Success is not an option. It is an obligation.

Here it is. The message that drives me. I wear it on my wrist every minute of every day. By wearing this bracelet (and the other bracelets I wear), it keeps me focused and helps me keep my eye on the ball. Do better than I did the day before. If I have the opportunity to advance greatly, do it! Success isn’t an option. It is my duty, my obligation, and my responsibility. Success is everything. That is how I live today.

Success Hasn’t Always Been A Priority For Me

I said it was a priority, but it wasn’t. I gave success a lot of lip service, but failed to come up with the actions necessary to create and sustain success. I failed greatly and repeatedly in my early years. I failed in car sales. I failed as a business owner. I even failed as a waiter, once. There were points in my life that I began to think that I would never be successful. My friends thought I was awesome, so it’s only natural that I thought I deserved success. “Why shoul

dn’t I be successful?” I thought. I work hard for a few hours a day on my business and spent most of my time on a crappy job in a restaurant. Even when I was “residentially challenged” in my mid 30’s, the first thing I did when I re-started living my life from a picnic table was buy a notebook and a set of pens so that I could plan my triumphant return with my next business. I always considered myself down, but never out during this time. But I never treated success as my duty and obligation.

I never figured out why I was unsuccessful until recently. Here is just a brief look back at what I was doing wrong and what I did to improve my life.

I Didn’t Take Personal Development Seriously

Although I read a lot of success literature from some great authors, I had never realized that success was my duty, responsibility, and obligation before. It always seemed like there was something I was missing. Some of my business “mentors” thought that listening to personal development authors and reading success literature was a waste of time. None of my friends were listening to personal development tapes or reading success books. And they didn’t succeed either.

I Risked Too Much and Too Often

I always said that I would risk everything to be successful and I did. Often. But that was part of my problem. I bought the mainstream media’s impression of an entrepreneur as a “risk-it-all,” Type-A personality. I got hooked on this idea that I had to risk everything all the time. And I lost it all constantly.

I Surrounded Myself With People Who Were Not Success-Oriented

I knew that I should go after success with everything I had, but then people who called themselves my friends would sabotage me, ridicule me and prevent me from achieving the success I desired. I trusted managers I worked with to act in my best interests, even when I didn’t. I trusted people who didn’t have my best interests at heart to have my best interests at heart. I set myself up for failure again and again.

I Wasn’t Committed to My Success

I found myself tired at the end of my workday from my crappy, low-paying jobs. I thought I would have to return to athletic shape to achieve success, and that was “too much work.” I was too busy drinking beer and whiskey every night and smoking cigarettes (among other things) to achieve success. It always bothered me that I was going through an economic expansion in 2002-2008 without advancing my life during that expansion. Something was wrong, and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. The truth was that I wasn’t committed enough to my success to keep at it long enough to experience greater levels of success.

Enter Grant Cardone

When I first heard about Grant Cardone, it was right on the heels of “The Great Financial Crisis” (as historians call this event). I had stopped drinking and would soon stop smoking. I didn’t have enough hope yet to start doing better, but I was making positive changes in my life. I started moving away from my table-waiting career that had brought me misery, alcohol and drug addiction, and just enough money to stay broke. Then, I lost track of him.

I got a better paying job, worked my ass off and improved my life a little more. I was constantly working in a nice restaurant and making more money. But I had no free time. I committed to changing my source of income, my job, and my life a little more. I knew I had to learn to sell my services in a highly competitive market.

One of Grant’s customers mentioned him to me when I was looking for sales training solutions on Twitter. I said that I’d heard of him, but was unfamiliar with his work. His customer then told me that following Grant could be the solution to my quest. I bought “The Closer’s Survival Guide” by Grant Cardone in June 2014. It wasn’t the sales closes that got me hooked; It was the first chapters that slapped me around a little that got my attention.

I knew I needed more sales training. I called Grant’s office and bought four mp3’s and downloaded them. They were “If You’re Not First, You’re Last,” “Sell or Be Sold,” “The Rules of Success,” and “The 10x Rule.”

It wasn’t until I downloaded my mp3 version of “The 10x Rule” by Grant Cardone that I began to hear something that I desperately needed to hear. Success is my duty, my obligation, and my responsibility. This message was like all the other authors that I listened to before, except Grant held nothing back. Grant’s brash and eye-opening honesty about success has kept my attention ever since.

My Progress

Since I have started listening to Grant, following him on Twitter and Facebook, and watching his webinars, I have started a new business and have started to experience the success I am working endlessly towards. It is not uncommon for me to be up working on a new website, expanding my education, or writing a blog post (like this one) until 2 am and getting up at 8 am (or earlier).

If you honestly want success in business and in life, I highly recommend visiting Grant Cardone’s website and ordering “The 10x Rule” to start your success journey. I guarantee that after listening to it a few times, you will look at life much differently than you ever have before. You will approach life differently and begin to change your life in ways you never thought possible.

Don’t just drink the Kool-Aid. Swim in it.