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In this article, former SUCCESS publisher Darren Hardy discusses how compounded choices, behaviors and habits can create seemingly magical results:

How often have you thought, I’m just too busy or I don’t have any time or there never seems to be enough time in the day to do what I want to do? First off, you know that’s BS. Even saying it makes you sound lame. Time is the great equalizer. We all have the same amount of it. Oprah has the same 24/7/365 you do. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2013-success-achiever-of-the-year-jeff-bezos" target="_blank" title="2013 SUCCESS Achiever of the Year: Jeff Bezos | SUCCESS.com">Jeff Bezos</a>, Howard Schultz, Warren Buffett and those you see on the cover of SUCCESS have exactly the same amount of time you do. So why do they seem to have way more time than you do? It’s because they have developed the power to manufacture time, and I am going to show you how you can, too.
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Here's how&nbsp;to apply this magic to time, giving you supernatural powers to manufacture time seemingly out of thin air.

To introduce you to the strange but glorious math in compound interest, we can use the rule of 72: If you divide your rate of return or interest rate into 72, then you’ll know approximately how many years it will take to double your money.

72 ÷ interest rate = Number of years to double

For instance, if we use the average proclaimed return of the stock market of 12 percent, then it takes about six years to double whatever money you put in (72&nbsp;÷ 12 = 6). Put in a dollar, you’ll end up with almost two dollars in six years. Put in $100,000, and you’ll end up with close to $200,000 ($197,000 to be exact) in six years, seemingly by witchcraft. To make things even more magical, in 30 years your $100,000 would be $3.5&nbsp;million. How is that possible? Twelve percent return is only $12,000/year; 30 years would amount to only $360,000, plus the initial $100,000, equaling only $460,000, but instead you have $3.5 million. Well, it’s magic! Or the magic of compounded returns.

This is why Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world, as if it has some mysterious power. Here are three ways to leverage this power to manufacture time in your life.

1. Invest some time now so that you can manufacture time in the future. I’ll give you a recent example. I wanted to attain Global Entry designation so that when I travel internationally I can skip right through the customs lines, saving hours each way… and it essentially guarantees security precheck in every airport with every airline. First they require me to fill out many tedious forms with personal information. Then I’d have to show up for an appointment at an inconvenient place at an inconvenient time.

Well, I never had time for that. With my full-throttle lifestyle, it never made the priority list. This went on for two years. Then, after sitting in one too many painfully long customs lines, I finally decided to stop what I was doing and tackle the Global Entry application hassle. In total, the whole shebang cost me five hours of my life. I&nbsp;know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but to me, five hours is a serious investment of time.

But here is the big lesson. That investment of five hours saves me at least 15&nbsp;minutes per flight, and I can keep my shoes on! I take about 100 flights a year. That means the investment of those five hours is magically manufacturing 25 hours a year I didn’t have before—25&nbsp;hours! Over five years, the return on investment will be 125 hours, or 15.5 working days. I can take a two-week vacation, costing me zero productivity, zero time, all because I made the five-hour investment up front.

There are a million little places where you can invest a bit of time today, and the time it will save will compound, manufacturing time that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Think about it. What investments of time can you make this week that will compound time in the future?

Maybe it’s finally doing the paperwork to set up auto-deposit with your bank or installing and learning the mobile app so you can deposit checks electronically, saving you dozens of trips to the bank. Maybe it’s setting up your desk and filing system on a weekend so you can fly faster through the workday. Maybe it’s setting up a travel system of dedicated toiletries, clothing, bags, etc., so the prep and pack time of every trip is cut in half. Maybe it’s creating an orientation manual or training video so the time spent hiring and onboarding new employees is cut in half, and their effectiveness is increased significantly. Trust me, I know stopping your universe-denting, rainmaking, save-the-world functions to write out procedure checklists sounds like a waste of time, and in the moment it might seem so. But once done, you will ignite the compound effect, which will start manufacturing time and improving your effectiveness by leaps and bounds.

2. Another way to manufacture time is to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/a-sorority-girl-lesson-in-delegation-what-not-to-do" target="_blank" title="A Sorority Girl Lesson in Delegation: What Not to Do | SUCCESS.com">get help and delegate</a>. You’ve heard this before, but let me help you understand the math and how it manufactures new time and money you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Let’s say your goal is to earn $250,000 this year. That means your time is worth $125 an hour.

Income goal ÷ 2,000 hours =&nbsp;Your hourly rate

If you monitor what you do all day, much of it, if not all, wouldn’t be worth $125 an hour. Much of your time might be spent filing, updating your social media status, filtering and sorting unimportant emails, running errands, taking unimportant phone calls, preparing for meetings, writing memos, sorting receipts and preparing expense reports, cleaning your office, arranging travel and other such activities. You wouldn’t pay $125 an hour for someone else to do any of those activities, but that is exactly what it is costing you when you do them.

Let’s assume all those activities must be done. Here’s how to manufacture time: If you can hire someone for $40 an hour to do those activities (which is about twice the going rate for most of them), you can stick to your $125-an-hour work. For every 1.5&nbsp;hours they work, one complete hour is manufactured out of thin air for you. If they work 15 hours a week, that creates 10 hours you didn’t have before. That will total 520 hours throughout the year, or 65 days you didn’t have before.

Yes, you do have to stop or slow down to design the job function, and find, hire and train the help. That is the deposit you make into the compound effect account. But once made, that deposit compounds quickly and manufactures massive quantities of time you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

3. The last way to leverage the compound effect to manufacture time is through systems. Stopping to build the right systems can ultimately set you free. Countless business owners complain about lack of control or freedom yet in the same breath, discount the value of well-designed systems.

Even if you’re not a business owner or a CEO, you are the CEO of your life, particularly your productive life, so I’ll use the framework from the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887307280/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0887307280&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=IPEN2L7Y4GJ3GZKN">The E-Myth</a> by Michael Gerber to explain &nbsp;this.

There are three unique skill sets to run a business: the technician, the manager and the entrepreneur. The technician supplies the output, the manager supplies order and systems, and the entrepreneur supplies the vision and direction.

While we all start out as technicians, the failure of a business, as Gerber describes, comes from never advancing ourselves into <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-dos-and-donts-for-entrepreneurial-success" target="_blank" title="7 Do’s and Don’ts for Entrepreneurial Success | SUCCESS.com">the role of entrepreneur</a> by installing the appropriate manager and technicians to run the business—so the business can effectively run without the labor of the entrepreneur.

When we start out, we are 10 percent entrepreneur, 20 percent manager and 70 percent technician. If you learn how to hire employees, delegate tasks to them and create a few systems, you can get to 33, 33 and 33 percent. You might even find some level of success here, but you will be running yourself ragged, becoming stressed out and vulnerable to failure. This is how most relatively successful people operate and live. To really thrive, you have to get to a minimum time allocation of 70 percent entrepreneur, 20 percent manager and 10 percent technician. Those whom you look up to as almost God-like in their productive output—people like Buffett, Bill Gates, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/leadership-the-virgin-way" target="_blank" title="Leadership, ‘The Virgin Way’ | SUCCESS.com">Richard Branson</a> and others—have figured out how to be nearly all entrepreneur, spending zero time managing or supplying the productive output. Branson has more than 400 companies that operate 100 percent without him.

