No Excuses! - The Power of Self-Discipline Part 7

Make a Decision.

The starting point of your moving upward and onward toward becoming one of the most competent, most respected, and highest paid people in your field is simple: Make a decision!

It is said that every major change in your life comes about when your mind collides with a new idea, and you then make a decision to do something different. You make a decision to complete your education, upgrade your skills, or get into a good college. You make a decision to start a new business. You make a decision to take a particular job or start a particular career. You make a decision to invest your money in a particular way. And, especially, you make a decision to be the best in your field.

Many people say that they would like to be happy, healthy, thin, and rich. But (as discussed in Chapter 4), wis.h.i.+ng and hoping are not enough. You have to make a firm, unequivocal decision that you are going to pay any price and go any distance in order to achieve the goals you have set for yourself. You have to make that decision and then burn your mental bridges behind you. From that minute on, you resolve to continue working on yourself and your craft until you reach the top 20 percent-or beyond.

Follow the Leaders, Not the Followers.

When you decide to be one of the best people in your field, look around you and identify the people who are already at the top:* What characteristics do they have in common?

* How do they plan and organize their days?

* How do they dress?

* How do they walk, talk, and behave with other people?

* What books do they read?

* How do they spend their spare time?

* Who do they a.s.sociate with?

* What courses have they taken?

* What audio programs do they listen to in their cars?

These are just a few of the questions you should ask in order to find out what successful people are doing that you might also need to do. After all, you can't hit a target that you can't see.

Your selection of the right role models can have an enormous impact on your future. Dr. David MacLelland of Harvard and author of The Achieving Society concluded that your choice of a "reference group" can determine as much as 95 percent of your success and achievement in life. Your reference group is made of the people who you feel are "just like me." Your natural tendency is to adopt the att.i.tudes, styles of dress, opinions, and lifestyles of the people with whom you identify and a.s.sociate most of the time.

FLY WITH THE EAGLES.

Some years ago, one of my seminar partic.i.p.ants told me his story. Bob Barton said he had started off in his twenties in a large company with about thirty-two salespeople in his branch. It was his first real job, and he was starting at the bottom. Because he was new, he hung around with the other junior salespeople. As they say, "Birds of a feather flock together."

After a month or two, Bob noticed that the top salespeople in the office also a.s.sociated with each other. They did not spend time with the junior salespeople. They also spent their time differently. When Bob got into work in the morning, the top salespeople were already there, planning their days and working on the telephone and making appointments. Bob also noticed that the junior salespeople would come in later, drink coffee, read the newspaper, and make excuses for not making sales calls.

LEARN FROM THE BEST.

Bob decided he was going to pattern himself after the top salespeople in the office. He looked at the way they dressed and groomed, and he resolved to dress and groom the way they did. Each morning, he would stand in front of his mirror and ask himself, "Do I look like one of the top salespeople in my office?"

If the answer was "no," he would go back and change his clothes until he felt that he looked as good as the best people. He began to come into the office and organize his day before 8:30 A.M. so that he was ready to make calls as soon as his customers were available to see him.

One day, Bob asked one of the top salespeople if he could recommend a book or audio program that would help him. It turns out that top people are always willing to help other people improve. When he got the recommendation, Bob immediately went out and got the book and sent away for the audio program. He read the book and listened to the program and then reported back to the top salesman. The top salesman gave him some more advice on things to read and listen to, all of which Bob followed.

DO WHAT THE TOP PEOPLE DO.

Bob asked another salesperson how he planned his day, and that salesperson showed him his time management system. So Bob began to plan and organize his day the way the top salespeople did it. By using these top salespeople as his role models and emulating them whenever possible, Bob started to make more appointments, see more prospects, and make more sales. Within six months, he was one of the top salespeople in the office as well.

By that time, the top salespeople had invited him for coffee and lunch, and he became one of them, rather than one of the junior people. The next year, Bob went to the national sales conference, where he met a lot of the top people from around the country. He deliberately sought them out and asked for their advice: What books would they suggest? What audio programs would they recommend? What seminars had they attended? What strategies did they find that were the most effective in building their sales business?

