What is this elusive thing called success? To some, success means nice cars, nice houses, vacations, and lots of leisure time. To others, it means merely getting the bills paid and making ends meet. To other people, it means making sure they get their government check every month. To most people, success means doing better than they did. It means that their quality of life is improving, and financial success is a part of that success. This post is for those that work for business success daily. These are the business owners, the entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs who work to make their dreams come true in the business world.

I always knew that I wanted success in my life. Early in my career, I allowed the people with whom I used to associate influence me negatively. Success to them meant drinking and smoking in their favorite bar every day after a long (or not so long) day at work. This picture was my vision of success, and it was the vision that I pursued for many years. This path led to some of the darkest days of my life. After I crashed my business and my life in 2001, my friends left me, and I was no longer welcome in the places that I used to go. I also crashed financially.

I moved to Florida to turn my life around in 2002. To make this part of the story short, I did not turn my life around. I continued to live by the habits of my former life, the drinking, the smoking, and the hanging out in bars. I struggled to get my life just a little bit together and moved to Atlanta. I returned to my source of income that was my old standby of waiting tables and slipped right back into my old habits. If you can do these things and still meet your goals, then that’s great. But, for me, after the age of 40, the time came for me to wake up and change.

I started listening to different information from different people. My mentor at the time said that I needed to throw myself into something called personal development. I heard about a man named Jim Rohn. I bought some audios and listened to them. I wrote down some ideas and applied them to my life, and I changed my life a little. I bought a couple of books and some more audios from people like Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, Denis Waitley, and Zig Ziglar. I listened to their audios, read their books, and I changed my life a little more.

Then I stopped for a little while. I got tied up in a job, made some more money, and changed my environment. I experienced some success.Why did I achieve a little success? I was listening to some new ideas. I applied some new, successful ideas, and I got different results. What was the secret? I found some new ideas and applied those ideas to my life. I changed the people with whom I was associating. I started working on myself. And I got results.

About a year later, I got restless again. I plateaued at what I was doing, and it was time to find some more answers. I started selling my services as a freelance marketing consultant with very little success. I discovered Grant Cardone in 2010 on Twitter, but I had no idea who he was. Two years after I first heard of him, a Twitter conversation led me to his website. I discovered that he was a sales trainer, and what I needed was sales training. I bought his book The Closer’s Survival Guide. I got much more than sales training. I got a bunch of attitude from someone who had been where I had been before. That was something I desperately needed in my life. The answers did not come to me by magic, or by some other mystical forces. They came to me because I searched for the answers that could change my life.

The success you seek does not come to you by luck or magic. You have to start looking for the success that you seek. I have made a lot of progress since I started this blog in 2011. I am always looking for new information and associating with new people who can help me get where I want to go. Applying new ideas to your life can help you become more successful than you were. How hard you look for those ideas reflects how important success is to you.  The harder you work towards success, the sooner you will find what you seek. I am constantly seeking greater successes.