You will manufacture more time by moving up the totem pole. While you’ll probably start out in most endeavors as a technician, supplying the majority of the productive output, you’ll want to quickly graduate into the manager&nbsp;role.

You want to systemize everything. For every hour you spend building a system, it will manufacture many hours you didn’t have before—day after day, month after month and year after year.

It is estimated that you and every person in your business spends at least 40 percent of each workday performing recurring tasks. If you build systems to perform many of those tasks, you can either eliminate direct involvement or at least cut the time demand on you by half. Almost everything you do can be turned into a system. How you write and publish a blog can become a system. How you create, edit, publish and promote a video can become a system. How you prepare for meetings, set up conference calls, process emails, manage social media—almost everything can be systemized. The more you do, the more time you manufacture.

It’s magic!

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-gamify-your-productivity" target="_self" title="How to Gamify Your Productivity | SUCCESS.com">You have to work really hard to be successful. Find out how to make it fun.</a>

&nbsp;

This article&nbsp;appears&nbsp;in the August 2015 issue of&nbsp;SUCCESS magazine.

[node:summary] - How to magically manufacture more time and be way more productive

In this article, former SUCCESS publisher Darren Hardy discusses how compounded choices, behaviors and habits can create seemingly magical results: How | SUCCESS

Win the War Against the Clock

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Win the War Against the Clock | SUCCESS

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Darren Hardy is the former publisher of SUCCESS magazine, an entrepreneur and New York Times best-selling author of The Compound Effect and Living Your Best Year Ever: A Proven Formula for Achieving Big Goals.

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Darren Hardy

Let’s face it: Regardless of how much you love what you do, or how much you love improving yourself, much of your time is going to be spent grinding it out. Doing what you don’t necessarily feel like doing. Going to the gym when you don’t feel like it. Getting up really early to put in a couple of extra hours working on an important project. Not watching the movie on the plane so you can grind out a few extra hours on your laptop. Skipping Sunday football so you can do some head-down work to get a jump-start on the week. I call these little moments the big separators between success and average.What do <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/4-secrets-of-insanely-successful-people" target="_blank" title="4 Secrets of Insanely Successful People | SUCCESS.com">successful people</a> and unsuccessful people have in common? They both hate to do what it takes to be successful; successful people just do it anyway. When others are watching American Idol, they grind. When others are meeting for happy hour, they stay at the office grinding. When others are sleeping in, they get up to grind. When others get tired, they grind out a few more reps, a few more phone calls, a few more pages of writing, a few more practice sessions…. They just OUT-GRIND everyone around them.In his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316017930/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0316017930&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=4CECOCTUPXGIFPYO">Outliers</a>, Malcolm Gladwell concluded that the people at the top don’t just work harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder. They what? Yeah, they grind!The problem is, the grind is tedious, mundane, arduous and boring. And when our attention and interest wane because we’re, well, less than excited, we suffer our greatest threat to achievement—it’s called drift. You don’t fall off-course, you drift, ever so slightly, until you look up days, weeks or even years later and realize that, oh crud, you are WAY off your intended direction. And now it’s too late, you are too far behind to catch up—you have a heart attack, get a divorce or have to file for bankruptcy.This drift tendency is a natural and normal human condition. It happens to all of us, all the time. It’s the No. 1 <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/john-c-maxwell-5-reasons-why-dreams-dont-take-flight" target="_blank" title="John C. Maxwell: 5 Reasons Why Dreams Don’t Take Flight | SUCCESS.com">reason people don’t achieve their resolutions or the goals they set</a>. It’s not for lack of intention; it is also not for lack of starting. Everyone starts. Everyone makes resolutions, signs up for gym memberships, starts new prospecting routines, begins a weekly date night ritual, starts eating healthy, and then what? Yeah, they drift.Thus, to prevent it, you have to learn to master the mundane. And to master the mundane, you have to make it stimulating and fun.How? Drugs. Well, one drug, in particular. I’m going to show you how to use the greatest performance-enhancing drug ever discovered. It will give you a radical, unfair personal achievement advantage.What’s the drug? Anabolic steroids? HGH? Andro? EPO? Nah, way more powerful than all those is… dopamine.Dopamine is the ultimate pleasure and motivation drug. And good news! You don’t have to travel to the seedy part of town to get your drug from some trigger-happy drug dealer. No, your drug dealer is God. You have a pantry full of dopamine, bottled up and just waiting to be pulled off the shelves for your enhanced performance use.So how do you break into your dopamine drug closet? GAMES!Nothing captivates the human attention and engagement like a game. It activates all sorts of human faculties: competition, reward, incentive, real-time evidence of progress, recognition, etc. All these pump the mojo drug into our system. We love our dopamine. It has a totally engrossing and intoxicating effect on us. That’s why kids, and adults, can spend countless hours—losing all sense of time—playing with their Xbox, PlayStation or Wii. It’s also why we love sports, board games, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Angry Birds and the like. All these games give us big hits on the dopamine pipe.Gaming stimulates all your emotional and psychological motivations. You can use that fact to your productive advantage.This is not a new idea; organizations like Weight Watchers, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and military organizations have been using this approach to motivate people for years. But now we want to apply game mechanics to your day-to-day key performance behaviors—to help you overcome crippling procrastination, creative avoidance and sheer boredom. So here’s what you need to do.Let’s use the simple, three-step formula from my book <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-author/darren-hardy/the-compound-effect-by-darren-hardy-paperback-edition-1.html" target="_blank" title="The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy | store. SUCCESS.com">The Compound Effect</a>.One, decide what your BIG 3 goals are. Not 50, 10 or five goals, but the BIG 3 goals that if you achieved them would make this year the best year of your life to date. That’s Step 1.Step 2: Identify the one to two key behaviors that are most important to accomplishing each of your BIG 3 goals. There are only one or two behaviors that, if you did them day in and day out, day after day, would totally transform your results. This is true of your diet, fitness, leadership, sales, marriage, parenting… any area. So it’s critically important to identify those one or two key behaviors and then focus on performing them day in and day out. Oh, but there’s the trouble. These <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/dreading-your-next-to-do" target="_blank" title="Dreading Your Next To-Do? | SUCCESS.com">behaviors become laborious, tedious and boring</a>. Thus you start to drift right back into mediocrity. But not you, not now.Step 3 of what I call my “massive transformation formula” is to track your performance. This is where we apply game mechanics to break open the medicine cabinet and pour dopamine—the true performance-enhancing drug—into our system.So I’ll give you some examples. I’m not a big fan of all the phone apps and other complicated games people have created for this purpose. I like super-simple and physically visible systems.Game On!Let’s look at how well games work to track your progress. We start with:• A goal, your mission, your crusade. For Candy Land, the goal is reaching Candy Castle. In Monopoly, it is bankrupting your competitors and ending up with all the cash. In Angry Birds, it is getting rid of the pesky pigs. For your productivity, that is achieving one of your BIG 3.• Your task lies in the how of accomplishing your goal. In Candy Land, it is progressing through Candy Land and avoiding obstacles. In Monopoly, it is buying property and charging rent. In Angry Birds, it is attacking the pigs. For you, it is the key behavior you need to perform to achieve one of your BIG 3.• To track your progress, games come with a board, console, app or storyline plot to progress through. This is where you need to get inventive. How will you track progress in your epic mission to achieve your BIG goal?I have used many different devices. When it is something I need to track throughout the day and not just at the end of the day, I use devices like a stopwatch. If I am tracking the amount of time I am engaged in my No. 1 behavior, timing it to win points on my game board actually helps me succeed.Another is a big calendar that I post up on my wall. Again, I&nbsp;like very physical and visual devices. If it is in an app buried in my phone, it is easily forgotten, avoided or made secret, which doesn’t help me or leverage public accountability. Maybe I’d track the number of days I do my stretch routine, or my core exercises, or I &nbsp;get in at least one 90-minute work session. When I complete it, I&nbsp;love to put a big fat red X up in victory, where I can see it all day. Not doing it, on the other hand, will haunt me all day. And once I have a string of big, fat red X’s going, I won’t want to break the chain. You will be way more motivated to do what you need to do and way more satisfied with yourself when you do. Every time you scratch one of those big fat X’s on your “game board,” you’ll get a big toke on the dopamine pipe.Another device I have used is a pocketful of pennies. Let’s say my goal, my mission, my great crusade, is trying to improve the intimacy in my marriage. Maybe my bride feels loved when I express my appreciation for her, and doing so progresses me through the game toward the goal. To track my performance, I start the day with 10 pennies in my left pocket. The goal is to move them all to the right pocket. Every time I say or do something to express my sincere, heartfelt appreciation, I move one penny from the left pocket to the right one. Now, like any game, I have to avoid obstacles. The obstacles are if I say anything negative, sarcastic or critical. If I slip up, I have to take a penny from the right pocket and put it back in the left. At the end of the day, I will know if I’ve won or lost the daily battle in increasing the intimacy in my marriage by whether I have 10 pennies in my right pocket, or not.Here is a game I helped a single dad friend of mine create. He was complaining that he couldn’t get one of his daughters to clean her room or his son to do his assigned reading. He tried every threat and pressure tactic he could muster. Nothing worked. And his household was one of constant lecturing and aggravation. So I helped him make a game of it. We took an old Candy Land board and gave each of them three ways they could get daily points—points associated with the key behaviors… including chores that dad wanted them to perform, but couldn’t get them to do. If they did all three, they got to move one space on the board. We also created some extra-credit ways they could move two spaces, even three spaces in a day. Well, let me tell you, the attitude, motivation and performance did a dramatic 180. Now they were excited, fired-up and fully focused on doing their three things to get their points. The entire previous experience of drudgery and threat and anger and complaining turned into fun, excitement and full-throttle engagement.The last few parts of constructing your game:Create a reward if you achieve your goal, your mission. I’ve used a special bottle of wine I would not normally allow myself, all the way up to a new watch I would not normally justify spending money on. By the way, my improved performance, the achievement of my big goal, always paid for the reward by a factor of 10 or more. It just provides a little something to look forward to at the end of the epic battle… if I win.I’m often asked <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/top-of-mind-how-do-you-find-motivation-when-youre-not-feeling-it" target="_blank" title="Top of Mind: How Do You Find Motivation When You're Not Feeling It? | SUCCESS.com">how I keep myself motivated</a>. I do everything I can to keep everything I have to do to be productive as fun, stimulating and gamified as possible. Hey, life is a game, like it or not. You have two choices: You can either sit in the bleachers eating hot dogs and Cracker Jacks or take the field, stretch your skills, display your honed abilities and live out your potential. Which will you choose?This article appears in the July 2015 issue of SUCCESS magazine.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/6-tips-to-be-a-productive-procrastinator" target="_self" title="6 Tips to Be a Productive Procrastinator | SUCCESS.com">Are you a procrastinator? Here's how to "do it tomorrow" the right (aka productive) way.</a>