FOLLOW THE ADVICE YOU GET.

Bob did something that few people ever do: When he received advice, he followed it. He immediately took action on the advice and then reported back to the people who had given it to him.

Within four years, Bob became one of the top salespeople in the country. His friends and a.s.sociates were the other top salespeople in his branch and in the other branches. His income had increased several times. He wore beautiful clothes, drove a new car, lived in a lovely home, and had a wonderful wife. And he said that it all came about as a result of asking top people for their input and then following that input and applying it to his sales activities.

But here's the kicker: Over and over, the top people, the ones who had been winning the sales awards year after year, told Bob the same thing: He was the first person who had ever come up to them and asked them for advice. No one else had ever sought them out and asked them why they were so successful.

The Answers Have All Been Found.

Here is a great discovery: All the answers have been found. All the routes to success have been discovered. Everything that you need to learn to move to the top of your field has already been learned by hundreds and even thousands of other people. And if you ask them for advice, they will give it to you. Successful people will have their phone calls held, cancel other appointments, and put their work aside to help other people be successful. But you must ask, and then you must follow their advice once they give it to you.

If you can't ask them directly, read their books and attend their talks and seminars. Listen to audio programs created by successful people. Sometimes you can send them e-mails and ask for advice. Learn from the best.

Set High Income as a Goal.

If your goal is to be in the top 20 percent of money-makers in your field, the first thing you need to do is find out what the people in the top 20 percent are earning today. This information is available. Just ask around. Check industry statistics. Go onto Google. You can find this information if you look for it.

Once you know the income target at which you are aiming, write it down as your goal. Make a plan to achieve this level of income, and work on it every day. Never stop until you reach it.

The secret to high income in business and sales is quite simple: learn and do. Like jacking up a car, you improve one notch at a time. Each time you learn and practice a new skill, you ratchet up your earning ability-and it locks in. As long as you keep increasing your earning ability, you keep ratcheting up to a higher level, from which you seldom decline.

Use the 3 Percent Formula to Invest in Yourself.

To guarantee your lifelong success, make a decision today to invest 3 percent of your income back into yourself. This seems to be the magic number for lifelong learning. According to the American Society for Training and Development, this is the percentage that the most profitable 20 percent of companies in every industry invest in the training and development of their staff. Decide today to invest 3 percent of your income into yourself in order to make yourself an appreciating a.s.set, to continually increase your earning ability.

If your annual income goal is $50,000, resolve to invest 3 percent of that amount, or $1,500, back into yourself each year to maintain and upgrade your knowledge and skills. If your income goal is $100,000, resolve to invest $3,000 per year back into yourself to ensure that you reach that level of income.

THE PAYOFF IS EXTRAORDINARY.

I was giving a seminar in Detroit a couple of years ago when a young man, about thirty years old, came up to me at the break. He told me that he had first come to my seminar and heard my "3 Percent Rule" about ten years ago. At that time, he had dropped out of college, was living at home, driving an old car, and earning about $20,000 a year as an office-to-office salesman.

He decided after the seminar that he was going to apply the 3 Percent Rule to himself, and he did so immediately. He calculated 3 percent of his income of $20,000 would be $600. He began to buy sales books and read them every day. He invested in two audio-learning programs on sales and time management. He took one sales seminar. He invested the entire $600 in himself, in learning to become better.

That year, his income went from $20,000 to $30,000, an increase of 50 percent. He said he could trace the increase with great accuracy to the things he had learned and applied from the books he had read and the audio programs he had listened to. So the following year, he invested 3 percent of $30,000, a total of $900, back into himself. That year, his income jumped from $30,000 to $50,000. He began to think, "If my income goes up at 50 percent per year by investing 3 percent back into myself, what would happen if I invested 5 percent?

KEEP RAISING THE BAR.

The next year, he invested 5 percent of his income, $2,500, into his learning program. He took more seminars, traveled cross-country to a conference, bought more audio- and video-learning programs, and even hired a part-time coach. And that year, his income doubled to $100,000.

