The Summit of Success

Progression, not Perfection

• What is Success?
• Progression, not Perfection
• Triple-One Business
• The Scale and Industry
• Focus within Industry
• How to Change Your Numbers
• Inspiring Change: The MOVFitness Example
• Continuing Change: HardMagic Press
• Conclusion

What is Success?

Success is a mindset, a habit, a philosophy. It is not a destination–it is limitless. This chapter explains how to step into that mindset and how to realize that success takes failure. The more you learn how to fail, the more opportunities for success will arise. A great concept to take into consideration is the batting average in your business. Most people who are in sales, or who are in any business,  think they have to be perfect all the time.

But let’s look at professional baseball players. A really good baseball player is going to have a batting average of about 300. If you actually bat .350 then you are an incredible baseball player. What that means is that thirty-five percent of the time they get up to bat, they get on base. That does not mean they hit a home run. It does not mean they score. It just means they do something productive thirty-five percent of the time. What that means is that a multimillion dollar business, like a baseball team, can win a world series if every person on that team is successful thirty-five percent of the time.

If you look anywhere else, for example if you are in school only thirty-five percent of the time, thirty-five percent is clearly a failing score. If you are in business you would think your boss wants you to succeed more than thirty-five percent of the time. But, this is not true. If everybody pulls through at thirty-five percent, then the business will be successful. So when you make a phone call to somebody, to sell your product, you want to make a pitch to them, but don’t think that you need to be successful. Just think that as long as you get on base thirty-five percent of the time, you are making progress with the company. This brings me to my next point: a philosophy called “progression, not perfection.”

Progression, not Perfection

Whether you are trying to take care of your health, your business, or your family, you never want to get into the habit of believing that everything needs to be done perfectly. When you think you have to do something perfectly is when you set yourself up for long-term failure. It is okay to have short-term failure, and what I mean by short-term failure is, for example, being fifty pounds overweight and wanting to get into the best shape of your life. You are not going to tell yourself, “Tomorrow I am going to have a six-pack.” That is going to set you up for failure. Instead, you want to say, “You know, in the next month, I think I can get down to ten pounds,” or even five pounds. Give yourself a realistic goal and shoot for it.

Likewise, if you are setting up a new project for your business, don’t expect that project to be at one-hundred percent right away. Use it as a learning tool. If you have never written a book before in your life, use your first book as a learning tool. I know this concept hurts the ego. Many people feel that if they are going to put that much time into something, then it has to be perfect the first time around. But honestly, if everyone in the project just says, “Today I am going to do something that’s actually going to be productive, and I will have visual results after my day is over” then the project will eventually prove fruitful. But if everybody says, “I’m not going to turn this into my boss until it is perfect,” then the boss is never going to be able to help you or critique your stuff. Chances are that the boss has been doing stuff for a really long time. He’s there to help you out, to consult you, and to advise you. So go ahead and turn in projects when they’re sloppy and say, “Hey, what do you think? Am I going in the right direction?” That’s progression. It’s not perfection; It’s progression.

Triple-One Business

In order to be successful, keep the triple-one business plan in mind. Now, the triple-one business mindset has been known by business consultants, but not by the general public. This is especially true when concerning people who don’t have a job and who are either interested in starting their own business, or are interested in working for somebody else. They will just go out, find a random job, and feel safe because they have a paycheck. Two years later, when their plant shuts down and they lose their income, they won’t know what to do. Well, I always blame the employee; Whenever someone loses their job, I never blame the employer.

If you worked for Ford or for Chevy and you lost your job, I don’t pity you very much because you did not understand the triple-one business plan. It is logical and easy for anyone to understand, even without having this lesson. But, with this lesson you will be able to look at your own business and make sure every one of its category is a triple-one category. The triple-one plan begins by looking at the category your business is in. For example, my business is in health and wellness. The wellness category is the number one category in the world right now, and it is projected to be number one for the next twenty years. What this means is asking yourself: What are people spending money on right now? Why are they spending money on it? and, How long do we expect them to continue spending money on it?

