Are You Looking for the Number One Secret to Success?
I'm here to tell you the secret to success. If you do this one thing in life, you can't help but be successful. What is the secret?
You can get everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want in life.
Zig Ziglar
This is a classic Zig Ziglar quote, and it's so true. Often, we think the road to success is clawing our way to the top, stepping over people as if they are rocks in our path to the good life, but that's not the way Ziglar sees life. He sees it as the more people we help, the further we will go in life.
As a writer, I'm constantly thinking about the story I'm writing, though I don't always think about how my story will impact my readers. Why are Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, James Patterson, Lee Child, and Janet Evanovich so successful? Because they write books that people want to read. They put in the thrills, chills, and spills that make readers want to read that next book.
One of the most successful restaurant chains in the Chicago area is a hot dog and beef sandwich shop named Portillo's. It is a well-liked chain that always has a line waiting to order both in the shop and in the drive-through lanes. It's amazing how many people they serve every day in each shop. The man that started the shop started selling hot dogs out of a little trailer by the side of the road, but he learned the value of excellent service and a consistently superb product and literally made over a billion dollars when he eventually retired and sold off the business.
You might have an idea that's rummaging around in your brain. Great. Go for it. But get your mind on straight before you launch. Are you just trying to get money out of other people, or do you have a great product in mind, and plan to sell it at a price that will benefit both you and your customers? Despite how much we might dislike the owners of (name your least liked business owner here), hundreds of millions of people use their product every day. Why? Because they are providing a service that meets our needs.
I've watched many episodes on the History channel of a show that tells how businesses got their start. And even though we might see a business that is successful now, back when they started their businesses, they were doing everything wrong. They were serving the wrong products, advertising to the wrong people, and hadn't developed the customer service necessary to keep people coming back.
I personally know of a young business owner that started a restaurant, and within the first hundred days, he was out of business. He hired a friend to be the chef. The chef had limited cooking experience and one day when the owner was off running errands, the chef served undercooked hamburgers. The negative reviews for that one day drove customers away.
Writers also experience these challenges. We market our books to the wrong readers. Write what we find interesting instead of writing to market. And after someone buys that first book, we don't know what to do with the next book. Yes, we have to deliver a consistently excellent product to our customers over and over.
Even as an employee in a business of over one hundred people to ten thousand employees, you have a customer. That customer is both the consumer of the business' product and your boss. If you can keep your boss happy by great service and attention to details, you will grow within the company. Keeping the consumer happy will keep you in the good graces of your boss.
What will you do today to help someone else get what they want by providing them with the products and services they need?
Read more - Second Principle of Success
IMAGES on this Blog Post are Courtesy of Unsplash.com
Typewriter Image from Kenny Eliason
Island Penisula Image from Paolo Nicolello