How do you create the kind of success you want in your business, your career, and your life? It’s a question most of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out, yet we never seem to be satisfied with the answers we find. The answer to the question actually is very simple, but we don’t really want to hear that. Too frequently, if we’re honest, the question we actually want answered is, what’s the easy way to success? The steps to success are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And as human beings, we love to make even simple things much harder than they need to be. Let’s look at 5 steps to success and try to figure out how to keep them simple.
Step one, have an unstoppable purpose. An unstoppable purpose is about the kind of world you want to create and not about how much money or how many possessions you can accumulate. So how do you know if your purpose is unstoppable? Your purpose is unstoppable if it is a purpose focused on making a positive difference in the world, and, it’s a purpose that everything else takes a backseat to. In other words, you’re willing to give up everything else in the world to fulfill your purpose in life.
Ghandi defeated the British empire with an unstoppable purpose. He stood for non-violent attainment of dignity and self-determination for the Indian people. He would not be stopped. If you knocked him down, he got back up. If you locked him up, he would continue the protest from prison and immediately return to his protests when he was freed. He would not be stopped, period, and his purpose inspired a nation, and a world.
Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to be a Ghandi, though your purpose needs to be just as unstoppable. For example, when my wife an I owned a music instrument business, our purpose was to give people the gift of music they didn’t think they could ever have. That purpose drove us to teach thousands of people who didn’t think they could ever play a musical instrument, that they could, indeed, make music. We didn’t care if we sold instruments, we cared about showing people that you didn’t need musical talent to make music. That purpose built the company to the largest in its niche world wide.
What’s your purpose? It could be grand, like making sure no child goes hungry or making sure everyone in the world has access to safe, secure, healthy water. Or your purpose could be simpler, like making the rejuvenation properties of beauty are available to everyone in their home (an interior decorator business). Or, making sure everyone has complete, accurate information, and honest advice, about their home buying/selling decisions (my purpose when I was in the real estate business). Or, you could simply have a purpose of providing the extraordinary experience of putting a smile on the face of every customer who walks in your store, or every client you go out to meet. All of these purposes change the world in some small way. The key is, discovering a purpose that make a positive difference in the world and that propels you enthusiastically out of bed each morning. (By the way, my purpose today is to create a better world for my kids to grow up in by helping everyone I meet learn how to live into their highest purpose.)
Step two, articulate a clear vision. An unstoppable purpose is about changing the world for the better, but no matter how unstoppable your purpose, it will get stymied unless you can articulate a clear vision for how you’re going to bring that purpose to life.
Our vision for our music instrument business was to, “put our instruments in the hands of as many people as possible and teach them, in two minutes or less, how to play a song.” That was it. The rest of our decisions about the business were driven by trying to figure out the best way to get those instruments in as many hands as possible.
My niece’s purpose in life is to open everyone’s eyes to the beauty and majesty in old bones. Today she’s a paleontologist and artist. Her vision is to use her art to let people see past the old bones and experience what the creatures she draws were like in life. Her vision led her to be the head paleontologist at a museum.
Your vision doesn’t have to be grand. All it has to do is move you from the 100,000 foot view of your purpose, down to the 10,000 foot view. If you can express a general approach to how to bring your purpose to life, you’re on your way to creating a vision statement.
Step three, write a compelling plan. Okay, you’ve got a purpose that energizes you, you’ve got a vision that gives some direction to how you’re going to live into your purpose, now it’s time to write a plan. If you’ve gotten this far down the road to success, this is where you’re most likely to let complexity derail you.
Too frequently, when it comes to planning, people tend to fly by the seat of their pants, or they create plans that are so complex and cumbersome the suffocate under their own weight. A compelling plan here isn’t about writing a detailed business plan. It’s about setting out some specific goals and outlining the primary steps you’ll need to take to accomplish those goals.
One goal might be to write a business plan, and if it is, then write one. You might decide to build a team of people to support you on your journey, or you might decide you need more education before you can execute your plan. The key to setting your goals is to make them simple, understandable, and doable.
It’s nuts and bolts time. You set a goal then answer then outline the basic steps you need to attain that goal. You outline just enough goals to execute your vision, then you go about working to achieve each goal. Once you are clear on what you need to do, specifically, then it’s much easier to actually do them. Just make sure you find the balance between having a plan that is too vague to be achieved, or having one that is too complex to be achieved. The old acronym, K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid), applies here, and I absolutely mean, don’t be stupid, keep it simple.
Step four, implement your plan with energy. If you’ve identified your unstoppable purpose, have articulated a clear vision, and written a compelling plan, you should have an endless supply of natural energy for doing the daily work to implement your plan. Here’s the key, if you don’t have a boundless supply of energy when you get to this point, then go back to the beginning and look at what you’re doing. The odds are you have not discovered your purpose, or you at least have not uncovered it sufficiently to understand what you are being called to do.
If your purpose is being stopped at the implementation level, you need to keep digging until you discover that thing inside of you that won’t be denied. If you’re struggling with it, take a look at what you’re afraid of. Sometimes, when we have a purpose that won’t be denied, we immediately start finding reasons to run from it. Unfortunately, human beings are built to sometimes be more afraid of succeeding than failing. If you’ve got an unstoppable purpose, you know it because you get energized every time you take a step to live into it. If you can’t seem to find the time or energy to implement your plan, then find the time to see what’s stopping you, get clear, get committed, then implement it.
Step five, review, revise, relaunch, repeat. You’ve got a great purpose, clear vision, compelling plan and you’re making things happen. Now it’s time to look at what you’re doing with the eyes of an eagle. Is it as successful as you think if should be? If it isn’t, what needs to change. If it is, what can you do more of to leverage your success? That’s the essence of step five.
Every day or every week, look at what works, and do more of it. Look at what’s not working and either drop it, or revise it so that it will work. If it’s just scraping by, what can you do to make it sing?
Review, revise, relaunch and repeat, should be a mantra, and a way of living, every single day of your life. Just like eagles in flight constantly adjusting to the current, you need to constantly adjust to the currents around your success plan. If you’ve done the other four steps well, then consistently use the last step, you’ll be on your way to consistently achieving your goals.
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