MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

I just came back from a 3-day con­fer­ence in Los Ange­les, and because I learned a lot from the long 16hour, 7am-10pm days, I’ll have a lot to share over the next few weeks…

Brian Tracy is a per­sonal devel­op­ment coach; his talks and sem­i­nar top­ics include lead­er­ship, sales, man­age­r­ial effec­tive­ness and busi­ness strat­egy. In short, he helps peo­ple become successful.

He dropped by our con­fer­ence en route to his own pre­sen­ta­tion, and Jay Abra­ham took the oppor­tu­nity to ask him what he’s observed as traits of the most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs. Brian Tracy shared 3 of the most impor­tant things he sees suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs do, and because he’s a pretty smart guy, I’d like to share his thoughts with you because I think you might just be inter­ested in know­ing what he had to say.

The 3 Most Impor­tant Things Suc­cess­ful Entre­pre­neurs Do.

1. Learn more things

The world is always chang­ing, so you should always keep learn­ing. It’s pretty sim­ple. If you look at all the suc­cess­ful peo­ple out there, they are the peo­ple who didn’t just accept the sta­tus quo. They were never idle, and they didn’t just keep doing the same things they were already doing.

2. Try more things

Suc­cess­ful peo­ple, beyond learn­ing more things, try more things. Now, this is not rocket sci­ence so far. But, Brian Tracy says, some­times it’s not just about know­ing com­mon sense, but also doing it.

We buy many suc­cess books, and one thing I’ve noticed is that they don’t con­tain any­thing really new. They con­tin­u­ally rehash the things that have been said before. They go down to fun­da­men­tals, but there isn’t much really new.

The Suc­cess­ful Entrepreneur’s Flight Plan

Brian Tracy gave an anal­ogy I really liked. He said that the most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs have a flight plan, and in a moment, I’ll describe what it looks like. Think about an air flight.

The first thing you need to know is the des­ti­na­tion. I’d bet that most peo­ple don’t get onto a flight not know­ing where it’s head­ing, though there are always a few crazy ones. If you want to be suc­cess­ful you must begin with a des­ti­na­tion in mind –don’t take a flight to nowhere. Before you start going any­where, know where you’re going.

The sec­ond part, take off, is incred­i­bly impor­tant. This is where most entre­pre­neurs fail. In Mind­Val­ley, this isn’t really our biggest problem…in fact, we more likely have a bias towards tak­ing action. How­ever, most entre­pre­neurs never start. They get busy plan­ning, and it’s like plan­ning for a trip that they never take.

Thirdly, and this is why the anal­ogy of the air­plane is so impor­tant –every pilot will tell you that 99% of the flight, you are actu­ally off course. If you think that a plane is always on course, you are actu­ally wrong. A plane is almost never on course –it runs on autopi­lot, con­stantly adjust­ing because there are dif­fer­ent jet streams, dif­fer­ent winds, and dif­fer­ent flow of traf­fic of other air­planes –there are many things chang­ing and alter­ing the course.

There­fore, a pilot is always adjust­ing and get­ting back on course. And how do they do that? By know­ing where they want to go, and get­ting back on course. That’s what’s hap­pen­ing all the time.

You are not always going to be on track, so you must accept that as a fact.

In a way, it’s good because many of us often feel bad and chas­tise our­selves because we are off track but the good news is, every­one is off track! This means that, in order to be able to get back on track, you really must learn and try more things. I found this quite an inter­est­ing analogy.

3. Be per­sis­tent.

The top entre­pre­neurs do those first two things, and just refuse to give up. If you know where you want to go, keep learn­ing and try­ing new things and you con­stantly adjust the course, but you will get there. It might take longer, and it might be a lot harder, but you’re gonna get there.

And that’s Brian Tracy’s recipe for suc­cess. The flight plan anal­ogy was espe­cially instruc­tive because it’s a dif­fer­ent lens of look­ing at what it means to be successful.

Peo­ple give up all the time, and that’s because it is really hard. I’ve noticed that the way of suc­cess is an emo­tional roller­coaster, and many peo­ple don’t have the stom­ach for the rises and dips. When you just get started, you’re excited –but any time you start going down­hill, you doubt your­self. It hap­pens once, you pick your­self up…, and then it hap­pens again. And some­times, you dip far lower than you ever have been.

But that’s the way it hap­pens –you get thrown off course, and you get kicked in the face.

I think that’s really the way it hap­pens because it’s hap­pened to me. Before I came and started Mind­Val­ley with Vishen, I was the golden child, and any­thing I did was crazily suc­cess­ful. I got pro­moted, I got into Stan­ford, I had busi­ness school paid for, I was doing new ven­ture strat­egy at eBay …any­thing I touched turned to gold.

In a cor­po­rate envi­ron­ment, that’s pretty easy. At least, it’s a lot eas­ier than in a start-up envi­ron­ment,  because real­ity hits you a lot faster when you’re in a startup envi­ron­ment. It’s bad, but you have got to accept the fact that fail­ure is going to be part of it. A lot of peo­ple are too afraid of the con­stant getting-kicked-in-the-face part.

If you watched the movie The Secret, you real­ize that a lot of peo­ple get close but give up just before reach­ing their break­through. If you study a lot of suc­cess­ful peo­ple, when they hit rock bot­tom, although they want to give up, they per­sist and get their break­through. In a way, you need to put your ego aside and be pas­sion­ate, think about the end des­ti­na­tion and enjoy the process.

In Mind­Val­ley, we look at things dif­fer­ently and we have a dif­fer­ent atti­tude for fail­ure. Although not every­thing we do works, when we do some­thing and it turns out a dis­as­ter, we don’t put shame on it. We cel­e­brate it and say ‘thank you’ because we’ve learned how NOT to do it, and we’re going to change course.

If some­thing doesn’t work the way it’s sup­posed to, we don’t throw it out com­pletely –we improve on it and find other uses for it. When we get off course, we use it as impor­tant input to help us change direc­tion and get back on track. Once you have com­pletely adopted that mind­set, you don’t look at it as fail­ure anymore.

We look at our growth as con­stantly going upwards, and so we feel that we’ve gone side-ways and not down –which makes it a lot eas­ier. Here, we don’t con­stantly beat each other up about fail­ure but con­stantly share learn­ings that help each other get closer to our goals.

I hope you find Brian Tracy’s words as instruc­tive and moti­vat­ing as I did. If you have any ques­tions, I can’t answer them the way Brian Tracy would answer, but I will give you my two cents worth.

I’ll end with 2 quotes from Brian Tracy. Firstly, “Goals allow you to con­trol the direc­tion of change in your favor.” And, “Suc­cess­ful peo­ple are sim­ply those with suc­cess­ful habits.”

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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