The new issue of SUCCESS hits newsstand today! This issue features our cover story with Michael J. Fox on What Really Matters.

No Pain, No Gain

My dad taught me to snow ski when I was 6 years old. By the time I was 8, I was skiing on my own. At the end of a full ski day, I eagerly announced, “Dad, I didn’t fall once all day!” My dad replied, “If you didn’t fall, you didn’t get any better.” What? This was the opposite response I was expecting and hoping for. The bewildered look on my face compelled him to elaborate, “If you are going to get better, you have to push yourself. If you push yourself, you are going to fall.”

My dad was a former university football coach, so we had a full Olympic standard weight set in our garage. On the wall he had painted, “No Pain, No Gain.” To build bigger muscles, you have to inflict pain on them, literally tearing down the fibers of the muscles and bringing them to the point of failure. That’s actually the goal. Then in recovery, the fibers will rebuild bigger and stronger than they were before. Building a muscle is a lot like the process of building success in life. read more »

Over the next several posts, I’d like to help clear up some of the very dangerous illusions I think our current culture has created about what it takes to be successful.

Hollywood, commercialism and our own decadence has falsified our reality and is leading us into a form of self-destruction.

What Ever Happened to HARD WORK?

I interviewed the “Hit Man” David Foster this past week (He will be on the cover and interviewed on the CD of our September issue of SUCCESS).

Not familiar with the name David Foster? There is no question you are familiar with his work. David is deemed the No. 1 music producer in the world. He’s the guy who discovered Celine Dion while singing under a tent in the rain in Quebec, Canada, and introduced her to American audiences. He also discovered and produced Josh Grobin, Michael Bublé, Andrea Bocelli and tons more. He has produced numerous records under his own label and has won 15 Grammys in his four-decade career… bottom line, this is a guy who knows how to create success—over and over again. You will love the feature story on him, incredible!

During my interview I probed David repeatedly on what his secrets to success were. He had some incredibly insightful tips and philosophies which I won’t spoil here, but the recurring theme was—the guy just outworks everyone else.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of the obvious. It’s true, there is a common reality to the superachievers I have interviewed and we have featured on the cover of SUCCESS, be it Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, Colin Powell, Donny Deutsch, Suze Orman, Richard Branson, etc—they all are hardworking.

Now there are a few caveats I need to add here:   read more »

You Lose One out of Five for Being Too Aggressive
But you get the other Four!

When I was in real estate there was this mega successful mortgage broker named Mari Mahoney. She did more business than any ten “successful” mortgage agents combined.

I asked her how she did it; what was her key to success. She rapidly responded with, “I lose one out of five for being too aggressive, but I get the other four!”

This statement, this philosophy, this testimony changed my life.

Before then I was overly concerned about being too assertive or overbearing. If someone got mad or called the broker (my dad!) to complain that I was calling too early, too late or showing up on their doorstep too often, I was horrified. After my lunch with Mari, it was my goal.

I was at my in-laws this past weekend. One of my brothers-in-law is looking for a job. I asked him how it was going and he responded, “I sent out 42 resumes, but no one has gotten back to me.” I asked him how many times he has called each one and how many drop-ins he has made to their office. I asked if he had sent any of them his favorite book, valuable article, press clipping on their organization or on their competition. The answer of course was “zero” and “no” to all these.

I offered him two pieces of advice that you too might find valuable—whether in finding a job, making a sale, finding an investor or any other person or account you need to land.

1) Shock and Awe—Narrow your list to your highest-priority targets. Then unload every bit of arsenal you have. Call, fax, email, FedEx, telegram, show-up, court the gatekeeper, bring lunch, send gifts (books, magazine articles, swag, etc.), network the contacts around them (peers, underlings, superiors, vendors, attorney, CPA’s, etc.).

Here is the magic: read more »

[Index: INTRO, Step 1, 1b, 2, 3, 3b, 4, 5, 6, 6b, 7, 8, 9, 9b, 10, 10b, 11, 12]

Learn Less. Study More.

As the chief champion of self-education and continual learning, this probably sounds like an odd statement, but here is the conundrum I think we find ourselves in. For any SUCCESS reader, and certainly anyone reading this blog, learning is not what we lack; in fact, it might be what’s bottlenecking us.

Beyond CDs, DVDs and books, we also live in an age of e-zines, blogs, RSS feeds, personalized readers, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, et al. We have a never-ending flow of ideas, tips, quotes, suggestions and advice being constantly pumped at us. Swimming in a sea of infinite information, we paddle like crazy just to keep our nose above water. It can be exhausting, right?

We read an article and then move on to the next. We listen to an audio and then seek the next. We finish a book and then start the next….

Therein lies the problem: We are 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.

As you know, knowledge is not power; it is the potential of power. What you do with knowledge is where the power lies. Never before have we had a society filled with so many knowledgeable failures. read more »

The Perfect Storm: A Trifecta of Opportunity

The new issue of SUCCESS hits newsstand today! This issue features our cover story with Richard Branson on Going for Bold. July is one of our most important issues. This is the month we focus on entrepreneurship, and it couldn’t be at a better time.

While it might look like a tough time for the national or global economy, we are actually in the middle of the perfect storm for entrepreneurship. In fact, it is my prediction that 20 to 30 years from now we will look back longingly at these times and call this the greatest window of entrepreneurial opportunity of our lifetime. It is over the next 12-18 months that the wildly successful companies of tomorrow will be born or make their bold move.

Candidly, this is no great prophecy. Did you know that 16 of the Dow 30 companies were started in a recession or depression? It’s true; these are companies like Procter & Gamble, Disney, McDonald’s, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and others—once entrepreneurial startups, now the behemoths of industry. read more »