How To Be Successful
7 Critical Success Factors
1. Be Consistent: This may be the most important factor of success. The willingness to consistently show up, ship your art, try again when you fail, write when no one reads, paint when no one appreciates, etc. Example: Seth Godin consistently writes a blog post every day of the week and post it at 6:15 am eastern time. He has done this for more than 4 years now. At first Seth says nobody read his blog but he consistently showed up, shipped his art and now he’s operates one of the most influential blogs in the world, and has written a dozen or so best sellers.
2. Be Crazy: Don’t be afraid to live on the the edge, seek fringes, be weird, or have people think you’re off your rocker. The middle is an overcrowded place where simply being good unfortunately is enough. Don’t fake it though. The idea is to be true to who you really are regardless of what the world thinks.
Average people often don’t recognize genius at first glance and defer to calling it crazy, bizarre, or weird….think Richard Wayne Penniman, AKA, Little Richard. Who despite being considered weird for being openly gay, and wearing women’s makeup invented a new sound (R&B), gave first starts to Jimi Hendrix, Ottis Reading, James Brown, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones.
3. Be Committed to a cause greater than yourself and give your talent to it with no expectation of anything in return. My friend world-renowned photographer David Sacks travels to Africa every year, shoots the most amazing photos of people living there, and donates them to non-profit Covenant Mercies. They then auction the framed art to help build schools, homes, and provide aids relief.
4. Be Connected to sneezers. The more sneezers who know what you do the more likely you’ll reach your goals.
5. Be a Connector: Don’t keep your network to yourself. Seek out opportunities to connect those in your network who are in need to those with ample supply. My friend Shelton Mercer, @SheltonMercer, runs TwittChange and that’s their whole mission. His non-profit organization raises money for victims of devastation by connecting his network of celebrity, and professional athletes with a worthy cause. Follow him on Twitter and tell him Rodney sent you.
6. Be a Change Agent: Instead of waiting for change to occur become the change you want to see in your industry, neighborhood, job, family, the world, etc. You might as well because change will happen anyway. In fact change is the new normal, and with change always comes some level of chaos. That’s why most people seek stable environments, they avoid change at all cost, they fear change.
Learn to embrace and adapt to change quicker than your competition, co-workers, etc. In fact be courageous and seek out industries, environments, projects, etc, where change is happening rapidly because where change occurs there is always a new challenge in need of a new solution.
Successful change agents…Princess Diana, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, The Dalai Lama. Believe it or not Russell Simons is moving in this direction check out his book Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All
7. Be Complicated: Steve Jobs was a barefoot walking, bathing his feet in toilets, Bob Dylan listening, yelling at people, crying (actual tears) in meetings, LSD taking, over emotional, impossible to get along with, say what ever was on his mind regardless of how much it hurt others, hippy, who loved art. He made a dent in the universe by packaging all of that complicated stuff into everything he shipped. Thanks Steve!
What other factors can you think of to help people be successful? Share them in the comment section.
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