The Secret Ingredient to My Success & How I Use It to Achieve More Success
Today I want to talk about the secret to my success as an entrepreneur.
All successful individuals have certain key characteristics in common. There are several components that contribute to a successful venture, regardless of the nature, type or size of the initiative we take.
But there is one particular ingredient that is the “secret” ingredient that makes the mix complete, and successful individuals make masterful use of this ingredient.
So what’s this secret ingredient to my success? It is no other than taking action, or speed of execution.
Sounds simple in theory, but for some reason I see most people fail because they fail to incorporate this ingredient in the mix. There are several self limiting beliefs that prevent many from progressing in their businesses, and unfortunately those lies we tell ourselves is what keeps us from achieving success.
The truth is that achieving success is not as difficult as some make it to be. As long as you take thoughtful and calculated action, something is going to come out of it. You will either see positive results, or you will learn from some valuable feedback. Successful people don’t view failure as failure, rather as a feedback mechanism that helps them improvise and get better.
Why am I telling you something you likely already know? While you may already know what it takes to succeed in theory, sometimes it helps see others implement it in their own lives to achieve success.
When I first learned about Ebay, I remember picking up a book on it and I was selling online within a couple weeks. I made some money but in the process realized that this is not what I wanted to do and quickly moved on taking with me some invaluable lessons of doing retail business online.
I leveraged my Ebay experience into starting an e-commerce website which I later sold for $250,000. I had my share of success running this business and also learned some valuable feedback that I marched forward with.
It took me 6 months from the time I learned about niche sites till establishing one. But after I established a profitable niche site, I moved on to establish several others, selling some in the process for a healthy amount in a very short time.
This is the longest I’ve taken before implementing a concept, and I admit I made a mistake. I left so much out on the table. I did the same with ebooks, and now successfully selling over 20 of them on various platforms online.
With this blog I am attempting to develop an authority website, and because of the success I have seen in just 2 years, I have started another authority site which I work on whenever I get some time.
Most recently I also started an SEO firm, purely because of the tried and tested methods I have experimented with as part of engaging in all the previous ventures. To go out on a limb, I have also started to develop some Iphone applications.
And this doesn’t even include the various offline ventures that I either started or am a part of.
Were / are all of these ventures successful? Some are while others aren’t so much. From a financial perspective, many of the things I tried didn’t work and resulted in a negative return on investment.
But what’s common is that each has taught me invaluable lessons that has improved my human capital and as a result contributed to my success today. I possess the knowledge to execute any of these ventures better today than I have in the past.
What’s also important to note is that I took action. I learned as much as I could until I was comfortable and then I implemented immediately. Don’t get stuck in the ready-aim, ready-aim rut. Take action and see where that takes you. You may succeed, or you may learn lessons that will help you with your next venture.
I wanted to share with you these initiatives so you can see that success doesn’t happen overnight. It is not a destination, rather a journey of continuous learning and improvement. I have either succeeded or learned something valuable from each initiative simply because I took action.
I was quick to implement what I learned and as a result quickly realized what works and what doesn’t. The beauty of this approach is that you can quickly shove aside what doesn’t work for you and concentrate on what does.
A by-product that I have benefited from out of this process is the establishment of multiple streams of income, some small and some larger, purely due to the speed of my execution of each of these ventures. Each feeds off the success of the other, which collectively creates a parlay effect and makes one big successful portfolio of income streams.
What I want to emphasize is that none of these in their own right is a big stand alone success worth bragging about. In other words, you don’t necessarily need to find that one great idea that will make you millions. Your millions can very well come out of a combination of several smaller successes.
In the game of baseball, singles, doubles, triples, walks and even bunts count. They collectively add up to runs that help a team win a ball game. Success is the same way. As long as you keep trying, you will hit some singles and doubles, and occasionally hit one out of the park as well.
However, don’t feel that hitting a home run is the only way to succeed. As long as you keep showing up to the plate to bat, you will make progress and eventually find success.
What is stopping you from achieving success? What is keeping you from taking action?
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26 Responses to “The Secret Ingredient to My Success & How I Use It to Achieve More Success”
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Howdy Sunil,
When do you think one is able to write that they are a success in a blog post such as this one? I’m still waiting to reach the point, but deep down, I don’t think I’ll ever write that I’m a success because there is so much to learn and do. The journey is what makes things so fun, and I’m really happy to be a part of it.
Parlaying different things into new things is definitely a good exercise!
thx,
Sam
do you think one can actually say they’ve learned everything there is to learn while on their death beds? so does that mean no one can claim success? a lifetime is not enough. success is relative, so when you’ve reached what success means to you, you can certainly express it. and if you’re happy riding the journey, then you should definitely feel and express your success more so as you cross certain milestones you have set for yourself. no point riding if the journey is no fun
I truly do believe it’s all about the journey. It’s so fun to just be in the moment.
