OPPORTUNITIES ARE FUELED BY PASSION

Passion is the fuel for uncovering opportunities. Without passion for what you do it is very difficult to see the opportunities that are right before your eyes. Passion energizes your thinking. It opens up your eyes to opportunities. It helps you focus on looking for the solutions to the obstacles that are in your way. You can’t teach passion. It is an intangible that is a prerequisite for success in whatever you do. Finding your passion opens up the door to opportunities. Think of passion as your opportunity-seeking missile. If you don’t have passion for what you do you will never see the opportunities. 

PROCESSING LUCK INTO YOUR LIFE

#1        Good Habits vs Bad Habits

In my role as a CPA and Certified Financial Planner, I help my clients manage their taxes and their wealth and, thus, I am privy to the inner workings of the world of the wealthy. In my other role as a financial self-help author I have, through years of research, gained a very unique understanding of how mere mortals create immense wealth. As a consequence of my two roles I am often asked by those struggling financially how the wealthy make their money. I codified these wealth creation activities into what I call, "Rich Habits". 

One of the most profound things that came out of the research for my book was the realization that wealthy people create their own luck by doing specific things, which I call "living the rich habits". By doing these specific things, by living the rich habits, they process luck into their lives. Most wealthy individuals, I found, were not even aware that they were the manufacturers of their own luck. They just thought they were "lucky". Case in point, the late J. Paul Getty, oil tycoon, when asked what he attributed to his immense wealth, he stated: "some people find oil, others don't." Even Getty thought his wealth was a matter of random luck. For this very reasoning, the concept of creating wealth has been shrouded in mystery. Thus the phrase "the secret to financial success". But thanks to the discoveries I made in my research, the secret to financial success is no longer a secret. The fact is, creating wealth is nothing more than processing success into your lives by living the rich habits and watching opportunity luck manifest itself out of thin air. Wealthy people, whether they know it or not, are, every day, manufacturing opportunity luck by the way they live their lives; by their daily habits. Think of opportunity luck as a tree. When you live your life a certain way, when you live the rich habits, you are planting opportunity luck seeds. As you nurture your tree, as you live the rich habits, your opportunity luck tree grows. In time, your opportunity luck tree will bear fruit. Think of this fruit as a manifestation of luck. This fruit may be a raise, a promotion, a bonus, a financial windfall, a long, healthy life, good relationships etc.

The key to financial and personal success rests in your daily habits. If you want to be financially successful you need to change your daily habits. You need to eliminate bad habits and replace them with good habits, or what I call rich habits. Living rich habits every day will create the opportunity luck that the wealthy enjoy.

#2        Daily Career-Related Self-Improvement

In my five-year study of the daily success habits of wealthy individuals one important discovery I made was that wealthy individuals are fanatics when it comes to daily career-related, self-improvement. The reason? They are in constant pursuit of opportunities to help their customers or clients through value added services or products. I uncovered four ways that wealthy individuals engage in opportunity-seeking, self-improvement: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Doing. Each one gets you higher up the ladder of financial success.

Reading - Many of us get those monthly industry periodicals. Typically, we set them aside and tell ourselves that we will get to that reading very soon. We may even pull out the periodicals, after a week or two, and browse through them, pulling out articles we are intent on reading. We set these articles aside and, again, tell ourselves we will get to that reading very soon. After a few months we throw these periodicals/articles out, rationalizing that they are outdated and of no use. Their time value has rendered them outdated. Wealthy individuals have a different tact. They set aside time every day for reading. They read every one of their periodicals. The reason? Wealthy individuals understand the value of timely information. They are in pursuit of opportunities to make more money. Often these opportunities are contained within the written words inside their industry periodicals. Wealthy individuals will typically set aside thirty-forty-five minutes of every day for career-related reading. They do this day in and day out. Wealthy individuals understand that reading helps them remain current with industry technical information and industry trends that might lead to opportunities. To wealthy individuals, reading gets them one wrung higher on the ladder of financial success.

Writing - Writing is a form of communication. Because we are writing on a topic, we must gain a better understanding of that topic than simple reading will provide. Writing often requires additional research and a more complex understanding of the topic that is the subject of the writing. Wealthy individuals engage in writing in a number of ways which include: company newsletters, industry newsletters, newspaper articles, industry publication articles, Internet articles and customer/client letters. Writing is another wrung on the ladder of success, getting you higher up that ladder.

Speaking - Speaking, like writing, is a form of communication. Speaking requires a greater understanding of a subject matter than writing. There is a simple reason for this. In a speaking engagement you may be asked a question. We all have egos. When we are "the expert" on a topic for which we have been asked to speak, our egos are deflated when we are unable to answer a question. The need to really know a topic, for this reason, is much greater in a speaking engagement than it is in writing. Speaking forces you to know your subject matter that much better and, thus, elevates you up another wrung on the ladder of success.

Doing - There is no better way to perfect your knowledge in an area than through repetition by doing. Repetition in a particular area gets you closer to perfection than reading, writing or speaking ever could. Each time you repeat a task in a particular area you become more efficient and more expert. Doing, over and over again, allows you to make and fix mistakes. It allows you to improve and perfect your skill-set. Through repetition by doing you will, in time, become a master in a particular task or subject matter. 

