UlTImATE SUccESS GUIdEa weekend. Obtaining licensing is the relatively easy part. Building a
business with few resources and no assistance is a major undertaking.
As with any business, there were plenty of lean years during which one
questions the decision to keep trying. Through hard work came a new
definition of success: Success means never having to watch your back,
because your happy customers will watch it for you. I have heard that
one can only connect the dots after one is past certain milestones in
life. While reflecting on the business I have built, I learned that anyone
might achieve such a level of success, without the help of others, by fol-
lowing ten simple axioms.
- hAve FAIth.
Ninety percent of entrepreneurs give up in the first three years in busi-
ness. That means that to succeed, a person has to believe he is the one in
ten who can and will make it. Unwavering faith in a higher power gets
many people through those agonizing first years. Set backs and failures
are a sure thing. Faith is a foundational point one can return to at any
time. Success brings great responsibility. Faith offers a point of refer-
ence, the steadfastness to do what is right, and a reminder that there will
always be a way through a difficult situation. - sUCCess Is soMethIng InsIDe eACh one oF Us.
Success is not something one achieves; it is something one has to realize
from within oneself. One has to be strong enough to dig deep inside to
find it. There are tough decisions to make to get to that level, and there
are risks and chances one has to take. Success equals setting personal
goals and working to achieve them. Success is greater than any individ-
ual is. Do not measure success by monetary achievement alone. There
is a powerful scene in the movie Wall Street in which Charlie Sheen’s
character, Bud Fox, accuses his father of being an old machinist who is
jealous of his success and his father tells him, “What you see is a guy
who never measured a man’s success by the size of his WALLET!”
Money does not equal success. Success is measured best by the rela-
tionships one builds. Some financial advisors—and other businessmen
as well—choose the predominance of their clients based solely on the
amount of money the client has to invest, thus measuring the client’s
merit on the size of his wallet. A better criterion would be to seek clients
whose beliefs align with one’s own beliefs, who one likes and wants