Let’s face it: Regardless of how much you love what you do, or how much you love improving yourself, much of your time is going to be spent grinding it

Let’s face it: Regardless of how much you love what you do, or how much you love improving yourself, much of your time is going to be spent grinding it | SUCCESS

How to Gamify Your Productivity

How to Gamify Your Productivity | SUCCESS

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EUREKA!You have an idea for a new business. You are sooo excited that you start telling your friends and family about it (mistake). You are confident this product solves a big problem in the market (mistake). You make a vision board and start drafting your business plan (mistake). You recruit some family members and an enthusiastic friend to work with you on it (mistake). You know you are ready and prepared (mistake) and willing to do whatever it takes to make this work (mistake).All the above may sound like good things, but following the textbook approach to entrepreneurial success is your biggest mistake of all.Guess what: 66 percent of businesses fail within eight years. Why are the odds so long even for people who go out of their way to do everything exactly right? That&rsquo;s what I set out on a mission to discover.The answers were startling. All the assumptions for this high failure rate (capital, location, credit, inventory management, and competition) were wrong. Overwhelmingly, failure was not due to outside factors, but to an internal one. And it wasn&rsquo;t economic&mdash;it was emotional. The <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-5-emotional-challenges-youll-face-as-an-entrepreneur" target="_blank" title="The 5 Emotional Challenges You’ll Face as an Entrepreneur | SUCCESS.com">unexpected and terrifying havoc experienced in an entrepreneur&rsquo;s life</a> is the greatest factor in why most new business owners give up or go belly-up.But it&rsquo;s not going to happen to you. Not now. Read, study and implement these preventive measures to ensure the full potential of your eureka moment.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 1</h3>Being a big thinker&hellip; and trying to &ldquo;dent the universe.&rdquo;As renowned universe-denter <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/leadership-the-virgin-way" target="_blank" title="Leadership, 'The Virgin Way' | SUCCESS.com">Sir Richard Branson</a> has said, when the first Virgin business began 40 years ago, there was no grand plan&mdash;especially not for a behemoth that would eventually employ 50,000 people around the globe. &ldquo;Had we tried to plan for such a future,&rdquo; Branson once told Entrepreneur, &ldquo;we would certainly have messed it up.&rdquo;If you begin with illusions of grandeur, you&rsquo;ll probably never get started, or as Sir Richard said, you will mess it up. You will overestimate your projected sales, you will overbuild and overspend on the perfect &ldquo;scalable systems,&rdquo; and while you are dreaming of your contribution to human progress, you will miss payroll. And then it&rsquo;s game over.Instead, start small. Start where you are. Ship what you&rsquo;ve got. Sell something today. Then improve. Focus on just getting better every day, rather than on some imagined, lofty goal.Now, I&rsquo;m not telling you to never set goals. In fact, if you don&rsquo;t give yourself some direction, you&rsquo;ll wander aimlessly into bankruptcy. But on a day-to-day, practical basis, thinking too big paralyzes you and keeps you from doing anything at all. You figure if your product or service isn&rsquo;t revolutionary yet or you&rsquo;re not changing the world, you have a convenient excuse to wait, delay and continue to aim, aim, aim rather than work, work, work.You&rsquo;ve heard it before, &ldquo;The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.&rdquo; Think about today&rsquo;s step. Then with each step you take, work on growing and getting better. In due time, you might travel so far in your constant growth that the world feels your step and is slightly dented by it. It can happen!<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 2</h3>Being excited... and expecting those around you to be excited for you.Someone once asked me, &ldquo;How successful does a person need to be?&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;Ah, I guess, as successful as you can be.&rdquo; He said, &ldquo;No, just more successful than your brother in-law.&rdquo; Meaning, your wife will be happy with you and her life as long as it&rsquo;s better than her sister&rsquo;s.Like it or not, people are constantly comparing themselves to each other. We only know how good or bad something is by contrast&mdash;it&rsquo;s good, compared to what? It&rsquo;s easy for people to read about celebrities and other superstar achievers and see their success as something out of reach. But if someone in their immediate circle, someone just like them, breaks out of the herd of mediocrity, it eliminates all excuses. And most people have become quite attached to their excuses. When you overcome similar obstacles and succeed, you&rsquo;re making them look bad and feel bad. Your success disturbs their status quo, and their ego becomes vengeful.Oh, sure, they&rsquo;ll say they&rsquo;re happy for you. They&rsquo;ll say they support you and your dreams. But secretly (maybe even unconsciously), they are hoping you will fail. They are hoping you will prove them right, that the fears that are holding them back from also becoming a successful entrepreneur are valid. They may even engage in covert tactics to sabotage your ambitions with weapons of doubt, teasing, mockery, sarcasm and innuendo to ensure they are right and their ego is once again secure.It&rsquo;s natural to feel excited about your possibilities and potential, but don&rsquo;t get carried away. Prepare yourself for the emotional turbulence ahead, including the negative voices of the people in your life.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 3</h3>Being in love with your product&hellip; and not your client.You are passionate about your product. You have spent countless hours working on it to make it excellent&mdash;the best there is. Unfortunately, the No. 1 seller in any category is probably not the best product. Look around you. What&rsquo;s the No. 1-selling restaurant in the world? How about the best-selling automobile, wine, insurance or face cream? The best-selling brand is rarely the one with the very best product. Instead, the No. 1-selling product in every category is owned by the person who is the best marketer.Like it or not, your product accounts for only 10 percent of your business&rsquo;s success, with 90 percent coming down to sales and marketing. I am hereby putting you on notice: You are not in the dry cleaning business, the insurance business, the mobile app business or whatever industry covers your awesome product. You are in the sales and marketing business, period. So you need to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-entrepreneur-roller-coaster" target="_blank" title="The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster | SUCCESS.com">become an expert at sales and marketing.</a>The first step? Fall in love with your prospective client. You must learn how to get inside the head and heart of your prospective client&mdash;to feel his desires, hopes, fears and problems. Learn how to transmit this love through your sales and marketing communication, and connect with the client heart to heart.Only when your sales and marketing are on board will your clients get on board. Then they will beat a path to your revolutionary product and fund your big dreams.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 4</h3>Being cheap&hellip; and not investing enough in people, marketing and&nbsp;learning.Adages become adages because they are true. &ldquo;It takes money to make money,&rdquo; is a perfect example. In growing your business, there are a thousand ways to spend your money, but there are three that matter most: people, marketing and personal growth (learning). Let&rsquo;s focus on people here.As <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/jack-welch-straight-from-the-gut" target="_blank" title="Jack Welch: Straight from the Gut | SUCCESS.com">Jack Welch</a>, former CEO of GE, said to me during an interview, &ldquo;No matter the innovations and changes in the marketplace, the one thing that hasn&rsquo;t changed is [that] the team who fields the best players wins.