“Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.” -- Denis Waitley

A couple posts ago, I talked about the Trap of Prosperity. Essentially, it is a period of stagnancy that sometimes comes along with success, and very often can lead to a decline in sales if nothing is done about it. There is another trap that you need to watch out for that I will call the Trap of Failure. It is something that we have all experienced at some point in our lives, and if you aren’t careful, it can cause a downward spiral. Basically, what it is is that when we fail to meet our own expectations, we often get down on ourselves. Instead of finding ways to go back and try again, we dwell on the past and it becomes a self-fulfilling loop of disappointment. We are disappointed that we failed, and so we are too busy thinking about that to move forward and try something else, and because of that, we are...

“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person - not just an employee - are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” -- Anne M. Mulcahy

Businesses are kind of like families. A business where everyone takes orders from the boss and never questions him or her in any way may work, but it’s not the most successful model out there. Families like this do exist as well, but they are usually dysfunctional in some way. This kind of relationship, whether it is between an employee and his or her boss or a child and his or her parents, encourages two distinct personalities to develop. The first personality is the one that is displayed whenever the boss is around -- strictly business. The second is their true personality, which comes out around co-workers and at home. This is detrimental because when employees are afraid to show their true personality...

“There is only one boss: the customer.” -- Sam Walton

A successful business should be honest to its customers, good to its employees, and well-organized in its management. And when I say this, I mean that a successful business has to be all three of these things. I have seen too many businesses focus on one too much and insist that it is the most important part of their business model. No matter how good your model is, if you do not take steps to balance these three areas of required excellence, then you are not maximizing your potential.

In this post, however, I am going to focus on the customer. The customer has more power than any single person in the company. It is the customer alone that has the ability to put everybody in the company out of a job, from the janitor to the CEO. Business originated from the demands of customers, and a good business should always go back to the demands of its customers. Whether you have a few or a few thousand different...

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” -- Oprah Winfrey

Oprah really hit the nail on the head with this one. It is easy to do what you're supposed to when you’re at work or out and about in public, but the true test of integrity is whether or not you have the ability to do the right thing even when nobody is watching. If you saw a piece of garbage on the street, would you pick it up? Sometimes, people don’t even do the right thing when others are watching, especially in public. In my opinion, seeing so many people we don’t know turns off our need to socialize because we can’t possibly socialize with everyone around us. Therefore, we all withdraw into our own worlds and refuse to come out, and because of this, people have a tendency to ignore things they would normally care about.

Integrity is a very broad term, and can be used to refer to large-scale integrity (such as...

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” -- Louis Pasteur

A fairly large number of people that I have met and talked to seem to have this mindset that luck is what makes somebody successful. That no matter how much effort you put in, in the end, if you aren’t lucky, you aren’t going to succeed. Although it cannot be denied that luck plays a role in success, this kind of mindset is detrimental, and if you do think like this, then it will be even harder to succeed.

Related: Do's & Don'ts to improve work commitment

People love to place blame. If you ever ask somebody why they were late to work, they will come up with a million excuses, but very rarely will they just say “I slept in”. It is hard to accept responsibility, especially when there are consequences involved. And just as people with jobs will blame anything but themselves when something goes wrong, it is also a common practice for slow growth business-owners to find a scapegoat when success...

“The minute you’re satisfied with where you are, you aren’t there anymore.” -- Tony Gwynn

If you’re not familiar with Tony Gwynn, he is a baseball player who was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2007, and although he is not a president or a business leader, he offers some valuable advice for anyone trying to accomplish something, be it improving at a sport, increasing your revenue, or simply working towards your next goal. I think most, if not all of us, can relate to this quote, because it really shows how competitive our world is. When you first set out to do something, you have a lot of excitement, you put in a lot of time and effort, and that keeps you going for a good bit, because you want to see where all this work will take you. And then the day comes when you finally see some progress, and you know that everything you did was worthwhile. However, a lot of times, people will be so happy with their progress that they want to bask in the...

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.” -- Jim Rohn

Change is something that is discussed often in the business world. If your product does not adapt to the changing market, it will not succeed. If your business plan isn’t as effective as it used to be, it needs to be changed. But something people don’t think about as often is personal change. Sometimes, when it seems like you are paddling into a headwind with no way out, instead of looking for a bigger paddle, you just have to change direction. When all the odds are against you and the work is piling up, you might feel like you’re being tested. And it’s true, in a sense. Pushing ourselves to the limit is good for us, and often brings in great rewards. However, you have to know when to buckle down and fight against it and when to put the sail up and ride it out.

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“Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.” — Nolan Bushnell

People often classify themselves as either a thinker or a doer, and think that both of these things are a good quality in their own right. This is true, but in order to really be successful, you have to be both. You have to have the ability to form the thought, see its potential impact, and come up with a finished product. If you can’t see your ideas through until the end, you will end up with a bunch of half-baked plans that never get off the ground.

Related: Tips for Analysis Paralysis

It might seem like good practice to be able to lay out the groundwork for a multitude of different projects and then see where they go, but the reality is that it is much more difficult to put the finishing touches on something than to simply start it. The reason for this is that when you are...

“The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.” — Criss Jami

The feeling of success, of overcoming a great boundary, is one of the greatest in the world. It is what pushes men and women toward greatness and gives them the drive and willpower to push forward, no matter the obstacle in front of them. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, the tantalizing prize that we are rewarded with after weeks upon weeks of effort. So powerful is the rush that we get from this feeling that it can send some on a kind of ego trip, without ever knowing it. Success makes us feel powerful, and the ability for power to corrupt is well-documented throughout history.

Related: How to have an effective quarter

But how do you avoid corruption while still maintaining the drive that can do wonders to your work ethic? The answer is through humility. It is easy to get lost in competition, and when that happens, your mind often plays tricks on itself to make you think...

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” — Thomas Jefferson

Attitude is key.

You have probably heard this in one form or another many times throughout your life, ranging from when you were in kindergarten to when you got your first job, and it may seem kind of corny at this point. But there is more truth behind it than many people like to admit. It comes through in many different forms from teachings of all kinds of famous speakers and entrepreneurs. It might also come in the form of “change always comes from within” or “to make a difference in the world, you must first start with yourself”, but in reality they all teach the same concept: That how you perceive the world affects how the world really is.

Related: Healthy Team Environments

What this means is that if you really want something, you have to truly believe that you can...