Because nobody learns everything there is to learn, I don’t know anybody in real life who has ever publicly claimed they were a success. If you think about it, when was the last time you heard someone like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Barrack Obama, etc say they were a success?
The most successful friends in my life always downplay everything and attribute any type of fortuity to look and to the help of others.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing? It’s just my perspective.
Appreciate the comments Sam. I don’t think its cultural, rather personal. I certainly don’t walk around claiming success either in spite of hearing it numerous times from family and friends.
One of my biggest goals on this blog is to inspire and demonstrate that “success” is possible/achievable through the mediums I focus on. I believe it is appropriate to speak of significant milestones on these platforms to encourage and inspire. I seek similar inspiration from those who I follow.
Definitely mate. You have built up a very good income stream online, and the beauty of this is that the more you highlight and build, the likely more you will make.
This is the true power of the internet and staying consistent!
agreed. and to your initial point, it is all about the journey indeed so it is important to enjoy every bit of what we are doing
Hi Sunil!
Great words, diversification is the key! I’m always eager to experiment on new things because you never know what business could be a really winner.
Have a great day.
right on…feed the stallions and starve the ponies
You’re exactly right – taking action is definitely the “secret” to success. Interested to hear more about how you’re making out with the apps!
Thomas
You will be one of the first to know. I’ve had you on my list for a while now Thomas 🙂
You are in a class of your own. Your actionable advice and how to information combined with a “kick in the butt” motivation make this a “must follow” site!
you are so nice Barb. we are all in a class of our own, and we have peers in each class. it is up to us how we want to move (if we want to as many are content where they are) and accordingly we seek inspiration and advice from those who have been there and done that.
no matter where I/we/you are in our journeys, there is always someone with less experience and knowledge willing to learn. I’ve picked up several solid personal finance tidbits from you along the way. that’s the beauty of what we do.
I think it is great you share what has worked. I have been in IM for over 2 years and made a huge amount of mistakes and from taking the wrong action(over 100 autoblogs my 1st year that went boom and bust). I’ll have to take a look through your free report here. I found that even when I tried to create authority niche sites I never really got going.
I think niche/topic selection and being able to write quality for those niches is my hardest thing unless I pay for really good content. I wondered if Kindle books is a better avenue than niche sites since traffic is easier with kindle vs. dealing with google/backlinking. Do you write for all your niche sites (I mean did you write all your posts for your Bamboo site?)
we have all made our share of mistakes Brian. willing to bet I’ve made more that you so keep that chin up. I recently concluded a 25k+ word series on ebooks – I think you will like it. I do not write for ALL my niche sites, but do write for those that are about topics I am familiar with. when I do hire writers, I ensure they are very familiar with the topic. no, I did not write all the posts for my bamboo site.
why do you think your authority site(s) did not get going? what were your main hurdles/struggles?
Thanks so much! Your post is very informative and inspires me to keep going. I’m looking forward to the next.
welcome Rosalyn
I quite agree with the ‘take action’ mantra. My problem initially is that I took action then stopped taking action whilst other parts of my life took over. So my mantra should be ‘take action and don’t stop!’
James, you can always continue where you left off right? what’s stopping you?
Hi Sunil, enjoying the article and comments about the journey, and couldn’t agree more. For me, I need to tip the balance between learning and doing and I suppose that comes down to goals, priorities and just taking action.
No wonder you’ve done so well with your Ebooks. Your ebook marketing article is the best I’ve ever read and I’ve bookmarked it so I can continue to refer back to it. That’s something I aspire to with my writing – to write a post that is so valuable that people keep coming back to it.
Better get my fingers on the keyboard!
Thanks Sunil! And Congrats on your stellar success recently.
thank you Cassie. the readership has made it every bit worthwhile documenting the journey on this platform. feel free to shoot out any questions as you go through it.
Sunil, you are an inspiration and thanks for this article.
You know one thing i pointed out first here was when you said you picked a book and learnt about ebay. The word ‘FREE’ is killing entrepreneurs now and they refused to spend money to learn what they need in order to succeed both online and offline.
Sheyi
thank you Sheyi. I can understand the reluctance. there is a lot of quality information out there for free. however, what we are really paying for when we decide to do so is to navigate through the “mess” and expedite the process – get to where we want to get to faster. I am a BIG consumer of information products that help me develop personally and professionally.
Sunil. Thanks for the post. I wanted to know how to rank my website in the top of the google search. Can you pls help in writing a article to this. Thanks Suresh
there is no one single “thing”, rather a combination of actions you need to take. my suggestion is starting with the archives of this blog
I can see one of the secrets to your success (actually it’s quite similar to a quality of my husband’s), you ask a lot of questions.
That curiosity and ability to listen is extremely important in learning and being successful.
it helps me really understand the subject on hand. I observe psychologists do it so well – they can read people’s minds after a while