&rdquo; In today&rsquo;s dynamic and highly competitive marketplace, the main battle is for talent.You cannot pay too much for the best. In fact, A-level talent is very inexpensive: A players will always produce above the wholesale price you are paying. But B and C players are very costly in so many ways.Considering that the largest portion of your operating costs is likely to be consumed in salaries and wages, it is critical that you get team-building right. Just one bad hire can sink you and your business. The cost of hiring a poor performer is not simply what you paid them. It&rsquo;s much higher. When you consider the time and resources you&rsquo;ll spend to replace them, the value of lost opportunities, and the chemotherapy your organization must undergo to stop the cancer they usually spread, the cost of a poor-performing team member is up to 15 times their annualized salary. Invest up-front in quality people.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 5&nbsp;</h3>Being like your father... and repeating the leadership sins&nbsp;of the past.If you haven&rsquo;t looked around recently, you might have missed some fast, dramatic change! Because technology has reached several tipping points, we are living not through a state of linear progress, but in a time when change happens at an exponential pace.Futurist <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/ray-kurzweil-the-exponential-mind" target="_blank" title="Ray Kurzweil: The Exponential Mind | SUCCESS.com">Ray Kurzweil</a> describes this phenomenon in his essay &ldquo;The Law of Accelerating Returns.&rdquo; He says, &ldquo;We won&rsquo;t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century&mdash;it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today&rsquo;s rate).&rdquo; Put it this way: We&rsquo;ll be developing the skill set to captain the Starship Enterprise rather than holding the reins on a horse and buggy.The patriarchal, top-down, do-it-because-I-said-so leadership style will not work in the 21st century. For the first time in human history, we will have five generations in the workforce at once. Far more women are working. Minorities will soon be the majority. The landscape was different for your father and other authority figures from the 20th century. Leading based on what we saw, experienced and learned in that era would be wrong.In the old days, economic competence was an entrepreneur&rsquo;s most important skill. Now <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-leadership-secret-to-supercharging-your-team" target="_blank" title="The Leadership Secret to Supercharging Your Team | SUCCESS.com">emotional intelligence</a> has replaced it. Human capital has replaced financial capital; where once leaders set organizational controls, now they must foster collaboration. Once the goal of the leader was to develop followers. Now it should be to make leaders out of everyone.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 6</h3>Being amazing... and trying to do it&nbsp;all.Our culture celebrates those who check off sprawling lists of tasks every day. We exclaim how busy, stressed and overwhelmed we are as if it were some badge of honor.It&rsquo;s not. This approach will cost you everything: your personal life, your business and all of your dreams. In order to grow a business, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-what-who-and-how-of-outsourcing-so-you-can-let-go" target="_blank" title="The What, Who and How of Outsourcing... So You Can Let Go | SUCCESS.com">you have to allow it to grow beyond you</a>.Think of yourself as the head coach. Your job is to draft the game plan, recruit the players, and get them trained and equipped to perform at their best. Then watch from the sidelines. If you jump in and start throwing, catching, blocking and tackling, your business will never win the Super Bowl. Imagine Bill Belichick running to catch a pass during a game!When you try to do it all, you bottleneck your business and you become the constraint to its growth. Think of yourself as the great talent broker. You are paid to bring the right people together and help them do the work. When you have set the stage for their success, stay out of their way.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 7</h3>Being successful... and avoiding belly flops.The entire universe is built on duality. Just as you cannot have day without night, up without down or good without evil, you cannot have success without failure. It&rsquo;s not possible.As a matter of fact, the process of success is a sequence of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/5-ways-to-reframe-failure" target="_blank" title="5 Ways to Reframe Failure | SUCCESS.com">progressive failures</a>.If you are succeeding only moderately, it&rsquo;s because you aren&rsquo;t doing enough to challenge your limits. My father taught me this on the ski slopes when I was 8 years old. At the end of the day, I ran up to him, excited to report: &ldquo;Dad, I skied by myself all day and didn&rsquo;t fall down once!&rdquo; He looked at me flatly and said, &ldquo;Well, then you didn&rsquo;t get any better.&rdquo;Sensing my disappointment, he explained, &ldquo;Look, if you&rsquo;re going to get better, you have to push yourself. If you push yourself, you&rsquo;re going to fall. If you&rsquo;re not falling, you&rsquo;re not pushing. Falling is part of getting better.&rdquo;The only way to accelerate your success is to speed up your failure. Pursue failure with passion and joy. When you do fall, celebrate it. You&rsquo;ve grown.The only thing holding you back from realizing your potential and accomplishing any goal your mind can conceive is fear. If you can learn to turn fear into fun&mdash;something you pursue rather than avoid&mdash;the top to your potential will pop open and out will pour your greatness.<h3 class="Mistake--">Mistake No. 8</h3>Being smart... and not seeking the help you need.Michael Jordan didn&rsquo;t win a championship for his first seven pro seasons. And then Phil Jackson became the Chicago Bulls&rsquo; head coach, and the team&rsquo;s fortunes soon changed. Kobe Bryant spent four years trying in vain to win a title. Then Jackson went to the Lakers. The difference in both instances wasn&rsquo;t the player&mdash;it was the coach.I bet you are already good. But in order to become great, you need help, as every superstar does.Invest in your learning and growth. If there is one common trait among the superachievers I&rsquo;ve ever met or studied, it&rsquo;s that all are avid learners. They are constantly looking for the edge, seeking the insight that will allow them to improve and break through their current ceiling.As my mentor <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-miracle-of-personal-development" target="_blank" title="Rohn: The Miracle of Personal Development | SUCCESS.com">Jim Rohn</a> taught me, &ldquo;You cannot achieve beyond your current level of personal development. You don&rsquo;t achieve goals. You grow into your goals.&rdquo; Seek the books, videos, audio programs and seminars that will help you grow beyond your current level of success.There are great ideas surrounding you every day. You don&rsquo;t have to originate them. You just need to grab them and apply them to your situations. Steve Jobs didn&rsquo;t invent the mouse, the graphical user interface, the MP3 player or the smartphone. But he made them all better.For every problem you have, someone has dedicated his or her life, time and passion to becoming an expert in that area. The longer you spend trying to dream up a new solution to your problem, the less time you have to solve others and grow your business.My dad taught me, &ldquo;You can never pay too much to rent someone&rsquo;s brain and gain their experience.&rdquo; While there are no shortcuts in life, they do exist for success in business. The shortcuts are charted by those who have already been where you are going and have returned to give you the map of the safest and most expeditious route. This guidance will save you time, energy, money, pain and anguish. The ones who have gone before you can warn you where there&rsquo;s treacherous terrain and great dangers so you can avoid them entirely.Their expert and experienced direction just might save the life of your business.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/entrepreneurs-are-not-normal " target="_self" title="Entrepreneurs Are Not Normal | SUCCESS.com">You&rsquo;re a freak. But don&rsquo;t be offended&mdash;it&rsquo;s a compliment. Find out why Darren Hardy says &ldquo;crazy&rdquo; is a good thing for entrepreneurs. </a>

