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 »

What a sensational event! More than 2,000 people came from all over the world-20 countries in all! What an honor it was to meet and host people from the Netherlands, Australia, England, India, Bulgaria, Norway and Germany, as well as people from all over the United States and Canada who came in just to attend the SUCCESS Symposium. After the event was over, they all said it was life-changing and worth it!

Even if you weren’t able to be there, I’ll share some of my notes from the event and give you access to some of the exclusive resources we released there.  read more »

What does it mean to be a leader?

Leaders are those who can turn a struggling, ragtag army freezing at Valley Forge into a force that topples an empire. Leaders are people who reach out to friends in pain to help them topple their fears and recapture their confi dence. A leader can take a nation engaged in civil war and help unite the factions. A leader can also help save a struggling marriage or warring family.

A leader can cast a vision and challenge a nation to achieve something seemingly impossible—even as audacious as putting a man on the moon. A leader can also cast a vision for a startup company that inspires a small group of people working in a garage to ultimately revolutionize an industry and forever change how we live.

Whether leading a nation, a multibillion-dollar corporation, a small sales team or a family, the qualities of a leader are the same. A leader instills confidence and helps people become more than they are. Leaders illuminate the path for others to journey forward, farther than they thought possible by themselves.

“Leaders illuminate the path for others to journey forward, farther than they thought possible by themselves.”

Whether we know it or not, we are all leaders. At every moment, everyone around us is watching our example. That is why it is important to make sure your example is one to reach for rather than one to be warned by. I think leadership is the great calling of life, the grand challenge for us all.

Leadership is not to hold power over others or to illuminate our own greatness; quite the opposite, in fact. I believe the most important responsibility of leadership is to read more »