I BELIEVE.

I read this book "Millionaire Upgrade" by Richard Parkes Cordock recently which revealed the important attributes that self-made millionaires or successful entreprenuers possess. These attributes are depicted by the book as eight important principles for anyone who aspires towards being successful in life and business.

The eight important principles are listed in an acronym fashion namely, I BELIEVE.

I = I believe in myself.

B = Be passionate and want it.

E = Extend your comfort zone.

L = Lies and luck don't work.

I = Install goals.

E = Enjoy hard work.

V = Very, very persistent.

E = Expect failure.

I = I believe in myself

The first "I" sets the stage for these principles of success to work. In order to be successful, one must believe that he can become successful. This positive self-belief in making things work out is not based on an arrogant faith in oneself being the smartest in knowing everything and how to achieve success in having pride in one's way of doing things which always is seen to be superior than others.

This positive self-belief is instead a consistent belief in oneself that he can persevere through all odds and challenges, and keep on trying one's best without giving up until he succeeds in what he seeks to achieve. This is an entreprenuerial mindset, one that has great endurance and tenacity to strive towards the end-goal without giving up despite disappointments and failures along the way.

Easy said than done. That is why not many people pursue the tough route of entreprenuership which puts the hardest test to one's life in making tough decisions and actions, and accepting the many failures and sometimes small successes before seeing the final great success of one's work. I see entreprenuership as the toughest examination of all the many examinations one takes in his student and even corporate years. To graduate as a successful entreprenuer, he will have to face the failures of many papers in this examination and learn from each failure in order to proceed until the end of the whole series of examination to become a successful entreprenuer both in maturity of knowledge and spirit of enterprise.

B = Be passionate and want it

To be a successful entreprenuer, one has to be 100% passionate in pursuing a great entreprenuerial purpose. A successful entreprenuer is passionate in living out his life in providing a meaningful product or service to value add in other people's life. His great entreprenuerial passion is in always innovating better ways to answer people's problems and make life better for people he is serving (in the provision of products or services). Pursuit of money through going an entreprenuerial route is not a strong motivator. Passion in doing what one enjoys that will bring about benefits to others he serve is an enduring motivator.

I see this similarity of the principle of passion with the ideas from the book "From Good to Great" by Jim Collins. Great organisations have great culture of passion in all its people in serving a great meaningful purpose. They continue to be great as they have passion in living out and serving their great meaningful purpose, the purpose for their existence.  

As such, there is no point in doing something great and ambitious when one has no belief and passion in what one is doing. Find one's passion in life and become great in serving others through this meaningful purpose with an entreprenuerial heart.

E = Extend your comfort zone

Humans are creatures of habits of comfort. We have this tendency to keep repeating the same familiar habits that bring comfort to oneself. A successful entreprenuer needs to constantly extend beyond his comfort zone. It is through experiencing new things each day that one constantly learns. A baby who wants to walk the way adults walk has to extend beyond his comfort zone by actually trying to walk. He will never learn walking if he insists on his comfort zone keeping to familiar habits of doing a baby crawl.

To extend beyond comfort zone means conquering over one's fears and self-doubts. Everyone has fears of trying something new. It is the successful entreprenuer who is able to master courage to confront his fears head on and push boundaries to take on the new challenge and learn from it. Many great entreprenuers like Thomas Edison (in the constant invention of new things such as electric light bulbs), Henry Ford (in making available widely the automobiles to the masses) and the United State's project in puting the first man on the moon are examples of individuals and nations extending beyond their comfort zone not knowing whether what they aim to achieve will be successful or not. You never know until you try your very best.

L = Lies and luck don't work

If one thinks great entreprenuers are lucky chaps who got their way because they are simply born lucky, one will be extremely surprised. A successful entreprenuer does not rely on luck. What an onlooker views as luck is a duration of preparation which consumates with a great opportunity by the willingness and passion of the successful entreprenuer to pursue the opportunity that is presented. Tiger Woods, the world championship golfer did not got his lucky break all of a sudden to become world champion. It is through many years of preparation in golf training and taking part in many competitions that he manages to be known eventually as world champion. Thus, luck is the crossroads of preparation and opportunity.