EUREKA!You have an idea for a new business. You are sooo excited that you start telling your friends and family about it (mistake). You are confident this

EUREKA!You have an idea for a new business. You are sooo excited that you start telling your friends and family about it (mistake). You are confident this | SUCCESS

The 8 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

The 8 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make | SUCCESS

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Every day there are a million things you could spend your time doing to keep your ride in motion and your business moving. From shipping, quality control and vendor selection to arranging financing, invoicing and paying the bills, there is an endless stream—a raging torrent, really—of things to do, contemplate and decide.Each one feels critical. Each one screams for your attention. When you look at it all, it seems daunting and overwhelming, a blur of scenery as you whiz past, your shoulder harness secured, unable to focus on any one thing.One of the scariest parts of this ride is deciding where to spend your precious time and attention. This is no false threat. Wasting too much time on things that don’t matter and neglecting the things that do will send your cart hurtling off the tracks and headed nose-first to the ground below—a short ride on an even shorter track.But how do you decide where to spend your time?<h3 class="Basic-Paragraph">The Choice</h3>Imagine for a moment that before closing up shop one afternoon, you find a golden lamp lying in the middle of your conference room table (just go with me here). After looking over your shoulder to make sure no other people are in the office (because they would certainly call you crazy), you pick up the lamp and wipe away a thin layer of dust to get a better look. (You know where this is going, right?) Immediately the lamp rumbles and out pops a genie like the one from the famous fable <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1420931938/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1420931938&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=QH6CH4NJDEYOQGKR">Aladdin and the Magic Lamp</a>.Unfortunately, this genie has his loincloth in a bunch and is not in the mood for the standard “three wishes” nonsense. Instead, he promises to grant you instant “best-in-your-industry” status in just ONE category.Which would you choose? For the record, this isn’t one of those “there are no wrong answers” kind of questions. There is a wrong answer. You run through the various options in your head.Best Product EverThe highest-quality product wins. Right? Not necessarily. With all the fancy three-star Michelin-rated restaurants run by celebrity chefs, promoted wildly on reality TV shows, what’s the No. 1 restaurant in the world? Answer: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/from-the-archives-ray-kroc" target="_blank" title="From the Archives: Ray Kroc | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">McDonald’s.</a>One of the most competitive businesses on the planet is the wine business. After all the art, science, label design, heritage, courting of tastemakers and connoisseurs, what company claims the title of No. 1 wine in the world? Answer: Franzia. (Yes, that’s the stuff that comes in a box.)I have watched thousands of entrepreneurs spend millions of hours designing, creating and perfecting their products. Unfortunately, I have also watched many of these same entrepreneurs close their doors or file for bankruptcy while their perfect products collect dust in their garages.Like it or not (and I don’t), it’s not a whoever-has-the-best-product-wins world.Top-Notch Management You’ve often thought that if you could just gather the right team, you’d have the competitive edge.Enron assembled one of the most talented corporate leadership teams in the history of business. Total bust.The movie <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007P0XBO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0007P0XBO&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=ZFHTL4JR6OR2NAE5">Ocean's Twelve</a> had one of the biggest-name casts ever, but sank at the domestic box office, grossing less than the star-less <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006FMUW/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00006FMUW&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=LGJLHYWE5PSVE7CR">My Big Fat Greek Wedding</a>.The United States’ 2004 Olympic basketball team was built with nothing but National Basketball Association stars and was dubbed the “Dream Team.” Yet team U.S.A. came in third. Ouch.Assembling a dream team is just that… a dream. It’s not the real crux of success. The right people focused on the wrong priorities can turn the dream into a nightmare. Just ask Enron.Outrageous Margins Well then, what about the highest margins? Certainly your accountant and chief financial officer would support that wish. Imagine all that profit. And isn’t that the goal of a business?But margins don’t matter if the product never sells—100 percent of zero is still what? Yep, zero.Awe-Inspiring Sales and Marketing Apple was not the first to deliver a mobile digital media player (or MP3 player) to the market. Not even close. In fact Apple was the eighth, and four years late to the party. Companies like Compaq, Archos and Creative had MP3 players with larger hard drives that could hold significantly more than 1,000 songs before <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/steve-jobs-master-of-innovation" target="_blank" title="Steve Jobs: Master of Innovation | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">the brilliant marketer Steve Jobs</a> touted (and persistently repeated), “1,000 songs in your pocket.”But who won?Apple.Why?Oh, don’t argue that the iPod was a significantly better product. The reality is that Apple won because of awe-inspiring sales and marketing.When the iPod was announced, tech tastemakers weren’t impressed. Rumors were that Apple would release a revolutionary PDA (personal digital assistant). Instead the company “just” unveiled a music player, and sales didn’t take off for a long while. The year Apple launched the iPod (2001), its revenue declined, going from 30 percent revenue growth the year previous to -33 percent. The following year, 2002, revenues were -2 percent. In 2003, +18 percent meant a partial recovery. It wasn’t until 2004, three years after the launch of the iPod, that the company returned to 33 percent growth and then dominated the digital music player market, claiming a 90 percent market share for hard drive-based players and over 70 percent of the market for all types of players.What happened to turn the tide those three years?Sales and marketing happened, that’s what!When it comes to <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/books/the-entrepreneur-roller-coaster-by-darren-hardy.html">the entrepreneur roller coaster</a>, one critical thing will keep your ride from coming to a screeching halt. Of all the distractions you encounter each day, there’s just one job that matters the most when it comes to making this the most thrilling, successful ride of your life.Like it or not, that thing determining whether your business succeeds or fails miserably is sales. It’s the one business truth that I witness every day: The ultimate success of a product or service is 10 percent the quality of the product and 90 percent the quality of the marketing.Nine times out of 10, it’s not the best product, management or margin that determines the leader in the industry. Whether it’s clothing, cars, restaurants, accounting firms, real estate agents, lawyers, furniture manufacturers, refrigerators or fishing tackle, the companies that become the biggest are the ones that market themselves the best and sell the most.I don’t necessarily like that fact, and I bet it makes you uneasy, too. I believe the quality of a product or service should be what’s most important, and it should stand entirely on the value it delivers. But that’s not reality.So put the lamp away and get back to the real world where, like it or not, sales is king. The person who knows how to acquire, keep and cultivate a customer gets paid the most. Period.<h3 class="Basic-Paragraph">Your No. 1 Job</h3>From the first glow of your computer screen in the morning to the last loose end you tie up before heading home, you need to be selling. Whether your business has one employee or 1,000, you have to sell.Even if you have a sales force selling your product for you, you’re still going to be selling “big ideas” to partners and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/maximum-leadership-looking-upward-0" target="_blank" title="John C. Maxwell: Looking Upward | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">“the vision” to your employees</a>. You’ll be selling to new recruits, persuading them to join you; banks to back you; vendors to trust you; and the manufacturers that make your product to speed up production and keep up the great work. You will be persuading people to do their best, to lower their prices. You’re going to push, pull, convince, negotiate, wheel and deal.You’re going to sell. All day. Every day. That’s business.From now on, sales is your No. 1 job, your top priority, the only thing that will give you the speed you need to survive the dives, drops and inversions along this ride.Why is it more critical than other business essentials? A few good reasons:• Everything starts with sales. Nothing matters until you sell something. Nothing. You can vision-cast, dream-board, draft fancy business plans, meet with consultants, design a nifty logo, get pretty business cards and letterhead, but there is no business until a sale happens. A sale tells you if you even have a business. A sale starts the entire process and is the first thing every new business needs.• Everything is sustained with sales. It’s the lifeblood of the business. Have problems? Sales will solve most of them. And the most common problem in surviving and sustaining your business is, guess what? Yes! Sales.• Everything ends with sales. It doesn’t matter how socially conscious or environmentally friendly your product is. It doesn’t matter how important your cause or critical your mission or how awesome your culture is. If you don’t sell enough, you’ll be out of business fast. There are no bailouts for small businesses or entrepreneurs. There are no safety nets on this ride. Your only insurance policy is to sell something.If the idea of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-make-sales-your-top-priority" target="_blank" title="How to Make Sales Your Top Priority | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">sales as your top priority</a> every day is making your stomach queasy, then you’ll need this spoonful of medicine:Suck it up and go sell.A lot.Every day.Because this ride runs on sales.Are you courageous enough to #JoinTheRide? <a href="https://rollercoasterbook.com/" target="_blank" title="RollerCoasterBook.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Register for the FASTPASS to jump to the front of the line and be the first to receive updates.</a><div id="stcpDiv" style="position: absolute; top: -1999px; left: -1988px;">Are you courageous enough to #JoinTheRide? <a href="https://rollercoasterbook.com/" target="_blank" title="RollerCoasterBook.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Register for the FASTPASS to jump to the front of the line and be the first to receive updates.</a> - See more at: https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/entrepreneurs-are-not-normal#sthash.v13av7Wo.dpuf</div>

Every day there are a million things you could spend your time doing to keep your ride in motion and your business moving. From shipping, quality control

Every day there are a million things you could spend your time doing to keep your ride in motion and your business moving. From shipping, quality control | SUCCESS