The Scale and Industry

If you look at a product like shoes, there is not a set scale that says shoes are number two or number six. But on a scale of one through ten, ask yourself how many people you think are buying shoes. When beginning your analysis of a triple-one possibility, consider the following questions: 1) How long do you think people will continue to buy shoes? and 2) Do you think this industry is going to have longevity? The answer in this case is ‘yes’, because people are always going to need shoes. However, because shoes are not an extremely hot subject on the market right now, I would rate them at a four or five.

Anything between one and five is in the top tier of businesses. When the industry is in the top tier, then it has a good chance for longevity. Other examples of top-tier industries are restaurants (4-3), health products (1), and electronic equipment (2-1), because we are still in the Information Age and still encountering technological advancements. These examples are meant to help you rate your business, or the company you plan to work for. Keep in mind, however, that this is only one of the three numbers that make up your triple-one plan.

Let’s look at a category that is not in the top five. The automobile industry, for instance, rates below the top tier. This does not suggest that automobiles will vanish, but that fossil fuels are going to eventually be extinct; Therefore, if you decide to work in the automobile industry, you will be in a limited category. Sure, it might take a thousand years for fossil fuels to run out, but because they are vulnerable to extinction, the automobile industry is limited. Health and wellness, on the other hand, is not limited. Shoes are not limited. Fossil fuels are limited, and the automobiles we are using and producing are based heavily on that limited resource. Therefore, that industry is limited. Because of this limitation, on the business scale it rates at a six or a five. Sure, we all need vehicles. But I think we are moving toward a mass transit culture where we do not use as many individual vehicles as we once did.

Even if that is not the case, it is clear and evident that fossil fuels are depleting, and that we need to switch over to a different resource. Ford and Chevy are already in a depleting field. Lets say that when considering these two average companies, the automobile industry is a five . If you work for them, which part of the automobile industry are you in? Are you manufacturing the automobiles? Are you working with purifying oil and other fossil fuels? Are you a loop technician? You must consider all of this when determining where you stand on the triple-one scale.

Focus within Industry

If you work for Ford as opposed to Honda, I would say that Ford is an eight or nine on a scale of one through ten, one being the best. Honda is at a two or three. Automobiles, overall, are at a five because they are not as hot on the market as health and wellness, or medical and pharmaceutical. But they are, however, more important than horse saddles. Therefore, consider on a scale of one through ten which automobile maker you are with. If you are with Ford, you are an eight. Since the automobile industry is a five and Ford Company is an eight, your numbers are five-eight. If you are with Honda, you are going to be a five-two or a five-three. Your first two numbers depend on the industry, in this case automobiles (5), and your company or area within that industry, in this case Ford or Honda (8 or 2 respectively).

Next, your third number is determined by your position within that company. If you work for Ford and you assemble cars,  via aluminum plates, in the manufacturing department building, you are eventually going to be replaced by a machine. This puts your job at around an eight. So, working in the automobile industry, for Ford, and in the manufacturing branch, you are at a five-eight-eight. Now, when you take all three numbers and add them (5+8+8), you get twenty-one. The lower your final number is, the better your job placement is going to be. The better your job placement is, the better longevity, the better health, the more money you will make, and the happier you will be. So any time you design a product as an inventor, you need to take these numbers into consideration. Add up your numbers and if your numbers are high, you are less likely to get an investor. On the other hand,  if your numbers are low, you will most likely have a lot of interested people.

How to Change Your Numbers

Now let us look at my company MOVFitness. MOVFitness is in the health and wellness industry, which makes its first number a one (1). Mostly everyone would agree that health and wellness is the currently the number one industry in the world. Further note which parts of health and wellness MOVFitness could be in, versus which it chooses to be in. We could be manufacturing and selling protein bars or gym equipment. These are two examples of different levels within the health and wellness industry. Other sections of health and wellness, though not as commercial, include doctors, physical therapists, massage therapists, and dental hygienists. Because they are in the health and wellness field, they are in category number one as well. MOVFitness takes part in another aspect of health and wellness: education. This is what MOVFitness is founded on.

