of this very popular excuse. And so, daily, you hobble  your business… by your own failure to review  your situation, see things as they are, and make the necessary decisions accordingly. You don’t need an excuse… you need a psychiatrist.
Why do you do it? Whatever your reasons, excuses are anathema… the bane of business success… the root of diminished expectations and realities.
Fortunately, you can start the necessary changes…. today!
You now have a choice: to continue making excuses, passing them off as facts when they are anything but… or ruthlessly eradicating them, from this moment. Some of you, through inaction, will keep your current situation; making excuses, not money.
But if you’re determined to grasp maximum success, you’ll thank me for this necessary wake-up call and follow these steps to the letter:
1) As stated, review what you say and how you say it.
2) Don’t create excuses which attempt to pass off as facts your faulty suppositions, unproven deductions, and general inaccuracies.
3) Put the harshest light on what you do and say; determine whether it makes you money, or not, and reform accordingly.
4) Beginning today, now, keep a pad with you at all times, and as you hear yourself making an excuse, any excuse, write it on  your pad as a configuration of  words due to be expunged.
5) Try to remove at least one excuse from your speech every day. As you do so, write the inhibiting phrase on a page. Then take it out to your barbecue and burn it…. burn it completely, thoroughly, until absolutely nothing is left. This marks your transition from excuse maker to problem solver. You are already on the heady road to… MORE of what you want, rather than excuses for what you didn’t have and could never get under your old regime. Happily, you are about to be a better and a richer person. Let me be the first to congratulate you.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses.
Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a href=”http://HomeProfitCoach.com“>http://HomeProfitCoach.com</a>. Check out Ultimate Cash Blueprint ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=yx7Qooyl