The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster

The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster | SUCCESS

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You&rsquo;re a freak.That&rsquo;s right. A freak. And so am I. Don&rsquo;t be offended&mdash;it&rsquo;s a compliment. Every single person you have seen on the cover of SUCCESS is also a freak. In fact, they&rsquo;re super freaky, and that&rsquo;s probably how they got on the cover.Let&rsquo;s define freak.freak |freek| noun: a person who is obsessed with or unusually enthusiastic about a specified interestIf that&rsquo;s not a definition for an entrepreneur, I don&rsquo;t know what is. No doubt you have to be &ldquo;unusually enthusiastic&rdquo; and pretty freaky to get on this roller coaster. Most don&rsquo;t have <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/courage-it%E2%80%99s-the-secret-to-getting-everything-you-want-in-life" target="_blank" title="Courage: It's the Secret to Getting Everything You Want in Life | SUCCESS.com/Blog" rel="noopener noreferrer">the courage</a> to even step into the car of this thrill ride. But you do, and that is exactly why they will call you a freak.Not only are you rare in your courage, but it turns out you&rsquo;re unusual for even wanting to ride in the first place&mdash;only about 10% of people are entrepreneurs. That means the other 90% are &ldquo;normal.&rdquo;Let&rsquo;s define normal.normal |nawr-muh| adjective: conforming to the standard or the common type; usualYuck! The &ldquo;usual,&rdquo; &ldquo;common type,&rdquo; or &ldquo;standard&rdquo; societal normal (that big, herd-like 90 percent) don&rsquo;t like it when a &ldquo;freak&rdquo; steps out of line. That kind of nonconformity threatens them. It challenges their choices and identity. Rather than step out themselves, it&rsquo;s safer for them to scorn your choices and attack you, in hopes of dragging you back into the herd so they can feel better about themselves.So, yes. They will call you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/freak-out-if-you-want-to-get-ahead" target="_blank" title="Freak Out! (If You Want to Get Ahead) | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">freak</a>. They will call you crazy.And that is good.&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They&rsquo;re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can&rsquo;t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.&rdquo;&mdash;Apple Inc. ad, 1997 after <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/steve-jobs-master-of-innovation" target="_blank" title="Steve Jobs: Master of Innovation | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Steve Jobs</a> returned to Apple.So hello, crazy one! Welcome to the freak show! The good news is you don&rsquo;t have to catch cannonballs, swallow swords, or breathe fire in order to join this freak show. (Unless, of course, your business actually is running a circus.)The bad news is that being a freak can be painful at first.&nbsp;Beware the CrabsI was once told about a type of crab that cannot be caught&mdash;it is agile and clever enough to get out of any crab trap. Yet these crabs are caught by the thousands every day, thanks to a particular human trait they possess.The trap itself is simple: a wire cage with a hole at the top. Bait is placed in the cage, and lowered into the water. A crab comes along, enters the cage, and begins munching on the bait. A second crab sees the first crab and joins him. Then a third. For a time, it&rsquo;s crab Thanksgiving. Eventually, though, all the bait is gone.At this point the crabs could easily climb up the side of the cage and leave through the hole. But they don&rsquo;t. They stay in the cage. And long after the bait is gone, even more crabs continue to climb inside the trap. Not one leaves.Why? Because if one crab realizes there&rsquo;s nothing keeping him in the trap and tries to leave, the other crabs will do anything they can to stop him. They will repeatedly pull him from the side of the cage. If he is persistent, the others will tear off his claws to keep him from climbing. If he persists still, they will kill him.The crabs&mdash;by the power of the herd&mdash;stay together in the cage. All the fisherman needs is a tiny bit of bait. The rest is easy. Then the cage is hauled up, and it&rsquo;s dinnertime on the pier.Like crabs, most of the human world has been conditioned by academia, corporate culture, media, and society to follow the status quo. For most people, that means becoming an employee. And that&rsquo;s exactly what 90 percent of the world becomes. When you decide to walk away from the 90 percent and step onto the entrepreneur roller coaster, you&rsquo;re like a lone crab trying to leave the trap.When you chose to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/entrepreneur-test-do-you-have-what-it-takes" target="_blank" title="Entrepreneur Test: Do You Have What It Takes? | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">become an entrepreneur</a>&mdash;to be different&mdash;and walk out on that 90 percent, something strange happens. Instead of encouraging and supporting you, your friends, family, and colleagues become crabby and start trying to drag you back down into the &ldquo;trap.&rdquo;Human crabs don&rsquo;t usually use physical force&mdash;they don&rsquo;t rip your arms off. But they don&rsquo;t need to. They have far more effective methods at hand (or in mouth, as the case may be): innuendo, doubt, ridicule, derision, mockery, sarcasm, scorn, sneering, belittlement, humiliation, jeering, taunting, teasing, and dozens more. These are the insidious tactics the human crabs around you will use to pull off your claws and kill your dreams.But why do they do it? Many of these people love you. Why would they want to hurt you (emotionally) and kill your hopes, dreams, and desire for something more?There are two key reasons:1. You make them look bad. When you step outside the status quo, you become a giant mirror that reflects the reality of their life back to them. They know they should be doing what you&rsquo;re doing, but they&rsquo;re afraid&mdash;your choices make their cowardice all the more obvious. Instead of joining you, it&rsquo;s easier to make fun of you, or try to convince you that what you&rsquo;re doing is foolish, risky, or destined to fail in the hopes that you will give up, come back to the pack, and take the mirror away.2. They simply aren&rsquo;t as courageous as you. They can&rsquo;t get over the idea of leaving the security of the corporate bosom&mdash;their weekly employee paycheck and their meager &ldquo;benefits.&rdquo; What you&rsquo;re doing just doesn&rsquo;t fit their model of the world, and they aren&rsquo;t brave enough to follow your lead. It&rsquo;s easier to mock you than follow you.I can tell you why crabs do what they do, but it&rsquo;s still easy to be caught off guard by their crabby behavior.When friends and family reject your business, it can hurt a lot more than the rejection you might experience at a job. A customer, a prospect, even a boss or colleague, can criticize, question, or say &lsquo;no&rsquo; while on the job, and it doesn&rsquo;t hurt so much. It&rsquo;s not you; it&rsquo;s just work. But when friends and family reject your business venture, it feels far more personal. It hurts. &lsquo;No&rsquo; to your work at the office is one thing. &lsquo;No&rsquo; to your passion, your vision, the business you&rsquo;ve fallen in love with feels a lot like they&rsquo;re saying &lsquo;no&rsquo; to you.What you&rsquo;ll soon realize, though, is that it&rsquo;s not about you at all. They are really saying &lsquo;no&rsquo; to themselves. They&rsquo;re rejecting their own inner voice that prods them to do more. To step out. To be brave. To take risks&hellip; like you.They aren&rsquo;t resentful of you. They&rsquo;re resentful of themselves.But it still hurts. And it can derail you if you&rsquo;re not prepared. Anyone who has a dream&mdash;one that might get them out of their day-job-crab-trap&mdash;had best beware of the fellow inhabitants of the trap. They&rsquo;re part of your roller coaster ride, and they can be very persistent in trying to drag you from the tracks.This chapter is about dealing with crabs and other dips and drops on the entrepreneur roller coaster. It&rsquo;s about accepting and loving your &ldquo;freaky&rdquo; nature. It&rsquo;s about facing disapproval, discouragement, and downright ridicule, and coming back stronger and more resilient than ever.I remember a great quote from <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/profiles-in-greatness-gandhi" target="_blank" title="Profiles in Greatness: Ghandi | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gandhi</a> that I think every entrepreneur needs to keep close at hand:&quot;First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.&quot;I like that. We win. Blessed are the freaks&hellip; for they shall inherit the earth.<a href="https://rollercoasterbook.com/" target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer">Are you courageous enough to #JoinTheRide?</a>

You&rsquo;re a freak.That&rsquo;s right. A freak. And so am I. Don&rsquo;t be offended&mdash;it&rsquo;s a compliment. Every single person you have seen on

You&rsquo;re a freak.That&rsquo;s right. A freak. And so am I. Don&rsquo;t be offended&mdash;it&rsquo;s a compliment. Every single person you have seen on | SUCCESS

Entrepreneurs Are Not Normal

Entrepreneurs Are Not Normal | SUCCESS

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SUCCESS has profiled some of today’s greatest achievers—Richard Branson, Maria Shriver,&nbsp;Arnold Palmer, Tony Hawk, John Wooden and Colin Powell, among many others. As I’ve considered what they’ve accomplished in their lifetimes, I’ve thought about why many of the rest of us work harder and put in longer hours without achieving the same big results. What makes the difference?

Here is my problem, and maybe yours: I am an addict. My drug is constant movement, constant communication, continual achievement—the long list of to-dos and completed tasks at the end of the day. It’s a wonderful high. But this behavior of constant busyness can actually take you off course from your high-value goals; tax your physical, psychological and emotional system; and even damage or destroy relationships.

I spent some time contemplating my goals, knowing I wanted to make quantum leaps in many areas of my life, not just incremental improvements. After a great deal of thought, I realized the key is not to do more or work harder; the key is actually to find ways to do less and think more, to be less busy and more productive. In this, I have struck upon the very secret to what separates the super achievers from the rest of us.

I’ve started applying this strategy in my own life and work. And, I’d like to share with you the principles I have found to move from stress-filled “success” to super achievement and obtain a more balanced lifestyle filled with joy, harmony and personal fulfillment.

<h2>Learn to Stop Doing</h2>

We all have our to-do lists that seem to keep growing even as you check off some tasks. Your workdays get longer, your time with family dwindles, and you find that even though you are in constant motion, you’re really standing still.