Every business will agree that within any industry, education and training are the number one fields. Therefore, not only are we in the health and wellness industry as a whole, but we are also within the fields of education and training. Because both are number one fields, this puts our numbers at 1-1. Our books, just like this book, teach people how to be better at what they do. Regardless of whether it involves wellness or not, our books educate and push them in the correct direction. This also inspires people to educate themselves, rather than just accepting others’ advise on what they should do. To influence learning, we have online classes and social networks that encourage people to connect with eachother, and learn from one another’s journey to being the best person they can be. This is a representation of how we are number one in the education category of health and wellness. However, these examples also beg the question: What exactly are we doing for education?

Well, we work in ballroom dancing, which is one of the number one shows on television. By working in this field, we make ballroom dancing lessons accessible to the general public. Not only can this help them better themselves, but it also allows them to become part of the local dancing community. We also focus on physical training and nutrition. By focusing on multiple categories, our customers can choose a program that fits their needs. On the other side of the equation, these are all number one categories for MOVFitness. This motivates us to continue being the number one program in all three fields.

An example of how we came to focus on these areas is in comparing yoga versus ballroom dancing. When yoga came into the States about ten years ago it became very popular. However, on the scale today it rates at about a four, whereas ballroom dancing currently rates much higher. Today, there’s a lot more people interested in the ballroom dancing industry. People will pay a lot more for ballroom lessons than for yoga lessons. Pilates is starting to gain some ground, so we have training in that as well. One area that you do not see us training very much in is Ultimate Frisbee. The reason we do not train in Ultimate Frisbee is because it is about a number nine on the scale. People don’t usually want to get certified in Ultimate Frisbee. Sure, it’s fun, it’s in the health and wellness category, and it’s in education. An Ultimate Frisbee instructor so would be a one-one-nine. However, when considering the health and wellness industry, one-one-nine is fairly low .

To recap, we are in the health and wellness industry (1). We focus on the education aspect of health and wellness (1). The subjects we teach (i.e., ballroom dancing, nutrition, etc.) are in the number one category of education. Combined, these three fields put us at one-one-one. This makes us a high demand, high longevity industry. Now, our company is about more than just having education and ballroom dancing, or just having education, weight loss, and nutrition. Almost any company will be larger than just one section. So when creating a company, you need to look at the different departments individually and figure out how to make each section a number one.

Inspiring Change: The MOVFitness Example

One year ago, MOVFitness was listed as a site where people could sign up to receive help from instructors. People who were interested would sign up for a personal trainer through MOVFitness. This choice made MOVFitness a one-stop shop for some. For others, receiving instruction through an online site was simply not the right choice. With the invention of Facebook and MySpace, we decided to switch MOVFitness to a social networking site for the health community. Now, it has become something like a Facebook for those interested in fitness. For more than a year ago, our website was in the health and wellness field, a number one category as previously described. In terms of the category within that field, it was a website. Websites are about a three or four. Within the website realm, it was just a static web page telling people to come and check out our service. Although the site was well-designed and well-managed, this put it at a six or seven, which is not very good.

The flaw in this one-three-six approach was that MOVFitness just told people what to do. It did not show them an interactive way of how to do it nor did it adjust to their personal needs. We are at a point in time where people want to interact more with the internet. They want to have a profile. They want to see other people’s profiles. And they want to meet people who have the same problems or similar lifestyles as theirs. They want it to be dynamic, so when they return to it they can show how they’ve progressed in various fields. Because our customers expressed these needs to us, we have changed our entire site. Our site is now more cutting-edge, more interactive, and more dynamic. And, if you check out the website www.movfitness.com, you will see that it has become one of the top-ranking websites in the world of fitness. This has happened because we tranformed it based on what people wanted.

Their needs influenced each and every part of our company. Management went to each of our company’s branch and asked the question: “Why is this section not a one-one-one?” When we decided that the website needed to be more interactive, we changed the sections and the site as a whole. We recognized that the site offered great tools and great instructors, but because it was lacking the interactivity that people sought in bettering themselves, it was not the best it could have been. It did not show what we are capable of. With these changes came the advancement of not only the business, but also of how well we could help people and how well they could learn. Now, it is a social network where you log in and can choose to take classes through the website. If you really want to get good at a subject, you have the option of hiring a one-on-one instructor. Because of this, we have hundreds of people coming back to our site and doing training on their own.

Now let’s look at a different area. Let’s say you are an accountant and you want to work for a firm. In order to search for a job within a firm, you do a job search on Monster.com. From there, you see that the pharmaceutical industry is hiring, a submarine company is hiring, and even a local tax firm needs somebody.