The wealthiest of individuals employ all four career-related self-improvement activities. But, in reality, you can achieve financial success by simply dedicating yourself, every day, to just one of the four career-related, self-improvement methods. Make no mistake about it; it's not an easy discipline. Daily career-related, self-improvement is boring. It's tedious. But the by-product is uncovering opportunities. Imagine you are standing in a forest. What do you see? You see trees. You see all of the trees that are in front of you. These trees are a metaphor for opportunities. Now imagine off to the side of the forest is a hill. This hill is a metaphor for career-related, self-improvement. What happens when you climb that hill (what happens when you engage in daily career-related, self-improvement)? You notice that there are many more trees in the forest (more opportunities). The higher and higher you climb that hill (the more you engage in career-related, self-improvement), the more trees you see (the more opportunities you see). The more opportunities you see in your life, the more money you make.

The wealthiest of individuals utilize all four strategies for success, although many focus on only one or two strategies and yet still reap enormous rewards. No one can become financially successful without incorporating one or more of these strategies in their lives. Unsuccessful people do the bare minimum in their careers. They avoid reading, writing, and speaking. They "Do" only the bare minimum to keep their job. They are not interested in perfecting their craft or bettering themselves in their profession. They are blind to opportunities. That is too bad. Until you engage in daily career-related self-improvement, you are walking around blind to the multiple opportunities that lay before you and that lift you up the ladder of financial success.

FACILITATING OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

Successful individuals view relationships as if they were gold. Relationships are the currency of the successful. Each relationship you have is like a tree. The size of each one of your relationship trees depends on how much you nurture the relationship. Successful individuals build their relationship trees into redwoods. The byproduct of these strong relationships is the manifestation of opportunities. Your strongest relationships will deliver to you opportunities on a silver platter. Whether through referrals, recommendations, advice or solutions, your strongest relationships constantly feed you with opportunities. How do you strengthen your relationships in order to facilitate opportunities? Successful individuals build relationships using four techniques:

#1        The Hello Call is a simple call you make to your relationships to say hello. But it is much more than that. Think of your hello call as reconnaissance. The purpose of the hello call is to gather information about your relationship. Their birthday, names of family members, college attended, groups or organizations they are affiliated with, hobbies etc. This information is then documented and stored into your relationship’s individual database.

#2        The Happy Birthday Call is a call you make once a year to wish your relationship a happy birthday. This call keeps your relationship on life support. It keeps it alive.

#3        The Life Event Call is the most powerful call you can make. A life event call is like putting your relationship tree on steroids. The roots to the tree grow deep after a life event call. Life events include a birth, marriage, graduation, promotion, achievement etc.

#4        Group Participation - The last relationship-building technique is participation in groups. Group participation forges bonds that are not easily broken. Whether the group is within your workplace or outside, your participation helps to showcase your skill-sets, attitude, work ethic and personality. Groups bind individuals together. Group participation is invaluable in facilitating opportunities.

MANAGING OPPORTUNITIES

#1        Relationship Opportunities

Maintaining a detailed database on all of your relationships helps uncover opportunities with respect to your relationships. The more information you gather on each relationship, the clearer you can see opportunities. These opportunities may be a service or product you recognize your relationship needs or wants. Understanding everything about your relationship helps you to meet these needs and wants. When you passionately focus on the needs and wants of your relationships, opportunities manifest themselves out of thin air. As you gather more information on your relationship you will see these opportunities and can list them in the individual database you maintain for your relationship, whether that is Outlook, Goldmine, Maximizer or some other database management system.

#2        Technical Opportunities

Daily career-related self-improvement helps improve your technical skills in your career and industry. Writing, seminars, lectures, teaching or speaking engagements force you to dig deeper into a technical area. Any time you have to communicate, whether in writing or verbally, you must gain a keener understanding of the topic or technical area. You must dig deeper. This digging helps you uncover opportunities, which then become part of your written or verbal communication project/engagement. Articles, presentation material, written speeches help memorialize the opportunities you uncover in your research and preparation for the writing or speaking engagement. They become part of the project and may be invaluable down the road in leveraging the uncovered opportunity when a need or want of an individual or organization manifests itself.

SUCCESS AND LEADERSHIP

There is no one template for a leader. Tall, small, fat, thin, black, white, smart, average. It does not matter. Leaders come in many forms and personality types. The one constant in being a leader, I have learned through the years, is risk. Leaders take on risk that others avoid at all costs. Oftentimes a risk event occurs and this is demoralizing. But true leaders understand the risks and expect failures and mistakes. I have seen leaders emerge from the ashes of start-up failures. It is the failures and mistakes from which lessons are best learned and true leadership is forged. The best leaders, I have found, are the ones who have tried and failed. I don’t want to follow someone who is successful, if they have never failed. Murphy’s law dictates that their failure will occur the moment I become that leader’s follower. I have also learned that leadership requires candor. No beating around the bush. True leaders use small words, short sentences and clear language. Efficient, concise and honest communication are the hallmarks of leadership.