Reevaluate how you spend your time and stop doing the time-wasters. The only way you can gain more time is to stop doing something. If you don’t like what your life has become or you want to take your life and productivity to the next level, you need to figure out what you can stop doing so that you can concentrate on what you should be doing to get better results in your life.

We’ve all heard about the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule that 20 percent of your activity produces 80 percent of your income. Simply put, this means you should spend 80 percent of your time on the 20 percent of your activities responsible for driving your income. Figure out what your 80 percent activities are, and stop doing those so you can focus more time on the 20 percent activities that make the real difference in your results and income.

Imagine this: If you just spent 40 percent on your high-value activities, you could double your income. Spend 60 percent or even 80 percent, and you could multiply your income by four times.

<h2>Create and Protect Your Boundaries</h2>

For a workaholic, these are dangerous times. The natural boundaries of time allocated to work, personal and family have been obliterated. Technology has penetrated the walled garden separating these important segments of our lives. This breach provides for constant intrusions on our attention, keeping us constantly connected and at the mercy of a stream of information and demands.

Put a junk filter on your life. To filter incoming requests, it is important to first become clear on what you want.

Determine your values. Who are you? Who do you want to become? What is most important to you in life? What direction do you want your life to take?

Focus on your goals. What are your three most important goals for the year? This month? This week? Today?

Identify what and who is important. Decide what areas of your life you want to develop and expand, and then leave room for it.

After identifying your values, goals and priorities, put a junk filter on everything else and keep it out of your inbox and off your to-do list.

Just say NO. There is no middle ground here. This is one of the most important disciplines you can develop to unhook yourself from your addictions. If you aren’t comfortable with saying “no,” say “no, thank you.” People most often over commit because they try to please everyone.

Remember that whenever you say “yes,” you’re also saying “no” to something else in regard to your objectives and goals. You don’t make time; you only trade it. Be a better trader.

You get in life what you tolerate. This is one of the greatest success philosophies I’ve ever heard. Put another way, you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of. If you tolerate disrespect, you will be disrespected. If you tolerate being underpaid and overworked, that will continue for you. If you tolerate being overweight, tired and perpetually sick, you will be. Life will organize around the standards you set for yourself. Some think they are the victim of other people’s behavior, but in actuality, we have ultimate control over how people treat us.

<h2>Study More</h2>

Knowledge is not power; it is the potential of power. What you do with knowledge is where the power lies.

Here is the conundrum: For any SUCCESS reader, learning is not what we&nbsp;lack; in fact, it might be what’s bottlenecking us.

We might be reading a lot, seemingly learning a lot, but never really stopping long enough to digest, contemplate, act, review and improve on anything we have just learned.

Learning is not the problem; lack of real study and implementation is. Don’t just read a book and put it down. Read it, summarize the key ideas and then write out how you are going to implement those ideas into your life. Now act, review and improve.Stick with the ideas in that book until you realize some transformation in its implementation.

<h2>Stay Consistent</h2>

I used to get frustrated when starting a new venture and then seeing the competition leap out in front and get off to a fast and successful start. Then I found the single discipline that gave me the advantage to beat anybody at almost anything—consistency.

A lot of people get gung-ho about new goals or achievements and charge out of the gate in an explosion of activity that eventually flares out. If you make a commitment to consistency, you’ll not only catch your competitors, but you’ll usually leave them in the dust every time. I do what I have found most people cannot—stay consistent.

Lack of consistency is the subtle but great stealer of dreams and desires. The stop-and-start process is what kills progress in any pursuit. It is probably one of the greatest reasons people don’t ultimately achieve their goals and end up living lives of discontent, frustration and disappointment.

<h2>The Management of Time</h2>

There is one force in our life that makes everyone equal. How you handle and treat this force is the single most important contributor to the income you will have and the lifestyle you will lead. This is why Jim Rohn called it the single “best-kept secret of the rich.” The secret? The management of time. Time is life’s most precious commodity, and how it is managed separates the rich from the poor.

When I interviewed Dr. Mehmet Oz for the October 2008 SUCCESS DualDisc, I asked for his secret to managing time. He performs 250 open-heart surgeries a year and is a professor; a chairman of surgery; a medical program director; a prolific writer; a regular on TV and radio,including Oprah; and he’s now launching his own TV show. Oh, and he is also a devoted husband and father of four. What he said was one of the best distinctions about time management I have ever heard: “It’s not about time management. It’s about energy management. The things you do in your life should give you that zest for life.”

Look for ways to get a better “Return on Energy” (ROE). If you are doing a good job at efficiently and effectively using your time, but you’re doing things that drain your life force and zap your joy, what good are you doing? You will immediately know if you should be spending your time on something if you ask yourself whether it gives you energy or takes it away. Spend more time on what gives you energy, and guard against, eliminate, delegate or mitigate your time on those things that deplete your energy.

<h2>The Art of Delegation</h2>

One of the greatest success disciplines of superachievers is delegation. Learn to ask for help. Learn to trust and empower others to accomplish what needs to be done.

I love watching movies on kings, presidents, generals and industrialists. You will observe something very interesting: You don’t ever see them in front of a computer, filing, cleaning, balancing their checkbook or doing much of anything, but thinking, making decisions and directing. That is the highest and best use of their genius.

When you can spend most of your day using your mind and empowering others to execute your ideas, you will become wealthy and powerful beyond your imagination.

<h2>Value Time Off</h2>

How does America regain its supremacy in the productive world? How do you improve your personal productivity? Go on vacation.

Americans failed to take 438 million vacation days in 2007, according to Harris Interactive research group. That’s more than any other industrialized nation. The result is that America ranks No. 1 in depression and mental health problems.

Americans are experiencing burnout, reduced productivity, diminished creativity, failed relationships, and stress or stress-related ailments, such as depression, heart disease and stomach ulcers, in record levels.

Our puritanical conditioning—being valued on how “hard” we work—as well as our fear of being replaced or left behind, and our addiction to always being “busy” are not only destroying our mental and physical health, but destroying our creative productivity.

This is especially true in our new global economy, where our advantage and future lie in being knowledge workers, not laborers. Your future lies between your ears—in your mind and your ability to think creatively, innovatively and productively.

When you are working 80 hours a week, your mind gets cluttered and stale. Like a pressure cooker, if you don’t give your mind some time to clear some steam out, it will boil over, causing ailments and loss of effectiveness and real productivity. I am not suggesting you need to take a vacation to better “enjoy life,” “find your bliss” or have “life balance”; I am telling you time off is an important component of hard-core achievement and productivity.

I hope you will take the time to stop and examine your own life and incorporate these principles into your daily routine on your journey to super achievement. These steps, if applied, will help you transform your productivity, performance and lifestyle. Remember: It’s not what you know; it’s what you do. The actions you take with regard to information you learn is where the power of change and transformation resides.

SUCCESS has profiled some of today’s greatest achievers—Richard Branson, Maria Shriver,&nbsp;Arnold Palmer, Tony Hawk, John Wooden and Colin Powell, among

SUCCESS has profiled some of today’s greatest achievers—Richard Branson, Maria Shriver,&nbsp;Arnold Palmer, Tony Hawk, John Wooden and Colin Powell, among | SUCCESS

Accomplish More by Doing Less

Accomplish More by Doing Less | SUCCESS

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