Let’s take a look at the tax firm within a scale of one through ten. The tax firm is going to be at about a five; You are never going to lose taxes as a means of bringing in customers. At the same time, taxes are not the most exciting thing in the world, which means that you won’t have people buying and using your products until tax season. You are already in a five-ranked industry. Whether you are in a five-one-one or a five-five-five, you are already in a category where not much can be done to make the industry grow or become more interesting to the public. As with anything, maybe in a few years, taxes will turn out to be a high-ranking industry, but for right now they are not. Because it is a middle-range number on our scale, it is not a good industry to get in to. It will not keep you stress-free. If the tax firm is local and small, you will find it difficult to advance it or to make a career of it. Because of its ranking and its unlikelihood to provide a solid and stable career, this option should be eliminated from your list.

Let us examine the other two companies that resulted from your job search. We had a pharmaceutical company and a submarine company. Let’s examine the pharmaceutical company. This is in the health and wellness sector, which, as we discussed earlier, is a number one field. If you are in the accounting department of the pharmaceutical company, you would be a one-five so far. You could never get rid of accounting—it’s a necessity. But at the same time, you cannot do very much with accounting to make it hot on the market. There are people who can use their skills to bump accounting from a five to a one, but it is unlikely. Therefore, you should look into your industry and decide what you can do to make it a hot topic on today’s market.

Continuing Change: HardMagic Press

That is what we have done with our own companies. We are in the process of making our publishing company (HardMagic) and  its site more interactive and more similar to MOVFitness. Right now it is a one-stop shop, just like MOVFitness was a year ago. People can check out our site, but there are few opportunities to interact with the web page and with the people on it. By the time our next book is out, our website will be more interactive. Our interactive website will allow people to write and publish their own novel. Because of this, it is going to be one of the top websites in the world. Before doing any of this though, we had to recognize that it was both a website and a publishing company.

A lot of people say publishing is a dying market because of the rising popularity of the internet and other technological developments, such as the I-pad and the Nook. In the long run, however, people will prefer to read text from books. The industry might or might not be dying, so right now it is a number five. We are in the health and wellness realm of publishing, so we are a five-one. Besides this, what are we doing in publishing for health and wellness? Magazines are a dying breed. They are losing a lot of money because instead of reading magazines, people search through websites. This means that advertisers are investing money into websites as opposed to magazines. We do not publish magazines, we publish books. We are affiliated with SBON.com, which is about a number three. That puts us at a five-one-three. The reason SBON.com is a three is because it is an online magazine. Online magazines are still very important because they are easy to access. They do not, however, have the impact that something like Facebook has.

So what if, within the publishing industry (5) and within the health and wellness category (1), we had an interactive website where people could write their own book and get it published (1)? While there is currently something of this sort, called Webook.com, they only help to a certain extent; They do not help writers find a publisher. We, on the other hand, show our members how to write a book, how to publish it, how to market it, and how to prepare oneself for this process. What’s great is that people can sign up to our website for free. In total, you may have to pay approximately $150. This will pay for the proofs of the books you are buying. Proofs are the hard copies of your book, as sent to you through the publishing house. You never give us a single penny. What is that going to do for us as a publishing company? We are going to have hundreds of thousands of people sign up on our website. One percent of those people might hire us to publish their book. As oppose to the static website we had before, we now have the ability to help you with the process of writing and publishing a book. Sure, it will cost about $10,000 for us to invest in this new idea, but investing is what you do when you are looking into beginning a business.

Conclusion

These are the type of decisions you want to consider as the owner of a company, or as a prospective employee. The first step is to learn and decide how to be successful in what you choose to do. Is the company you are planning to work for a one-one-one? If you want to go into taxes but know that it’s going to be at least a five, then you need to ask yourself, “Can I at least be in the health and wellness side of taxes?, Can I be in the education side of taxes?” You do not want to be in a magazine (5) with taxes (5), and just give out factual data (5). Not only is this a five-five-five, but it is also a recipe for disaster. So whenever you get a job, whenever you invent something, or whenever you create and operate a business, consider whether or not your company will be a triple-one.

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