After that, like playing Texas Hold-Em, he decided to go "all in" and raise his investment into himself to 10 percent per year. He told me that he had been doing this every since.

I asked him, "How has investing 10 percent of your income back into yourself affected your income?"

He smiled and said, "I pa.s.sed a million dollars in personal income last year. And I still invest 10 percent of my income in myself every single year."

I said, "That's a lot of money. How do you manage to spend that much money on personal development?"

He said, "It's hard! I have to start spending money on myself in January in order to invest it all by the end of the year. I have an image coach, a sales coach, and a speaking coach. I have a large library in my home with every book, audio program, and video program on sales and personal success I can find. I attend conferences, both nationally and internationally in my field. And my income keeps going up and up every year."

Three Simple Steps to Become the Best.

Becoming one of the top people in your field requires discipline and application more than anything else. There are three simple steps that you can follow to become the very best in your field:1. Read sixty minutes in your field each day. Turn off the television and the radio, put aside the newspaper, and read material about your field for one hour each day before you start working.

2. Listen to educational audio programs in your car. Start them and stop them as you listen, so you can reflect on what you have just heard and think about how you can apply the ideas to your work.

3. Attend courses and seminars in your field regularly. Seek them out. Take online courses in the convenience of your own home, courses that enable you to upgrade your skills and give you important ideas that you can use to be even more successful.

The power of compound learning, like compound interest, is quite amazing. The more you learn, the more you can learn. The more you learn, the better your brain functions, and the smarter you get. Your memory and retention rate improve. The more you learn, the more relations.h.i.+ps you find between something you learned at one time and something you learn at another time.

Never stop learning and growing.

The Achievement of Mastery.

How long does it take to achieve mastery in your field? According to the experts, the acquisition of "mastery" requires about seven years, or 10,000 hours of hard work. It takes seven years to become a master salesperson. It takes seven years to become a successful businessperson. It takes seven years to become an excellent diesel mechanic. It takes seven years to become an excellent brain surgeon. It seems to take seven years, or 10,000 hours of hard work, to get to the top of any field. So you might as well get started. The time is going to pa.s.s anyway.

The starting point of your achieving mastery is for you to commit to excellence. I have never met a person who made a decision to get into the top 20 percent in their field who did not eventually achieve it. And I never met a person who got there having not made that decision. Making the decision and then following it up with continuous, purposeful, disciplined action is essential.

Talent Is Not Enough.

As I mentioned earlier, according to Geoffrey Colvin in his bestselling book, Talent Is Overrated, most people learn how to do their job in the first year, and then they never get any better. They just coast in their jobs. But the only direction you can coast is downhill.

Many people will work away at a job for many years and never rise above the average. They will do their job from eight to five, but they never lift a finger to upgrade their skills. They will not invest any time learning their craft unless their company pays for the extra training and gives them the time off to take it.

The average person does only an average job, and as a result, he earns an average income and worries about money all his life. He never realizes that often there is only a thin veil that separates the average person from the excellent person. The fact is that "if you're not getting better, you're getting worse." No one stays in the same place for long.

Two Hours Each Day Will Get You to the Top.

It has been calculated that all you need to invest is about two extra hours per day to move from the average to the superior. Only two extra hours each day will move you from worrying about money all your life to being one of the highest paid people in your field.

People immediately ask, "Where am I going to get an extra two hours each day?"

It's simple: Take a piece of paper and do the following simple calculation:* Calculate the number of hours in a week: 7 days times 24 hours equals 168 hours.

* If you deduct forty hours for work and fifty-six hours for sleep, you have seventy-two hours left over.

* If you deduct three hours per day (twenty-one hours) for getting ready for and traveling to and from work, that leaves you fifty-one hours of spare time to do with as you please.

* If you invest two hours per day back into yourself, fourteen hours per week, you still have thirty-seven hours left over. That's an average of more than five hours per day of free time.

All you need to do is devote two hours each day to move you from average performance to superior performance at whatever you choose to do.

Form the Habit of Continuous Learning.