Lies also has no place in a successful entreprenuer's belief. A successful entreprenuer does not hope for things to happen. He does not lie to himself and gives excuses that things will happen the way he hopes without taking any actions. Instead, he takes purposeful actions to make things happen the way he wants. Sometimes, things will not happen the way he wants after taking actions. However, he will still persevere on and keep trying different ways to reach his goals.

I = Install goals

To become successful, one needs to have goals and works towards them. Some have big goals. Some have small goals. Some have noble goals while others have more trivial goals. No matter what, it is important to constantly remind oneself of the goals one has passion in pursuing.

One can break down his goal into small steps and achieve one step at a time towards fulfiling the final goal. A successful person install goals and has clarity on what goals he wants to achieve in life. He is always taking actions to strain towards his goal in steps. A goal is thus fulfiling a dream with a disciplined deadline.

E = Enjoy hard work

A successful entreprenuer enjoys hard work. His work is not work to him but doing something he is passionate and believes in. As such, he enjoys what he is doing and does not mind going the extra mile to make sacrifices for what he is doing. Many a times, we have heard of great entreprenuers who put in many long hours of sacrifice into building up their business. For an onlooker, we may think such entreprenuers are overworked. However, to these successful entreprenuers, they just simply enjoy their hard work as they are working on their passion in life to serve a great meaningful purpose.

It is important to find one's true passion in life and then enjoy working hard at it until one reaches success in his goals (founded upon his passion). I read up elsewhere that successful people put in at least 10,000 hours of consistent hard work at learning and practising a particular trade in order to become an expert in the trade. This translates to approximately 3 hours every day of consistent learning and practice for 10 years to reach expertise in a trade.  One really needs passion in a trade to enjoy this level of consistent hard work!

V = Very, very persistent

Successful people which includes successful entreprenuers are very, very persistent individuals. Their passion in pursuing their goals is so strong that they will not give up until they reach their goals. They will not take "no' for an answer, but will find means and ways to reach their goals. They are passion driven people who will do what it takes (personal sacrifices of time, effort and confronting their fears, failures and disappointments) to reach their goals.

One great inventor and entreprenuer who displays such great persistence is Thomas Alva Edison who despite failing many times in his many attempts for every new invention, never gives up and continues trying until he successfully invented every new invention. One of the products of his extreme persistence is his greatest invention, the electric light bulb which has lighted up the world since his time. Had he given up easily, the world may not see an electric light bulb today (unless another inventor of great persistence comes along somewhere in ages past to discover an electric light bulb).

E = Expect failure

All successful people including successful entreprenuers have failed many times. Such people know that one cannot win all the time. Failures are part and parcel of the learning journey towards success. It is in failing that one can learn from his mistakes and better oneself. The more failures one make, the more opportunities of learning and growing in wisdom and judgement. A successful learned man has gone through a robust experience of learning from many failures. As such, he constantly learns from mistakes and do not commit his mistakes again while finding better improved ways to do things.

It is the ones who are afraid to fail that never extend beyond their comfort zone to become better at their trade. Failure is a great teacher. Learn to expect failure. But, do not forget to learn well from this great teacher who is "failure" so as to constantly grow to become better after each failure.

A magic ingredient that binds all 8 principles

In conclusion, I will also like to share from this book that there is an essential ingredient for success apart from these eight principles. This magic ingredient that binds all the above eight principles is teamwork. It is not enough for one person alone to embrace all these eight princples to have success. Every successful entreprenuer knows he cannot achieve success on his own. He needs a team to work together with him pursuing the same passion and belief.

In a team, there is synergy and everyone can leverage on one anothers' expertise, time, effort, capital and all other shared resources for a common meaningful purpose they are serving. A successful entreprenuer surrounds himself with successful people who can work together with him with common passion and belief. He can also learn from other people in a team as everyone has their unique strengths, areas of expertise and even weaknesses.

It is not an easy route to success, "Do I BELIEVE?"