Father Knows Best "Success"

First, I want to thank Ali for asking me to guest blog on her site. I appreciate that she thinks others might enjoy what I write.


I want to blog today on success. I said SUCCESS. I find that far too often people don’t understand what it takes to be truly successful. Most people believe they will be successful and yet they do not understand the basics of success. Here are a few points for you to consider if you want to be successful in anything in life.

Success requires that you are different.

Success requires that you live your life completely differently than anyone you know- doing things nobody else is doing. If the average student studies 2 or 3 hours then to be successful you should study 4 or 5 hours. Success is not doing what average people. Think about that a minute- Success is living an extraordinary life. Success requires that you sleep less, play less, work harder and dream bigger because you have chosen not to be average. When I was 22 years old I chose to work 5 jobs and slept every other night. It was a crazy attempt to be successful. It didn’t work-BUT what it taught me was how hard I could push myself. I could be different than anyone else I knew. I could work harder than anyone I knew. That lesson was invaluable later in life. I decided to be different for the rest of my life.

Success requires persistence.

What is the difference between a successful person and an average person? The answer is simple: A successful person gets back up one more time after a failure and does not let it stop them. It’s really that simple. What does it take to stop you? Learn to never give up. Your friends may laugh at you. You may feel like you simply don’t have the ability, the money, the skill, the intelligence or the desire but you do. I started dozens of businesses throughout my life-most were disasters – some were mildly successful but I never gave up. I continued to start businesses my entire life even though I lost money, sleep and lots of time. I gave up so many chances to play golf, go the movies, and simply hang out with my friends. Actually, now that I think about it… I gave up ALL of those things about 99.9% of the time. Now, I can truly say it was worth it.

Successes stack up like bricks.

Above I mentioned that I started multiple businesses and that most were failures. Even though some were not successful they still had elements that were successful within them. Most made very little or no money at all each time I learned something. The business as a whole may not have been successful but maybe I would learn a successful marketing plan or a successful price point or even a successful product or service. It was these little successes within failed businesses that I was eventually able to “stack up” to build a successful sustained business.

In conclusion, I want to tell everyone YOU can be successful. There’s no doubt in my mind. Success is a choice. You can choose right now not to live an average life, that you will never give up, and that you will stack your successes up and reach for your dreams. Dreams do come true.

Jeff is Ali’s dad & owner of a construction company. A national contractor for the several divisions of the federal government.
 
Hope you guys loved my Dad's post! Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll get back with some answers.
~Believer in PRTC