I just finished reading a beast of a book (600 pages which is a lot compared to what I typically read) called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. I’ve heard of Mr. Canfield because he’s the author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series which is a monstrous success.
I didn’t know he had a book about success until I heard him on Entrepreneur on Fire. I was intrigued because I figured I could learn something from someone that turned a book idea into a billion-dollar brand.
So in this book, there are a total of 67 success principles, but here are the 20 principles that stood out to me the most and what I took away from them…
1. Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life
It does no good to blame others for your situation. When you take responsibility for your life, actions and situation, you can actually work on improving it. When things aren’t going your way, it’s easy to blame something/someone else…and when you do that, you usually don’t take any additional action to actually improve things.
2. Be Clear Why You’re Here
What do you love to do? What are your goals? What are you good at? If you’re not clear on why you’re here, how will you formulate a plan for success? You should also be clear on what your One Thing is.
3. Believe in Yourself
I actually blogged about this topic here. If you don’t believe in yourself…if you don’t have confidence in your abilities…how can you expect to succeed? Self-doubt is normal because no one is perfect, but you have to have a solid foundation of belief/confidence to pull you through.
4. Success Leaves Clues
The basic idea here is that you should be studying successful people that are achieving what you want to be doing because you can learn from their processes and strategies. For example, sign up for their email list and study how they use email to nurture and sell.
5. Take Action
This is such a simple, but powerful piece of advice. Without action, a billion ideas and millions of hours of learning won’t amount to anything. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. Just take action and tweak as you go along.
6. Experience Your Fear and Take Action Anyway
Having fear is natural. As you stretch yourself and go for bigger goals, or start doing new and different things, it’s OK to feel fear. But don’t let it consume you. Acknowledge the fear is there, but take action anyway.
7. Ask! Ask! Ask!
You can’t get what you want if you don’t ask. Starting a side business and need new clients? You have to ask your target audience to buy. The worse thing someone can say when you ask is no.
8. Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement
I think this principle is so important. Never become satisfied with where you are. Now, I’m not saying don’t celebrate your wins because it is important to enjoy the ride and appreciate what you’ve accomplished. But what I’m saying is commit to improving all key areas of your life and business, even if it’s only a 1% improvement every week.
9. Reject Rejection
Rejection is part of the game when you’re selling a product or service – don’t let it stop you from moving forward. Not everyone is going to want to buy. In fact, you’ll probably get a lot more no’s than yes’s. But every no you get is one step closer to a yes.
10. Practice Persistence
They say in some industries, it takes up to 8 contacts to make a sale. If your side business is a professional service and your persistence stops at 4 follow ups, you’re losing out on potential revenue. But the importance of persistence is key in all areas of your side business, not just selling.
11. Exceed Expectations
When you exceed your customer’s expectations, you create loyalty to your side business. It also helps stimulate referrals because the customer is happy and they want to tell their friends about you.
12. Drop Out of the “Ain’t it Awful Club and Surround Yourself with Successful People
Being negative is one of the worse traits you can develop if you want to be successful. You also can’t blame other people for your mistakes and failures. Instead, find other people that are successful and learn from them. Absorb their knowledge, mindset and thinking. A mastermind is perfect for this.
13. Clean up Your Messes and Your Incompletes
It’s hard to have a clear head to focus on what’s important in your life and business if you have a lot of stuff bogging you down. Projects that are dragging on. Tension with a family member or business partner, etc. Focus on removing distractions and you’ll see a jump in productivity.
14. Face What Isn’t Working
As you build your side business, you have to be honest with yourself as to what’s not working. If what you’re doing is not producing results, don’t be afraid to pivot or to try something else. This goes with anything in your business such as marketing, selling…even employees.
15. Develop Four New Success Habits a Year
Creating habits can be an awesome habit to propel you forward. For example, prospecting for new clients for 30 minutes every day…writing daily…walking every day…etc. Make it a ritual that you’ll add new habits every year that will help you reach your goals. And if you make them small habits, it will be even easier…but don’t discount these small habits…they can give you a Slight Edge.
16. Learn More to Earn More
Never stop learning! I do this by reading every day even if it’s only for 5 minutes. If you listen to interviews with successful people you’ll notice many of them are rabid readers…but they’re so successful, why are they still trying to learn new things? Because it’s important to keep feeding fuel to the fire so you don’t get stagnant.
17. Just Say No!
Time is precious. It’s the only asset you have that you can’t get back. The bottom line is that when you’re saying yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. So make sure you’re not committing yourself to too much. Focus on what’s Essential.
18. Become a Leader Worth Following
I think this mainly applies when you have people working for you, but I think it’s a good practice to live by regardless, especially if you have kids. If you want to become a leader, become someone that is worth following. What that means is going to be different from person to person. For me, it’s someone that is kind…someone that works hard every day towards their goal…someone that never stops learning…and someone that is a family person.
19. Mastermind Your Way to Success
This is one thing I have yet to figure out. With my schedule of 50 hours per week at my full-time career…my side business…and my growing family…I struggle to find a way to inject a mastermind into my schedule where I can be consistent with the group. But it’s important because you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with as Jim Rohn said.
20. Practice Uncommon Appreciation
Be grateful and appreciative of what you have. This advice is a growing trend among all the podcasts I listen to. When you learn to be grateful for what you have, it completely changes your mindset. Me personally, I’ve made it a habit to think about what I’m grateful for every night as I drift off to sleep.
