what they planned. Essentially, the endeavor loses its novelty. So in the beginning, you have to be firm and disciplined with a positive belief system. One shred of doubt or ounce of negativity is enough to pollute a company and destroy it from the inside, either immediately or over time.
So the immediate goal is to get on board with your idea, with your business, with your vision. Make it clear in your mind what you’re setting out to do. It helps to write this out. Your vision needs to be well-articulated and unambiguous. If you look at a lot of companies’ visions or mission statements, they are vague and cliché. A clear vision with your unique goals laid out is what is going to set you apart from the pack.
From the outset, you need to know that there is no such thing as luck. Successful people aren’t lucky. Unsuccessful people aren’t unlucky. Luck is a choice, and you can choose to be lucky by making your own luck.
However, the truth is you don’t want luck. Think about it. If you’re an amazing comedian and have just given the most amazing performance of your career, receiving cheers and fan mail and more gigs seemingly out of nowhere, some might call you lucky. If you were truly only lucky, you should be petrified to get back on that stage. Why? Being lucky means that you don’t know what you did to get a positive result, hence you wouldn’t know how to create that again. That’s why the saying “luck runs out” is so true. It’s unidentifiable and therefore unable to be replicated. That’s not a good starting point for achieving success.
There’s no such thing as a lucky businessperson. Successful entrepreneurs don’t bend the way the wind blows and expect to land on firm ground because they’re on a lucky streak. A successful businessperson calculates and carries out his or her actions. He looks at what works and what doesn’t and when he finds something that works, he replicates it. Because he knows how to replicate this seemingly good “luck,” he appears “lucky” to the naked eye. In reality, luck played no part. When you even entertain the possibility of luck, you give up your control of the situation. The outcome is no longer up to you and is not directly related to any action that you take. So how would you be able to take any logical action to create and maintain success?
Luck is not “being at the right place at the right time.” Rather, luck is “putting yourself in the right place at the right time.” Luck is setting the goals, making the plans, doing the work, and meeting up with success on your own terms. Success will not find you, but it is easy to find if you know where to look.
Only when you believe in yourself and know that there is no such thing as luck are you ready to get down to business.
But what is business and how do you start?
Key Points from Chapter 1
Adopt the right attitude
Believe in yourself and your team
Maintain a positive belief system
Get on board with your idea
Develop a clear vision
Look at what does and doesn’t work and make that your luck
Put yourself in the right place at the right time
Suggestions for Further Reading
The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Brian Tracy
The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder’s Complete and Original Lesson Plan for Achieving Your Dreams, Napolean Hill
Deciding Where You Want to Go; How to Set Achievable Goals
“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” ~ Sven Goran Eriksson
If you hope to have any success in business and in life, you must first have goals. There is no question about this. You can’t simply jump into the sky and expect to fly. You need to map out where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Without real, tangible goals, you can’t achieve success, not because it’s impossible, but because you haven’t even defined what success looks like for you.
That’s what making goals is for—to make it clear in your mind where you’re going, what you hope to accomplish, and when you hope to accomplish it by. You can’t say that you’ve gotten anywhere if you haven’t the slightest idea of where it was you were going in the first place.
Contrary to the title of this chapter, the trick is to NOT make your goals achievable. That may sound contradictive, but it’s quite prudent. Most people make the mistake of shooting too low. They think of something they want, something they think they can get, and they set off to do it. Because they’ve made their goal achievable, they’re likely to attain it with some hard work. If that’s your definition of success—to plan to do something and do it, then congratulations; but that’s like saying, “by the end of the day, I’m going to finish all of the paperwork that’s on my desk.” You may achieve it, but what have you accomplished…and is that success?
You’ve heard the expression, “Shoot for the moon for if you miss you’ll still land among the stars.” Well, if you only shoot for the stars, you might not even get off the ground.
Something that is achievable can be brought to a successful end. Something that is achievable is commendable. But I challenge you to set a goal that you can’t say you’ve done it before or that you’re even certain it can be done. I challenge you to set your sights high, and do something that you can only look at and say: It’s Possible.
You must believe in possibility, in success, even though it is uncertain. So the chance for failure escalates considerably from the goal that was just achievable. You can set out to write a thesis on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a noble goal and an achievable one. But can you write that entire paper with your left hand (assuming you are right-handed)? There’s no evidence saying that you can’t do it. There’s none saying that you can…but it’s possible.
You might fail. That’s a short sentence, but it can have a big effect on your mindset. When most people think that thought, they decide that they can’t do it. They might fail, and failing is the worst thing that can happen. On the contrary, the act of “thinking that failing is the worst thing that can happen to you” is actually the worst that can happen to you. Failure is probably the biggest gift you can receive.
“Failure is nature’s way to prepare you for greater responsibilities.” ~ Napoleon Hill
So make your goal big. Make it so big that you’re not even sure you can ever accomplish it. Then try like heck to do just that.
Achievable goals do have their place, however. Your overall goal should be a stretch. It should test your limits and force you to grow, but the smaller goals that you’ll set to reach this ultimate goal must be achievable. They should be tasks that you know you can do. Your daily goals can be as small as you need them to be as long as you do them. Small steps add up, and many small steps taken consistently are more productive than big steps now and then.
This is where your business plan comes in. You can’t have a successful business without a plan. Now that you have a long-term goal and a clear vision of where you want to be and when, you need to identify the steps you need to take to get you there. You also need to set up these steps in a logical order, creating a sort of harmony.
Think
